F.I.R.E....

..or Financial Independence and Retiring Early which I thought I would write about as there is not much news today. Having said that there is lots of press today about the Governor of the Bank of England talking about interest rates rising, maybe later this year. I seem to remember we had the same blarney from Carney last year and we were supposed to have seen a rate rise by now. So I remain sceptical of that and I will believe it when I see it.
Any way back to the point of today's post. For some the idea of financial independence and retiring early may be appealing and to others it might seem like a pipe dream or even a nightmare if they love their job. So what are the best ways to achieve this and how much do you need? Well as ever it depends on what lifestyle you want to lead and how much you realistically need to live on for the rest of your days. Now rather than reinvent the wheel (as I have better things to do with my time) I'll recommend a few good blogs and sites out there that have covered this ground already.

So first up the answer to the above question - how much do you need and maybe even life the universe and everything is not apparently 42 but 25 according to an interesting site called Mr. Money Mustache (I know that's the wrong spelling but that's the address). He explains why he thinks 25 is the answer in this post and also references a useful site where you can plug in your own numbers and see how you would have fared in the past here. While these are US centric I'm sure similar results could be achieved for those using UK equities or a diversified global portfolio. He also looks at The Shockingly Simple Maths Behind Early Retirement which is all about saving hard if you can and he touches on the mindset required for achieving this with a bit on Stoicism.

Meanwhile in the UK we have similar sites and one I stumbled on recently is called Fire v London which is about Financial independence in London (which is how I stumbled on Mr. Mustache). Hat tip to Mike at The7Circles.uk (a useful site for UK investors) for putting me onto Fire v London. The Fire v London site also put me onto a useful resource for Private Investors which might help with the often asked question of how to calculate the returns on your portfolio. This comes from something called boglehead.org which is a Wiki set up by John Bogle the founder and retired CEO of the Vanguard Group.
Links to various formats of useful spreadsheets for this purpose can be found here.

Finally, last but not least is another blogger called Wheelie Dealer who is quite helpful and educational and who has written recently about how much you need to retire. All interesting, I hope you find these useful and that they might help you on you way to your own Financial Independence and retiring early - if that is what you want.

Talking of which since I get strange looks and people seem dazed and confused when I say I'm an investor or I'm retired perhaps I'll start saying I'm a FIRE-man which might make them see me in a better light and seem less bemusing for them. Talking of bemusing I'll leave you with a bit of old music today (which if the Led Zeppelin dazed & confused link above doesn't float your boat) then the video below might amuse and it seems appropriate to today's post - I am the god of hell fire and I bring you: