Burning Desire For FIRE

Financially Independent, Retired Early(ish) at 57.

Page 54 of 78

Frugal Friday: Lockdown #6 edition.

August 6, 2021 / / 8 Comments
Rose - apricot coloured blooms.

Oof. It’s hard when a state is only 9 days out of the last lockdown and then has 4 hour’s notice before being thrown back into the next one. I’m sure all 6.6 million Victorians would like to thank the family from Sydney who broke the rules and precipitated this for us all.

For the first time, I was caught on the back foot and didn’t have a specific project lined up to do. I spent Thursday driving to Moorabbin to get my car serviced, then a went for a walk with Tom29, who is waiting to start his new job next week. He jumped jobs and earned a 40% increase in his wage, so I’m very proud of him.

Then I went into work. I owed Alice a bottla champagne on a bet we had in the series finale of ‘Celebrity Apprentice Australia.’ I also needed to give my $2 to the sweep organiser for ‘Survivor.’ WHAT a cracking season it’s been so far! We have a Whatsapp group going so every episode we’re chatting away.

(I distinguished myself by logging on to chat one night and not noticing that I was on the wrong chat. I was making remarks about the show and wondering where all the others were, until I realised that I was actually sending these weird messages to James, my Irish friend that I met when we went to North Korea 3 years ago. He thought it was hilarious…)

I spent a lovely couple of hours chatting with people and catching up on what’s been going on. So many people would walk into the Danger Zone, the area of staff room 2 where I always lived, glance at me, then do a double-take when they remembered that I don’t work here anymore.

People kept asking if I was still enjoying being away from work. My reply? Something along the lines of, “Retirement is fucking fantastic!!!!”

Still, the general atmosphere was pretty glum. It’s hard on both the teachers and the kids when remote learning comes into play and they’re all pretty sick of it. The announcement of the lockdown hadn’t yet been made when I was there but it seemed pretty obvious that it was going to happen.

On the way back to pick up my car, I received a phone call from Mum. She and Dad were having computer problems. Ugh! But as luck would have it, I was 5 minutes away from them so I dropped in after the car was done and worked out what was going on. Lucky – otherwise it’d be ages before we could clap eyes on each other again.

Even though I’m fully vaxxed, I kept my mask on the whole day. I don’t like the sound of Delta… both the virus and Goodrum. (Just a little joke.)

So it was after 5 when I eventually arrived home. Ryan26 met me at the front door after the little woofs had finished their hysterical greeting. Fair enough – I was gone the whole day. Clearly, I was never going to come back and they would be all alone with only Ryan26 to love…

“You’ve got a parcel. Live plants.”

I blinked. I thought all my plants from Diggers had been delivered…?

Look at the picture at the top of the post. Six years ago when I fulfilled my lifelong dream of going to the UK and Europe, a reader of the Frog blog contacted me and asked if I’d like to stay at their place for a few days and she’d show me around. I spent 3 beautiful days with Deana and her family, and she took me to Hever Castle, Jane Austen’s house and Canterbury.

In the Canterbury post I mentioned shopping at a quilt shop there. Last year one of my lockdown projects was to turn some of that fabric into a quilt for Deana as a surprise. Anyway – she got me back.

She sent me a bare-rooted rose bush called “Lady Gardener’, which is the rose in the photo. Fortunate Frogdancer strikes again! Now I have a project for lockdown #6 – I’ll be getting Ryan26 to dig another hole in the orchard and I’ll plant it beside the fence. The blooms will look lovely this summer in front of the dark grey.

It’s somehow fitting that an English rose has given me an English rose. 🙂

Dad Joke of the day:

I’ve accidentally swallowed some Scrabble tiles. My next crap could spell disaster. 

Frugal Friday: Mum’s Boppin’ Bangers.

July 30, 2021 / / 7 Comments
Dorky guy dancing

When we moved here I brought with me a big bureau-type thing that used to live in the lounge room and had the tv on top. It has shelves and also drawers which were perfect for storing DVDs and CDs – remember those things?

Dog on a couch.

