Saturday 24 October 2015

... and that concludes the 8th year of my FIRE journey

I wandered aimlessly in the consumerist, save 10% of your earnings for the future, let compound interest do its magic (great post on this by ermine this week), with others taking care of my financial future giving me time to spend the rest, world for some 12 years before I woke up and realised I wasn't really getting anywhere from a personal finance perspective.  Sadly, early on that even included a stint in debt for a new’ish car because “I was worth it”.

This month, October 2015, as best as I can tell looking back at my records, represents 8 years since my FIRE (financial independence retired early) awakening took place.  So to give me some time to celebrate today I'm going to forgo my usual many words and instead give you a single simple chart that I think says everything about my journey thus far, a journey that is infinitely modifiable to suit each individual and one that I now believe is within the realms of possibility for many if only they would spend some time thinking about it.

My complete personal finance journey from 1st full-time job
Click to enlarge, My complete personal finance journey from 1st full-time job

7 comments:

  1. The graph says it all - well done on your 8 years RIT - fantastic progress and an inspiration for the rest of us to continue on our own paths!

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  2. Bloody hell - well done that man! That is one serious course correction, and one that stuck. Kudos to you,sir!

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  3. We've bought a "new" car. It's ten years old. Beat that, RITman!!

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  4. @weenie/ermine
    Thanks for the compliments. Still have a bit of work to do if I'm going to Retire in 10 years.

    @dearieme
    The next important question from me would be what's the mpg? :-)

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    1. Wrong question. The right question is "what's the gallons per annum"? We control our mileage but not the passage of time.

      The next question is whether VW, bless them, will succeed in having driven down the price of diesel fuel in Europe, as new car buyers revisit the case for petrol. We can but hope.

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  5. Excellent graph, proving Ermine's point as well as, well, 1000 words.

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  6. Hi RIT,

    Thanks for sharing the graph - and its a great incentive to those of us a little earlier in the journey to show that its not only worth it and the benefits, but more importantly just how much difference it will make!

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