After ten years and three months, I’ve decided the October update will be the last net worth update, and I’m stepping back from Aussie Firebug for a while.
This blog started as a way to prove, using our real numbers, that early financial independence is achievable without a huge income, wealthy parents, or winning Lotto.
Our latest numbers showed that our passive income, using the 4 percent rule, was higher than our monthly expenses for the first time.
For the month of October 2025, we were financially independent.
So why stop now?
The Spark Is Gone
I will be honest.
My interest in FIRE content has faded. What once felt new and exciting now feels repetitive and disconnected from where I am in life.
The spaces I used to spend time in, like /r/fiaustralia, the MMM blog, and even my own Aussie FIRE Facebook group, no longer resonate with me.
The movement has not changed. I have.
Discovering financial independence changed my life. I devoured every book, blog, and podcast I could find.
But as our wealth grew and life opened up, my focus shifted. By 2023, creating Aussie Firebug content felt like a chore.
I had completely lost interest.
All the exciting stuff had already happened, and the snowball was well and truly rolling. Becoming financially independent felt inevitable.
We were already living the life we wanted. A number ticking over in a spreadsheet wasn’t going to change anything.
2023 was also the year our daughter was born, and the year before that, I’d started a business.
Somewhere during those years, my obsession shifted.
Family became my top priority once I became a dad. As life got busier, the time I spent on Aussie Firebug steadily declined.
When I did get time away from family, I kept gravitating towards the business. In the past, that time would have gone to AFB.
My spare time is now mostly consumed by building products, not for the money, but for the craft of entrepreneurship itself.
Creating something new, understanding sales and marketing psychology, and finding an edge over the competition genuinely excites me.
I haven’t felt this level of energy for something since I discovered Mr Money Mustache in 2013.
It’s not always smooth sailing, but working through a problem and watching the result come to life is an incredible feeling.
Seeing a customer thrilled that something your team built solves a real problem for them is unbelievably rewarding.
It’s addictive.
The truth is, my passion for FIRE has tapered off, and I have no desire to create content about something I am no longer obsessed with.
I Have Mostly Done Everything I Wanted To Do
When I started, I had three goals.
Get 100 readers on the blog.
Interview Brandon from the Mad Fientist, Steven McKnight, and Mr Money Mustache on my podcast, since they were the biggest influences on my FIRE journey.
Share monthly net worth updates until we hit financial independence.
I have ticked off the first two.
The third one did not end the way I originally planned.
There is a clear turning point in everyone’s financial independence journey when your monthly passive income, using the 4 percent rule, covers your monthly expenses.
It happened for us in October.
We reached financial independence.
However, one good month does not guarantee a repeat, particularly given how much our expenses fluctuate.
I planned to keep publishing updates for three years after reaching that point, because I knew there would be plenty of ups and downs.
But I’m calling stumps here for a few reasons:
As explained above, I’ve lost the motivation for creating FIRE content.
I think the 4 percent rule is far too conservative. Inspired by the book Die With Zero, I am no longer aiming to preserve my portfolio indefinitely, but to draw it down to zero, or close to it, by the time I die. This significantly changes our drawdown, as shown by the fabulous calculator from engaging-data.com below.
If we stopped working today with our current FIRE portfolio, we would have a 71% chance of not running out of money by age 96, even with a 6 percent withdrawal rate.
Those are solid odds.
What sets this calculator apart from the traditional 4 percent rule is its ability to model flexible spending.
No one draws the same fixed percentage every year, humans simply do not work that way.
It also factors in mortality. There is a greater than 50 percent chance I will be dead by 80,
which puts the trade-offs into sharp focus.
This is exactly the point Bill Perkins makes in Die With Zero. The biggest risk is not running out of money, it’s running out of time.
Super is not officially part of our FIRE portfolio, but there’s a good chance we will be able to access it eventually. This adds another ~$250K to the pot (in today’s dollars).
Keeping It Relatable
I tend to be inspired by people who are in a similar position to me.
My favourite blogs, podcasts, and YouTubers are all people I can relate to and learn from because, in one way or another, their situation mirrors my own.
Lately, I have found it harder to relate to the struggles and mindset of many people who email me. That is not a criticism, it is simply a reflection of where I am now.
That is not to say I cannot offer useful insights from the roughly 13 years I have been doing this. I can, but it is harder to genuinely connect given how different my circumstances are today.
As an example, I think Die with Zero is an excellent book for people who are close to, or already at, FIRE, but a poor fit for someone just starting.
That is how I feel about my current situation more broadly. I am not sure I can provide the same level of value to beginners as I once did. My mindset is completely different to when I was at the start of the journey.
Where to now?