You can see how it used to look in this old photo. Look behind Jeff on the couch – the couch which now lives on the backyard verandah – and there it is.

Soon after we moved here I found a dining table and chairs that were on Gumtree. When I went to look at them, the people were also selling the strangest-looking bureau I’ve seen. It was all business on the top but it has the weirdest legs. I wasn’t sure if I liked it but I knew I’d probably regret walking away from it so I bought it.

Cabinet with long spindly legs

It’s in my lounge room with the tv on top of it. I’m still not sure if I like it but I’m used to it and in an odd way I’m fond of my strange-looking cabinet. If it ever came alive like in nightmares, those spider-like legs would be impossible to escape.

So we moved the original bureau to the Man Cave, where it sits covered by family photos and, other than being dusted every now and then, hasn’t been touched by human hands since.

It has the family DVDs, the boys’ old games, computer cables and my CDs. We only have one device capable of playing CDs and I’ve packed it away somewhere. In the last few years, I’ve veered away from listening to music and am more a podcast girl. However, Ryan26 has an excellent Spotify account and he plays music a lot so I still get to hear some groovy tunes. If I want to hear something specific, Youtube is handy.

Boxes and tubs piled on top of each other.

I’m a lazy soul at heart, which is one of the reasons why retiring early appealed to me so much. A couple of months ago I spent a couple of days sorting through tubs of my fabric stash and putting them into colours. I put them, all sorted, into the tubs and piled them into the wardrobe of the guest/sewing room.

There! All together! All sorted! Nothing can stop me now!

Tangle of fabric strings

Except… ugh.

Who wants to go and lift all those tubs out if you want a colour from the bottom of the pile? Or worse – if you want to PUT AWAY a fabric that belongs in the bottom tub? Look at this pile of selvedges and strings. I’d have to lift out at least 3 tubs to put these away.

It’s such a hassle.

I didn’t retire just so my life can become so difficult.

I started looking at chests of drawers on the LKEA website, but we were in lockdown … then I remembered the old bureau. I mentioned to Ryan26 that I was thinking about taking it over for my fabric. He had a look in there and started dragging out all my old CDs.

“How about I make a Spotify list for you?” he asked. This is how ‘Mum’s Boppin’ Bangers’ was born.

We had the best afternoon! He put all of my CDs on there – except Michelle Shock’s album ‘Short, Sharp Shocked’, which apparently isn’t on Spotify. Pity, because that whole album is a banger.

After a while, he started playing random tracks and I’d try and guess the title and artist before they started singing. It’s amazing how many songs I remember, though Madonna’s ‘Beautiful Stranger’ had me stumped.

Then he called me in, sat me down and said, “What are the other songs you want to put here?” Now that was a gloriously fun rabbit hole to go down. I think it was 3 hours and over 3,100 songs later that we decided it was time to stop and make dinner.

That was two days ago. One of today’s tasks is to swap over the fabric for the junk in that bureau. I’m happy for never-used boys’stuff to sit in the tubs, but this Frugal Friday win is to utilise the space we have in a far more user-friendly way, without racing out to buy more furniture. I’m far more likely to use the fabric I have if I can access it easily. Lazy at heart, remember?

The monetary loss is, of course, once Ryan26 started playing ‘Mum’s Boppin’ Bangers’, I realised that I wanted to be able to hear it whenever I wanted. It’s got some damned fine… well… bangers on it.

So we’ve splitting a Spotify account between us. $7/month each is a small price to pay for hearing songs like this again:

I haven’t heard this song for I don’t know how long. Just imagine how many other excellent songs are lurking on ‘Mum’s Boppin’ Bangers’ waiting for me to rediscover them?

(But apologies for all of the grammatical errors on this vid. Ugh. Maybe I shouldn’t have retired – the world clearly needs English teachers to help the Youtubers.)

Speaking of English teaching – one of the things I miss about teaching is putting up Dad jokes on the board at the start of each lesson. So guess what? At the bottom of each post from now on, I’ll put a Dad joke.

I know it’s not in the Financial Independence vein, but hey. Don’t you try and repress me! My blog – my rules. Besides, I have a huge list of jokes saved. It isn’t frugal to let them moulder and go to waste.

