A road trip to financial freedom
A money blog by the travel bug
It’s almost six months since I launched this website and time for an update on my journey to financial freedom. It’s been a mostly smooth drive since June and my overall feeling is one of being hopeful. If this update was a song, it would be Jenn Johnson's 'You're gonna be OK'.
Fees need to be hunted down no matter how deep they’re hiding and cut if they’re for a service that adds no value to your life. So, how do you find out how much you’re really paying? Well, start by looking out for the three A’s of investment fees - advice, admin and asset management - and pin those hairy figures down.
Want to know where active, passive, wrappers, unit trusts and other commonly used investment terms fit into your portfolio? This is for investors who want to dig deeper. Warning: this post contains explicit investment language and graphic depictions of what your money get ups to when you hand it over to the investments industry. Only view if you're not sensitive to a sustantial amount of detail.
This blog post is for everybody out there who’s ever played around with a retirement calculator and then got stuck halfway trying to figure out whether they’ll be OK in old age or not. Because investment terms are not that obvious - even for insiders. This week I'm walking you through the Discovery tool step by step.
It seems most corporate employees - myself included - become burrowed so deeply into areas of specialisation that they hardly catch a whiff of the exciting new developments in their industry. Being on sabbatical allowed me to explore what’s new on the local investment scene. My heart missed a beat. How and when did I fall this much behind?
Let's face it. It's hard to relax on holiday when your wallet aches every time you want to do, see or eat something. But there are ways to see the world that fit most budgets. Here are some frugal travel tips for those who need to find out what's on the other side of the fence.
Soon we’re off to Greece for our second holiday this year. Partly possible because I haven't bought a new car in almost 17 years, but also because I've spent years trimming down my running costs to the bare minimum that would work for me. This is how I manage to live below my means.
Are there routes to your magic number other than the 4% rule? Because 300 times your monthly expenses is kind of a tall order and maybe you are feeling somewhat 'flat tyres' after reading the previous two posts. Time to look at other formulas that could work better for you.
Four things that can go wrong with the 4% rule
The 4% rule is a great guide towards your magic number - if you keep in mind that it's a rule of thumb and like all simplification it has the potential to trip you up if you're not aware of its shortcomings. Here are the four main possible 'wobblies' you need to prepare for.
Are the rule of 300 and the 4% rule the same thing?
If your GPS is set on financial freedom, that place where you can just be for a while and march to your own do-be-do beat, then you'll need to know your magic number. The amount at which you can say, 'If I quit my job now, I'll be OK for a very long time.'
Why I (sometimes) fake financial freedom
It can no longer be postponed. After more than seven years since my last one, and five years with Big Investments Group (B.I.G.), air punching and silently screaming behind closed doors, I’ve lined up a sabbatical. Two months out of the office. Out of reach. Released from duty. Free to do-be-do.
Will we live a long, long time?
According to legend, if you look into the Well of Reflection at the cemetery of the sacred temple village of Koyasan and do not see your own reflection, you will die within three years. So it happened that I contemplated my own mortality every step of the way back into the village, feeling a little pale and unsettled. I don’t know if it were the clouds that added to the illusion, but for the life of me I could not see my own reflection.