So, where to from here?
That is a good question, and one I have been sitting with for months.
I am not shutting down Aussie Firebug for good, but I am taking an extended break to focus on other priorities.
My time writing about FIRE has largely come to a close.
I have said and done more than I ever set out to do. There is nothing left that I feel I need to add.
This blog has been far more popular than I ever could have imagined. Not in a million years did I expect it to reach the audience it did.
I still enjoy long-form, thoughtful conversations, so I would like to continue the podcast. That said, it may evolve into something broader and not be focused solely on FIRE. We will see where that leads.
This blog has given me far more than I ever expected, and I’m proud of what it became.
It’s been a minute since I last wrote about our FIRE journey, and much has changed in our lives. Life looks different now, especially since becoming a dad roughly 1.5 years ago.
And let me tell you, nothing hammers home the value of controlling your time like raising a child.
With the blog reaching its 10-year milestone this year, I figured it’s the perfect time for a refresher, not just for new readers, but also to reinforce the benefits of FIRE for any aspiring parents out there.
FIRE Gave Me Time, but Took Away Something Else
Here’s the funny thing…
For most of my life, chasing FIRE has been about doing what is best for me.
I wanted to reclaim my time from the ever-growing demands of life. What I did with that freedom was less important. I just knew I wanted it back. I pictured a future where I was no longer tied to a 9-to-5, free to live a more kick-ass life on my own terms.
It was almost a selfish pursuit, if I am being honest.
But something strange happened when I finally started living the life I had spent years working towards. I realised I did not love it as much as I thought I would.
Let me explain.
In 2021, after spending two years living abroad, my wife and I returned to Australia. I entered my second mini-retirement. I was doing a bit of light consulting work, maybe 0 to 15 hours a month. But often I would go weeks without lifting a finger.
This was the dream.
The very life I had been building towards since 2013. I had worked hard, saved aggressively, invested wisely, and now I had more free time than I knew what to do with.
I could finally focus on my health. Start that veggie garden I had always wanted. Cook dinner every night without rushing home from work.
Sounds perfect, right?
But after living that dream for a while, a feeling I did not expect crept in.
Dissatisfaction.
I could not shake it. I had built the exact life I had been working towards for years, but for some reason, it just did not feel right. It wasn’t that I was miserable or anything, but deep down, I wasn’t fulfilled.
Part of the problem was that most of the people I loved hanging out with were still working during the day. My wife had dropped down to three days a week, and she genuinely enjoyed the social side of her job, which made me a bit jealous, especially around the Christmas party season.
I realised that a sense of purpose and contribution was missing from my life.
So, I did what any FIRE nerd with too much time on their hands would do…
I started two businesses 😅.
Finding Purpose, Building a Life That Matters
I had a few key drivers for my new projects.
First, I wanted to reconnect with locals and regain the sense of contribution to my community that I had been missing.
Second, I wanted to test myself. I have always admired individuals who start their own companies. Building something from scratch always seemed ridiculously hard, and I wanted to see if I had it in me.
And third… I missed work Christmas parties lol.
When I reflect on all the significant, positive things I have accomplished in my life, a clear pattern emerges. Every single time, before I took the leap, I felt uncomfortable.
That feeling, that knot in your stomach, is usually a dead giveaway that whatever you are thinking about doing is actually worth doing.
Going for that job interview after uni? Uncomfortable. Entering my first Jiu-Jitsu competition? Terrifying. Leaning in for a disco pash with my now-wife at Saloon Bar? Absolutely nerve-wracking.
But every one of those moments led to something incredible.
You do not grow in the comfort zone!
So with all that in mind, I jumped.
I ended up starting a data analytics company that scratches my technical itch. I have always loved problem-solving, and now I get paid to do it.
But it was about more than just the technical work.
I wanted to challenge myself.
I had always admired people who could build something from scratch, create real jobs, and make a difference in their community. There is a deep satisfaction that comes from seeing something you have built actually help people.
When clients use our products and give great feedback, and when we solve real problems for them, it hits differently.
Additionally, I helped build a co-working space with some friends. A completely new concept for our hometown, which has turned into a brilliant spot for entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small business owners to work, connect, and build their own projects.
So yeah, I still work.
But the difference now? I choose when I work, how I work, and, most importantly, I actually get purpose from what I do, something I never had in any of my old jobs.
Now, you might be thinking, “Damn Firebug, you saved all that money just to end up working again like the rest of us.” And fair enough.
But still, there’s a significant difference between working because you need the money and working by choice.
Looking back, my “Why of FI” was predominantly fueled by dissatisfaction with my old job.