Today’s Dad joke:

I dig.
You dig.
He digs.
She digs.
We dig.
They dig.

It’s not the most imaginative poem. But it’s quite deep.  

“So are you working?”

July 27, 2021 / / 13 Comments

In between lockdowns is a fantastic time to catch up with old friends.

Recently, I’ve had 3 separate high school reunions with women I haven’t seen for 40 years or so. Each reunion has been so much fun – it’s odd how our lives have been so different in the little details, but have still been the same(ish) in terms of the broad-brush-stroke events.

But something I found myself pondering after the first couple of meetings – how do you ask what people are doing without assuming that they have a job? Many people have their self-image tied in up what they do for a living, but what if, like me, they’ve retired?

In my age group it’s not terribly uncommon for women to have dropped back to part-time work or full retirement, especially if they’ve stayed married. Decades of those two wages makes a difference after a while!

We all know that the usual question when meeting anyone, either for the first time or after a large gap, is to ask, “So what do you do?” This implies that they have a job/career. Is there a different way to ask how they’re spending their days?

I decided to test-drive the question, “So, are you working?” Said with a smile… tone of voice is really important, of course. It seems a more neutral way of asking how they spend their time without the expectation of getting a job title in return.

If they’re working, you’ll get a “Yes, I’m a ………………” or something like,”Yes, I’m working 4 days a week as a …………….”

If they’re not, you’ll get a, “No, I’m retired… never worked… ” Whatever. The only risk I can see is that the person bursts into tears and says they just got laid off. That’d be awkward, but you run that risk anyway with the more usual question.

(Of course, it wouldn’t be so neutral if you added one word – imagine asking “So, are you STILL working?” OMG… can you imagine the expression on the other person’s face? )

So on my third reunion, I asked the question. I already knew what Robyn did for a living – we’d reconnected on BookFace and had had a long chat on Messenger – but I had no idea what Lisa was up to these days.

It worked really well. She smiled and told us that she worked 3 days a week as a district nurse, visiting Mums and young babies in high risk families. There were no weird looks and her reply led into a really interesting discussion about what she does in those three days, as well as how she spends the other 4 days a week.

We had a great talk. Robyn works fulltime as a teacher, Lisa part time and I’m retired, so we were spread along the whole line of possibilities. It was fun to compare the different lifestyles. We all chose the more traditional “caring” careers. Not sure if that’s a product of leaving school in the 1980’s as young, middle-class women or whether we’re just fantastically humanitarian people. We all enjoy/ed our careers though, regardless of the reasons why we entered them.

I know this isn’t a huge thing in the big scheme of life, but I found it an interesting thing to play with.

Has anyone else experimented with how to ask The Question?

I did some Maths!

July 25, 2021 / / 7 Comments
HELP written on test

This morning I was noodling around on the Simple Savings forum when someone posted a comment about the cost of groceries. This made me wonder – how were we tracking this year compared to last?

David27 has moved out in all but name, so SURELY we’d be doing better?

Plus we have a VERY well-stocked Zombie Apocalypse cupboard that I beefed up when covid raised its ugly head. This means that we don’t go to the supermarket very often, especially when we’re in lockdowns. The plague is a very good reason to avoid people. It also means that you avoid impulse buys when you pop in for a litre of milk, for example.

Also, remember all of those pumpkins we grew? We’re just finishing the last one, months after we picked them all. That crop alone would have saved us something. We’ve eaten a lot of pumpkin over the last few months and I’ve even invented a pumpkin pasta bake, just to use up even more. We’re still eating other things from the garden, though far less in winter.

So how are we tracking?

I knew this would require some advanced Maths. Fortunately, my laptop has a calculator. I pulled up my ‘Yearly Expenses’ chart and had a look.

Chart of grocery spending.

oof.

Kids are expensive to feed, especially when they turn into men. You can see how the grocery bill drops as a couple of them left home. It used to be even more expensive when I had 4 adult men to feed, but Tom was already gone by the time I started tallying up figures.

Roughly speaking, I divided up 9K (2020’s number, rounded up) by 12. That gave me an average monthly figure.

