The Year of Investing - April 2018

Well that was a weird month. If March was a financial trainwreck, then April tried to one-up it was unpleasant life events. Thankfully by the end of the month it all settled down and I still kicked plenty of goals, but what a roller coaster!

How money in the bank got me a Great performance review

source

A couple of weeks ago I got to sit through the joyous quarterly occasion that is a performance review. Of course, we don't call them that because a positive outlook is everything so we call them Inspiration Sessions!! Well, not quite, but it's a similarly pompous name.

I'm not one of the FIRE bloggers who loves their job and says they'd keep working even with money in the bank. I'm one of those FIRE bloggers who checks their numbers every Monday and sighs before opening the job pages and seeing if something else has come up before eventually getting down to work for the day.

But, despite all this, I still got a Great outcome in my performance review thanks to my FIREy pursuits.

The Year of Investing - March 2018

Oof, was it just me or was March one of those months? I spent a lot, the markets went backwards and life just seemed more stressful and busy than it had any right to be. Still, I stayed on track with my goals, and squeezed in a couple of days of doing absolutely nothing - just like retirement could be!

Emotional survival for market crashes

After seeing the share market take a wonderful and scary dive at the start of February, I started thinking about how it felt to me - seeing the value of my investments drop by a couple of thousand - and how it would feel to others with bigger accounts.

While I'm early in my journey and quite happy to see market values drop so I can acquire more for less, I'm trying to imagine how it will feel when I have a bigger investment, and a market correction hits.

Here's a few ideas to manage the panic moments.

The Year of Investing - February 2018

I'm back! Sort of! I got one blog post out in February, and plan to post once a month for the rest of the year. After that my stint as a Treasurer will be over, as well as one of the extra committees I've signed myself up for. So 2019 should be a boring quiet year where I can focus on writing a lot more.

But between now and then, I hope to get one post out a month to keep my typing fingers in shape, as well as these monthly updates.

Read on intrepid followers, for the dazzling numbers that made up February...

Why do you think $40k isn't enough?

One of my Australian FIRE blogger friends Pat the Shuffler was recently featured on ABCnews.

Not only was it a good read, but the bottom half of the internet (i.e. the comments section) was highly entertaining.

But one ongoing comment that I want to address has been a bane of the FIRE community for years. "Hope he likes eating two minute noodles, because no one can live on $40k a year."

What is it with everyone outside the FIRE community trying to tell us we don't know what our own budgets are?

The Year of Investing - January 2018

Where in the world is LadyFIRE this time? Largely lamenting the fact that I didn't get my payrise, and spending over an hour every night in a volunteer treasurer role. Who needs free time right?