Working in government, I often felt like what I was doing did not really matter. The endless meetings and bureaucracy drained my creative energy.
If I had landed a job that felt meaningful and exciting back then, I probably never would have been drawn to FIRE in the first place.
You could argue that if I had just changed jobs 13 years ago, I might have saved myself a lot of effort.
And honestly, you would not be wrong.
But even knowing that, I am incredibly grateful I found FIRE.
Because the real value of it only became clear after we had our daughter.
I cannot stress enough how life-changing it is to have full control over your time when you are raising young kids.
My wife has not been back to work since our daughter was born, and I only go into the co-working space three days a week. And because I work for myself, if my wife needs a hand or if I just do not feel like going in, I can stay home without stressing about it.
Our investment portfolio is our financial security blanket. It shields us from the stress of unexpected expenses and money worries.
The peace of mind cannot be understated.
At any moment, we could liquidate part of our portfolio and have the cash in our account within a few days. If things ever got tight, we could push a button and have hundreds of thousands of dollars ready to go.
The financial security we’ve built gives us a sense of calm and freedom that’s the real payoff for taking control of our finances.
Summary
Life’s weird.
I got into FIRE about 13 years ago and, by mid-2021, found myself in a mini-retirement with all the free time I could ask for. Amusingly, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would.
I wasn’t satisfied and felt the lack of purpose/contribution unsettling.
I’ve since found a new passion in the small business and entrepreneurial community. Starting two businesses has been one of the most exciting, scary, and rewarding things I’ve ever done.
But just when I thought I’d outgrown the FIRE stuff from my 20s, we welcomed our daughter into the world.
And just like that, all those years of carefully managing our spending, climbing the corporate ladder, and learning how to invest felt completely worth it.
It stopped being about us. We’ve built a financial shield for our family, giving us the freedom to prioritise our time around our kid (more to come hopefully).
That’s why I’ll always be grateful I discovered FIRE in my early 20s. It shaped so much of who I am, even if I’ve changed a lot since then. I don’t see everything the same way I did back then, but the core values still stick with me.
Welcome back to the third annual Aussie FIRE survey results!
In case you missed last year’s results, you can grab them here.
This year’s survey added a few more asset classes and more detailed expense breakdowns. I was going to add time intelligence to some of the visualisations but I ran out of time. If you’re interested in the historic relationship between the 2021 and 2022 datasets please message me. I have withheld the Longitudinal Survey Identifier (LSI) from both datasets for security reasons but they are available upon request. I would welcome further analysis between last year’s survey and this one.
I’m so happy to report that the survey had 1,025 submissions across 18 countries.
Feel free to download the anonymized results of the survey here under the Open Database License (ODbL). I really look forward to seeing what you find—if you share on social media, make sure you tag me and I’ll give it a shout-out!
Enjoy!
Aussie Firebug
Firebug Profile
Geography
1,025 responses
What country do you live in?
995 responses
What state/territory do you live in?
Age Range
1,024 responses
How old are you?
Sex
1,025 responses
Sex
Relationship Status
1,025 responses
Relationship Status
Are you DINK?
550 responses
Are you DINK? DINK = dual income no kids
Kids
848 responses
Do you have kids?
543 responses
Do you want kids?
Education
1,025 responses
Highest level of education
Employment Status
1,024 responses
Employment status
Industry
1,021 responses
What industry do you work in?
Living Status
1,025 responses
Living Status
PPoR Worth
685 responses
How much is your PPoR (Principal Place of Residence) worth?
After-tax Income
1,019 responses
What’s your AFTER-tax income per year?
1,019 responses
What’s your AFTER-tax income per year?
1,019 responses
What’s your AFTER-tax income per year?
Net Worth
1,025 responses
This wasn’t a direct question. The figure was calculated from other fields
Expenses
Housing Expenses
960 responses
Estimated housing expenses per year?
How much do you spend on rent/interest repayments, rates, utility bills a year? If you’re filling in this survey as a couples/households, enter your combined expenses.
*Don’t include your mortgage repayments or investment property expenses here. Only interest repayments if you have a loan.
934 responses
Estimated housing expenses per year?
How much do you spend on rent/interest repayments, rates, utility bills a year? If you’re filling in this survey as a couples/households, enter your combined expenses.
*Don’t include your mortgage repayments or investment property expenses here. Only interest repayments if you have a loan.
Holidays Expenses
977 responses
Estimated travel/holiday expenses per year?
How much do you spend on travel/holidays a year? If you’re filling in this survey as a couples/households, enter your combined expenses.
807 responses
Estimated travel/holiday expenses per year?
How much do you spend on travel/holidays a year? If you’re filling in this survey as a couples/households, enter your combined expenses.