Then I multiplied it by 7. We’re in July, the 7th month. (I know Maths people will say that we still have 6 days to go before July is done, but all I wanted was a rough idea.)

Roughly speaking, I’ve spent around $1,800 LESS than I did this time last year. I’m pretty pleased with that.

Hmmm… how much cheaper will it be when Ryan26 moves out? Maybe I should start dropping hints???

But then, maybe not. He’ll probably look at me like this:

Sad bear looking sad.

Well, I’m exhausted after all that intensive brain work. Time for a lime verbena tea!

Frugal Friday: Anyone for pizza?

July 23, 2021 / / 10 Comments

Even without a thermomix, pizza dough is so easy and cheap to make. When the kids were really little, I used to cop out and use wraps as bases, but honestly… that’s a travesty. A good pizza needs a good base, so I love the pizza bases I make. Have a look at the ingredients – could it be cheaper?

2 tsps dry Yeast

220g lukewarm water

30g olive oil

1 tsp sugar (At the moment I’m using the sugar sachets I liberated from the motels I stayed in on my South Australian trip – SO EVEN CHEAPER!!!!!) heh heh…

420g bakers flour. (Though plain will do as well.)

1 tsp salt.

Sometimes, if I’m feeling fancy, I’ll put garlic, chilli and some fresh rosemary in there as well. (I freeze whole peeled garlic cloves and whole chillis and grow rosemary in wicking boxes – SO NO WASTE!!! EVEN CHEAPER!!!!!!!) Ok, I’ll stop now.

How thrifty is this? It costs literally mere cents to make this dough – enough for 4 or 5 pizzas, depending on how large you like them.

I keep the yeast in the freezer in the blue insulated thermos-y thing. It’s the yeast I bought a few days before our very first lockdown back in March 2020. Still going strong.

Oh! Did you notice the olive oil container? I bought that in San Gimignano in Italy on my 2015 trip. Another frugal tip – buy souvenirs that you’ll USE, not ones you merely look at. Nearly every day when I reach for the olive oil, I think of that trip.

Here’s the dough, just before I wrap it up in a silicon mat and put it near a heating vent. (It’s the middle of winter here in Melbourne.)

After an unfortunate incident when Poppy was a puppy, many years ago, we’ve learned that we have to keep dough that we’re proving up high.

There is a very strict rule in this house, brought in when the kids were little, that EVERY pizza must have green on it. No matter what else is happening in the garden, I always have leaves growing and so they must go on.

Edited to add – in the background is a ceramic tea caddy that I bought in Beijing when my friends Helen, Rick and I went to North Korea. Another useful souvenir!

Ryan26 is the pizza maker in this household. The toppings vary, depending on what’s in the fridge and the garden. This was last night’s effort.

Of course, I forgot to take a photo when he pulled them from the oven. I was starving. But we fed 2 adults an incredibly cheap, yet incredibly delicious dinner for 2 or 3 dollars at most.

And here’s the answer to Toni’s question in the last post.

I have a side-by-side fridge and freezer in the kitchen and the lowest basket is devoted to ice-cube sized portions of home-made pesto – which always goes on our pizzas – and balls of frozen pizza dough.

Ryan26 just divides up the dough after it’s risen and put’s individual-sized balls into freezer bags. They’re so handy if someone, such as an adult son who lives away from home, drops in and is starving. He can whip up a meal very quickly.

I also like it when it gets to around 5PM and I’m not in the zone for cooking. I just throw 2 frozen pizza dough balls onto the kitchen counter and by the time Ryan26 is ready to start cooking, the dough is ready to roll.

Some people recommend freezing them in flat discs so they’ll defrost quicker, but I don’t like the sound of that. How many times have you gone to the freezer to get a sheet of puff pastry, only to find that it’s broken? It’s a PIA. I’d rather it take a little more time to defrost and then you can roll it to to the size that you want.

Thanks, Toni, for asking the question. I got to have the night off from cooking last night. Love pizza nights!

Frugality and FI is the gift that keeps on giving.

