FIRE

An attitude of gratitude – grin and bear (market) it

/ Gracie Sunderland

Just a month ago I was jauntily planning my future, posting about dreams of building on my small but proudly created foundation. Since then the Bear Market and general chaos-fest of COVID-19 has arrived, and my savings have lost almost 25%. I wrote last week about carrying on with good habits: this week we are on lockdown from schools, the office and all public institutions are closed, and the world feels like it holds a number of possible, uncertain and potentially Armageddon-esque, futures.

So, what are we to do? Other than keep on keeping on?

For this week, I am going to concentrate on all the other things. Firstly, counting my blessings. Yes, I am somehow supposed to home-school the kids whilst continuing to work from home full time. But what is also true is that I will get to spend some much-needed time with the children; that we are well resourced (internet, craft supplies, a garden etc) to manage this.

I also recognise how lucky I am to have a job. I spend a lot of time fantasizing about living with more freedom and growing my side hustles, but right now I am just glad to have a job with a great boss who understands my circumstances and can be flexible whilst I juggle working and having the kids at home. And whilst I appreciate you can never rely 100% on employment, right now I am pretty damn glad to be here.

I have been thinking a lot about people who don’t have this security – the small business owners who can’t open during COVID restrictions; the almost 1 million people in the UK who are on zero hours contracts who won’t get paid if the can’t work. Drops in the stock market and a huge rise in financial uncertainty is likely to hit charitable giving and make 2020 bumpier than it is already. One in 50 families in the UK uses a foodbank (with numbers continuing to increase) but if donations significantly slowdown then foodbanks will be unable to cope and help people in need. Already vulnerable populations are likely to be the hardest hit, so as well as counting my blessings, trying to keep the kids calm (and doing something that isn’t watching TV or shrieking) I’ve donated to Age UK.

Stay healthy and happy, people!

Perchance to dream…

/ Gracie Sunderland

Sometimes the daily grind of being a full-time working single mum can mean that I can feel that I don’t deserve to dream big – I can barely make it to bedtime without letting something drop. And when I read financial independence blogs about ‘living on one partner’s salary whilst saving the other’, it seems so unlikely that it’s a path for me. But this blog is born out of hope, and out of the belief that if I can have got this far, then frankly anything is possible.

So – what is the dream?

If my year of avid podcast listening to the FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) crew (more on the background and where to find inspiration – and, let’s be honest, advice about how to do things properly, later) I found two key starting questions:

Why do you want this? What’s your goal?

Yesterday, the fact that my day in the office was rough enough to take the skin off my nose, was enough for me to want to have F-You money. As J L Collins notes in that article, “I may not have known what it was called, but I knew what it was and why it is important.  There are many things money can buy, but the most valuable of all is freedom.  Freedom to do what you want and work for whom you respect”. F-You money means the freedom to make choices; to take time out before burnout, to spend time with my kids when they need me, to pursue other projects. It means taking a job because I want to, not because I have to in order to get the bills paid.

Right now, I can’t see a way on one income to become totally FI. I don’t know if that’s just me being a weenie, or if there is some rational logic in there. But I know that working toward having enough financial security to make different work choices would transform my life, and in working toward that – taking control of my money and making it work for me – is a great place to start. And a place which makes me feel less like a rabbit-in-the-headlights who has to do all or nothing.

How do you think you’ll get there? The five year plan

My five year plan feels ludicrously ambitious (though when I look at FIRE extremers it looks more like someone saying ‘I’m saving up my 20 pence pieces in a jar!’ and blogging about it). A lot of these goals are based on a long back-story which will come in other posts, but for now I want to put these out there. By July 2024 I intend to:

Be mortgage free. I have been overpaying for a while and have £78,120 left. I will also be debating (at length, probably) the reasons to overpay a mortgage rather than invest given low interest rates – and how this relates to my risk tolerance as a single parent.

Have enough in pension funds to bring in £12,000 per year. I paid in two year’s pension contributions at 23-24, then nothings for 12 more years. Partly this was due to free-lancing/taking time off to have kids/being broke, but I could kick myself. More on the detail of this to come, but the figure is based on the small defined benefit pensions I have and pension calculations rather than a ‘sum in the bank’.

Have £120,000 in low cost index funds. This is the combination of my current savings nest-egg – £40,000 – plus maxing out the £20,000 tax free stocks and shares ISA contribution per year.

Achieving these goals means saving about 40% of my income.

So, there are the reasons, and the ambition. Next week, the plan of how to get there.

Wait, what? Handbags?

/ Gracie Sunderland / 1 Comment

The idea of the Brilliant Ladies’ Handbag Club comes from an all-women group I used to attend. It was created to help women set and achieve their goals, from cleaning out the attic to getting their start-up on the road. That group was called something else, but my then 6-year-old son renamed it to the BLHC, because just attending made me brighter, happier, and more focused. Since then, I have focused on working out what I want to do with my one wild and precious life – and it turns out the answer isn’t ‘work for a salary’. It probably isn’t ‘do yoga on the beach’ either to be fair – but wouldn’t it be great to choose?

I love the image of the handbag: full of useful tools; creative things like books, postctards, dried out daisies, and colouring pens; somewhere to dive in and finding things I didn’t know were there but turn back up just at the right time. My handbag always has nourishing snacks (and plenty of sweets, because you never know – also spare underpants, because you never know) to keep you going on the way. And a phone and a list of contacts in case I get lonely on the journey.

I’ve spent a year diving into a brilliant community around FIRE (financial independence, retire early) and whilst it’s becoming more diverse, as s British single mother there is only a small amount of it which resonates – which feels like me. So the Brilliant Ladies’ Handbag Club is an online place for me to chronicle my journey, reflect and store all the nuggets of wisdom along the way and share them with like-minded people. If you’re interested in FIRE; taking control of your money, even when things get tough, and in doing so stick it to the consumerist man; dreaming and building a different life; or just looking for some company, then come on in. Amongst the sweeties and the underpants, might be your tribe.