July 21, 2021 / / 6 Comments
Pea soup in a bowl.
Not my soup – mine’s still cooking!

There’s a rumour that’s been circulating for a while now that Frogdancer Jones – that’s me – is frugal. Or maybe a tightarse… take your pick. I was told about a conversation that happened in the staff room at work where people were describing a continuum of spending. Apparently, I was on the thriftiest end, while the others spaced themselves along the rest of the line up to the biggest spender.

But hey, I like being frugal. I like the challenges of making material things last longer, enabling my money to go a little further and only shelling out for things I HAVE to have and things I WANT to have. Middle of the road ‘meh’ stuff doesn’t cut it in this household.

Being frugal means that I can cut down unnecessary spending, freeing up my cash for fun things. You know, things we’ve all wanted to buy… a mini dachshund puppy, a trip to North Korea, 6 more apple trees… Things that are by far more important to me than designer handbags and the like.

It’s fun for me to save dried peas from the garden and turn them into soup, using my slow cooker that I’ve had for over 20 years. It makes me smile to look down at my slippered feet and see the ‘Welcome to Nightvale’ patches. My ‘Earn back my council rates’ challenge costs me nothing, but because of it I’ve read 86 books so far this year for free. If you think getting lost in a good book doesn’t add to your quality of life, then I have news for you!

I’m a big fan of finding experiences and activities that entertain and inspire you without having to necessarily cost a whole lot. This automatically leaves money that you can put towards something else.

Being frugal doesn’t mean that you never lash out on expensive items.

Which is why I’m really excited about my latest purchase.

Big box with Poppy ( a cavalier) sniffing it.

This is a gift for David27 and Izzy. It’s an engagement + wedding gift because it’d be an extraordinarily generous engagement gift and I’m not that rich! It was delivered here in the middle of lockdown #5 so it’ll be a while until I can drive over there with it to give it to them.

It’s a product that I hold very dear to my heart. I have 2 of them and I can’t possibly do without them. Just this morning I used one to make bread dough, pizza dough and gratin sauce for cauliflower cheese for lunch. We now have 8 bread rolls and 4 balls of pizza dough in the freezer for literally mere cents. And absolutely no artificial ingredients. Izzy and David27 both have health issues and she’s also lactose intolerant, so this will be perfect for them to eat cleanly and with fresh ingredients, while being able to produce gourmet meals. They’re both foodies.

I’m so excited to be able to provide this for them.

Just to make it fair for the rest of the boys – because 2 have already bought their own thermomixes, while Evan24’s housemate owns one – I’ve decided to give a little less towards the wedding. I’ve always thought that I’d give 5K per boy per FIRST wedding – (any subsequent weddings and they’re on their own!!) – so I’ll give 4K towards this one.

Come to think of it, I also gave them the diamond for Izzy’s engagement ring. There are definite advantages to being the first cab off the rank when weddings come along! This is a product of the practical thinking that frugality brings. I had a very good quality diamond in a ring sitting in the jewellery box, back from when I was in my twenties. I’m never going to wear it again. It makes no sense for it to sit there for decades when Izzy could have it put into a setting she loves and then get to enjoy looking at it every day.

By doing this, I release something that was useless to me and David27 gets to put the money that he would’ve spent on a diamond towards the wedding. Sounds like a win/win to me!

Being frugal and FI is almost like a superpower. When I think back to the days when the boys were small, when I could barely afford to keep a roof over their heads, I feel so very lucky to be able to buy a gift like this now. Back then, I would never have believed it would ever be possible.

All I have to do now is wait for this current lockdown to be over. The box can sit in the hallway, just like the boxes of my customers used to do when I sold thermomixes as a second job. Once we’re free to drive further than 5 km from our homes, I’ll look forward to driving over to Izzy’s parents’ place to deliver it, just as I used to do back in the day for my customers. It’ll be fun.

But if you know them in real life.. sssshhhh!

Don’t spoil the surprise!

Frugal Friday: Support the Arts and save some uggs all at the same time.

July 16, 2021 / / 2 Comments

I’ve noticed that it’s been nippier in the mornings lately. It’s not just that we’re in the middle of winter, though that’s a factor – it’s also that BOTH my ugg boots have a hole right where my big toes are. It’s surprising how much colder you feel when a little breeze is whipping across your toes first thing in the morning.

The easiest thing to do would be to chuck these out and buy another pair, but I didn’t want to do this. My son, Ryan26, bought these for me 2 Christmases ago for over $100. That’s a lot of money for a student. And apart from the toe holes, the rest of the boots were in tiptop condition.

Then came an email from one of my favourite podcasts, ‘Welcome to Nightvale.’

This poddie has been going for 9 years and it has quite a bit of merch. Including cloth patches…

Hmmmm…

I could send away for 2 patches for $24, or spend $100+ on a new pair of uggs. But gee – do I have the time required to actually sew the patches on?

Well yes. Yes I do. I’m retired, after all.

I LOVE THEM!

When the patches arrived I put on a podcast that I wanted to listen to, brought a cup of lime verbena tea from the garden over to the couch and started sewing. It was a pleasant way to spend some time and I knocked over both the repair job and a couple of podcast eps. Now that’s being productive!

My uggs are now snug again and I have a totally individual pair. I’ve respected my son’s gift and now they’re even more special to me than before. Plus I’ve stopped 2 boots from disappearing into landfill.

I’ve also supported a podcast that has given me YEARS of entertainment and I’ve saved a chunk of cash as well.

Who says that frugality has to be drudgery?

Little Adventures #3 – Endeavour Fern Gully, July 2021.

July 14, 2021 / / 8 Comments
Track leading into the bush.

I was looking at the news, seeing New South Wales’ covid figures soaring to over 100 cases from their bungled “lockdown” and then news came of 3 covid cases in Victoria due to removalists breaking the rules. That decided it! July’s Little Adventure had to happen quickly just in case we all go into lockdown again.

For any new readers; my Little Adventures are day trips. Once a month I take the freedom I have now that I’ve retired and I explore a place close to home. A place I’ve wanted to see but never really had the time for when I was working.

I looked at the weather forecast. Tuesday was cold but fine. Wednesday would be rainy. Decision made!

Tuesday would be “Little Adventure and Planting Asparagus Crowns” day.

Wednesday would be “Shopping at Costco For Dog Food In Case We Go Into Lockdown Again” day. We can go without many things in this house if we have to, but dog food is definitely not one of them.

Big gum tree.

Ryan26 is on his L plates and was at home, so he leapt behind the wheel for the 44km drive to the Endeavour Fern Gully. This is a property in Red Hill owned by the National Trust. The Mornington Peninsula was once a temperate rainforest and they’ve preserved a little patch of it with a walking track through it. Blogless Sandy discovered this place when she was with her walking group and told me about it.

I was interested to see that it’s a National Trust property. My plan is to buy a membership, once covid lockdowns settle down. They have a few old buildings that I haven’t seen since primary school and they’d be perfect for Little Adventures. The fern gully is free, so my membership plans can wait.

Big tree fern.

Ryan26 and I were the only ones there. There are definite advantages to being retired.

Tree trunk covered with moss.

All we could hear was the sound of birds, the gurgle of water as we walked near tiny creeks and the sound of a farmer a couple of paddocks over as he was riding his tractor. Fortunately, he was quite a way away so it wasn’t too intrusive, more like a low burring noise underneath everything else.

Another gum tree.

It was crazy to think that the Peninsula was once covered with dense vegetation and ferns like this. At one point the walking track skirted the side boundary of the property. On my right side was a paddock of green grass – nothing else. On my left side was a wall of tree ferns way taller than me, blocking out the sky.Really demonstrated how settlers have changed the landscape.

I unintelligently left my phone at home so Ryan26 took these photos for me.

Lots of gum trees.

The walking track is around 2kms or so and it winds its way through banks of tree ferns gathered around creeks, as well as stands of trees. Don’t you love the sound of running water?

Every now and then we’d hear a bellbird, or a galah would fly screeching overhead. Ryan26 is a quiet soul, so we didn’t chat much. We just walked in silence, first him and then me, quietly taking it all in.

The smell of the air was utterly different down there. It’s hard to describe. It was a clean, ancient smell of vegetation. Of things rotting down to provide new plants with the nourishment to grow. That may sound unpleasant but it really wasn’t. It’s a place of lush growth and renewal.

Boardwalk through tree terns.

I was glad we came. It’s an easy drive from Melbourne and we were home for lunch.

After a revivifying nap on the sunny spot on the couch, I went out to the garden and planted 7 more asparagus crowns. I can’t touch them for around 3 years but after that, I’ll have asparagus for the next 20 years or so!

Aiming for FI is ALWAYS a good idea.

July 5, 2021 / / 14 Comments

When it comes right down to it, we’re all responsible for our own financial well-being. A definition on the internet or someone else blathering about how they think you should handle your FIRE journey has no relevance. Everyone has different nuances and circumstances to take into account, which means that the beauty and the terror of personal finance are just that. It’s PERSONAL.

Ultimately, it’s all up to you.

Having said that, however, I’m firmly in the camp of the ‘FI’ part of FIRE being the most important. Retire/don’t retire – I couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss what you do. But I do believe that, wherever possible, people should have the goal of being financially independent firmly in their sights.

The reason for this is simple: You never know what’s going to change in the future.

What started me thinking about this was a tweet I saw a little while ago where a guy was saying something like, “I think FIRE is stupid. I love my job. I love my life. I never want to retire.”

Someone pointed out to him that he may feel differently a little way down the track. Having kids, for example, definitely changes the way people look at how they want to spend their time.

His reply was something like, “Oh. I didn’t think of that. I’m single and 25 LOL!”

Oof.

Things change.

I worked at my last school for 17 years. I loved my job. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my holidays too, but every day I’d walk through those doors and be so happy that I worked at that school. Until gradually, things changed and I wasn’t feeling the love so much.

Things change.

If I hadn’t kept steadily moving towards Financial Independence during the years when I absolutely loved my job, I’d have been screwed when I became jaded. I would have had to stay whether I wanted to or not.

Two and a half years ago I wrote a post about a friend’s marriage that had hit a crisis point. It’s called ‘The Scariest Financial Decision of all‘ and in it, I talk not only about my friend but also about the breakdown of my marriage so many years ago. The thing was, I walked away from that marriage as emotionally prepared as I could be, (is anyone ever really emotionally prepared for all that?), but financially???

I was in a woeful state.

A bit like my friend. Two years after I wrote that post, she pulled the pin on her marriage for good. In the interim, she had another baby, so she’s now on her own with 3 kids under 6, a part-time job and a house with a hefty mortgage that is still awaiting property settlement. She has no money of her own behind her and so, like me 24 years ago, she’s essentially starting from scratch.

While my divorce wasn’t exactly amicable; hers is just awful. Nothing has been able to be agreed upon between the parties and even simple things like access to children and child support have had to be dragged through the courts. As you can imagine, solicitors, barristers and the drawing up of documents etc can run up expenses really quickly. My friend would be up shit creek without a paddle, let alone being able to afford a canoe, if it wasn’t for one thing.

Quite a while ago, her parents decided that they wanted a slice of this Financial Independence pie and so they made it their goal to reach it. Their goal was FAT-FI, which is basically a snappy way of saying that they ended up retiring with more than they needed for their basic living expenses. Since then the share market has been burbling along, they were living their lives and all was serene until the separation.

My friend can pay her legal team. She’s getting the best advice possible to ensure the safety and security of her kids. She can do so because her parents worked towards financial independence years ago.

I’m darned sure that when her parents were saving, investing and doing all they could to ensure a solid retirement, the thought of this situation happening never entered their heads. Like all of us on this path, they were focussing on what they wanted to have put by to make sure their retirement would be a good one.

But now? They’re so thankful to be able to help their daughter and grandchildren. If they’d YOLO-d their way through life, my friend’s situation would be pretty grim right now. Part of her parents’ view of having a great retirement has altered. They now view being able to help look after their grandchildren’s lives as being very valuable to them.

Things change.

We can foresee some things, such as getting older and reaching life’s milestones, but some things are absolutely hidden from us until they happen. Seeing as how that’s the case, the only way we can prepare for them is to get our financial acts together.

If something happens and we need to drop everything to be there for someone we care about, it’s far easier to do that if we don’t have to be juggling having to go to a job to pay our bills at the same time. Knowing that we have a solid financial footing means our brains are free to focus on the other things that the person needs. It frees us up to be totally in the space with that person, instead of money worries shredding away at the edges of our minds.

Fingers crossed that we never have to experience this! I know I’d prefer to have my boys merrily sailing off into the sunset with never a worry. I know that I’d prefer to have a retirement where the weightiest decision I have to make each year is which country I’m travelling to… but life is tricky.

Money doesn’t solve everything, but it sure makes a lot of situations just a little easier to bear.

Financial Independence is always a great goal.

You never know when it’ll come in handy.

Little Adventures #2 – Cutting Cloth, June 2021.

June 30, 2021 / / 15 Comments

Back during the heyday of craft blogging in the late 2010s/early 20teens, there was a group of us that read each other’s blogs, met up for blogmeets at cafĂ©s and generally encouraged each other. Most of us had young kids and between us, we created a warm, friendly and utterly creative corner of the internet. Over time, most of the blogs gradually dwindled as kids grew, we went back to work and all of that.

One of the most creative of us, Kellie from ‘Don’t Look Now’, decided 5 years ago to follow her passion for fabric and open a quilting shop. Unfortunately, it was over the other side of town in Fairfield, where I never go. It was also when I was in the middle of my Europe trip and then buying The Best House in Melbourne. I was busy, busy, busy. Still, I filed it away as a place I’d visit ‘one day.’

The shop front. Wow.

Fast forward to this morning. I realised that, due to the 4th lockdown, June had almost gotten away from me and I hadn’t had a Little Adventure. Basically, now that I’ve retired, I’ve set myself a challenge to go somewhere new every month. Being June 30, it had to be today!

Fortunately, I had all 4 boys and their partners over for dinner last night and the 2 who live in the Western suburbs needed a lift back home. Yarraville isn’t exactly close to Fairfield, but it’s a darn sight closer than my side of town! So once I dropped them off, I fired up the Tomtom and headed on over.

Shopfront detail. I saw this quilt when I visited her once, many years ago.

This shop is utterly exquisite.

It’s also where I found the pattern I used for the Vintage-look baby quilt. I actually saw the original! Sadly, Kellie wasn’t in the shop that day, but once I regaled the other women with the tale of how I made mine, then unpicked it all and made it again, the conversation flowed and I had the best time!

Remember how I bought a painting in Hahndorf when I was on my holiday to South Australia? On my way over there, I decided that I’d buy the fabric for a quilt to begin bringing the colour-scheme from the painting into the rest of the room.

How cute is this?

I was probably there for an hour. I pulled up a photo of the painting on my phone and then the pulling of fabric bolts from the shelves commenced. I learned a lot, just listening to Liz talking about why each fabric would work. She was really clever in how she mixed and matched colours, which is something I need to learn more about.

We were walking up and down the shop, pulling bolts out and putting them in a stack and then stepping back to see that they’d be like.

I’ve been following this place on the blog and Facebook since it opened, so it was a thrill to see the incredible quilts in real life that I was so familiar with.

While I was there I also bought a little reading lamp. Sometimes the guest room/sewing room gets a bit dull. It’s on the south side of the house and I’ve been meaning to fix this problem for ages.

Look at how Liz packaged up my fabric! I kept glancing over at it all the way home.

Here’s the photo I took of the painting after I’d unwrapped it. You can’t really tell from this photo but it has a 3D effect – the flowers and fallen petals are made from layers and layers of paint, so they stick out. So much so that I have to keep an eye on anyone who sees it for the first time. A surprising number of people try to touch them.

In different light during the day the painting changes as the light moves across it. It’s really quite extraordinary.

So there’s the colour palette. I also bought a hexagon template so I’ll be learning a new skill when I’m making this.

I’m glad I thought to do these Little Adventures.

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