Childcare/schooling Expenses
374 responses
Estimated Childcare/schooling expenses per year?
If you’re filling in this survey as a couples/households, enter your combined expenses.
363 responses
Estimated Childcare/schooling expenses per year?
If you’re filling in this survey as a couples/households, enter your combined expenses.
Transport Expenses
954 responses
Estimated transport expenses per year?
How much do you spend on petrol + maintenance if you have a car? Or, how much do you spend on public transport if you don’t own a car.
978 responses
Estimated transport expenses per year?
How much do you spend on petrol + maintenance if you have a car? Or, how much do you spend on public transport if you don’t own a car.
Food/dining Expenses
1,004 responses
Estimated food/dining expenses per year?
How much do you spend on food and going out to eat a year? Think about how much you spend on grocery bills a week plus any restaurants you frequently visit.
978 responses
Estimated food/dining expenses per year?
How much do you spend on food and going out to eat a year? Think about how much you spend on grocery bills a week plus any restaurants you frequently visit.
Other Expenses
960 responses
All the other expenses per year?
Everything else you spend money on should be included below. Sports, pets, entertainment, insurance, shopping, medical etc.
Investing
Have you reached FIRE?
1,025 responses
Have you reached FIRE?
Investing Experience
1,023 responses
How many years have you been investing for?
FIRE Number
999 responses
How much in todays dollars would you need invested to be financially independent?
E.g. if you needed $1.25M to be FIRE. Enter in 1250000
Withdrawal Rate
1,006 responses
How much are you planning to withdrawl from your portfolio to live on each year (as a percentage)?
Cash (Median)
948 responses
How much do you have invested in CASH?
LIC (Median)
260 responses
How much do you have invested in LICs? LIC = Listed Investment Companies
Aussie ETFs (Median)
834 responses
How much do you have invested in DOMESTIC ETFs (companies in the ASX)?
International ETFs (Median)
603 responses
How much do you have invested in INTERNATIONAL ETFs (companies listed outside of the ASX)?
Individual Shares (Median)
588 responses
How much do you have invested in INDIVIDUAL SHARES?
Managed Funds (Median)
130 responses
How much do you have invested in managed funds?
Bonds (Median)
78 responses
How much do you have invested in BONDS?
Defined Benefit (Median)
37 responses
How much is your DB worth?
Annuity (Median)
7 responses
How much is your annuity worth?
Invetment Property Equity (Median)
369 responses
How much are your investment properties worth – How much do you owe on your investment properties?
Precious Metals (Median)
88 responses
How much do you have invested in PRECIOUS METALS?
P2P Lending (Median)
50 responses
How much do you have invested in P2P LENDING?
Cryptocurrency (Median)
361 responses
How much do you have invested in CRYPTOCURRENCY?
Options (Median)
13 responses
How much do you have invested in OPTIONS?
Other Assets (Median)
160 responses
How much do you have invested in OTHER ASSETS? List the dollar amount you have tied up in other assets that have not been listed above.
Most popular ASX Products (Top 20)
868 responses
Which of these ASX listed products do you own (if any)?
Do you use DRP?
1,011 responses
Do you use DRP (Dividend Reinvestment Plan)?
Do you use DSSP or BSP?
1,017 responses
Do you use DSSP or BSP? If you don’t know what these are, select no
Investment Structure
1,014 responses
How do you own your investments?
Super
Super Balance by Age (Median)
1,017 responses
How much do you have invested in SUPER?
Relying on Super?
1,024 responses
Will you be relying on Super to reach financial independence?
Max Super?
1,022 responses
Do you max out your Super contributions each year?
SMSF
1,025 responses
Do you operate a self-managed super fund (SMSF)?
Most popular Super Funds (Top 20)
946 responses
Which Superfund(s) are you with?
Miscellaneous
Financial Planners
1,025 responses
Have you used a financial planner?
189 responses
Was the financial advice worth it?
189 responses
Was your financial planner independent (as legally defined by ASIC)?
Most popular Trading Platforms (Top 20)
978 responses
Trading Platform
Most Popular Side Hustles (Top 20)
376 responses
Which of these side hustles do you do (if any)?
Debt Recycling
1,012 responses
Do you participate in debt recycling? Select no if you don’t know what debt recycling is.
Methodology
This report is based on a survey of 1,025 Firebugs from 18 countries around the world.
The survey was fielded from November 1st to December 1st 2022.
Unfortunately, Google forms doesn’t have a timer option which means I was unable to validate submissions
Respondents were recruited primarily through channels owned/ran by aussiefirebug.com which included: Aussie FIRE Discussion Facebook group, Aussie Firebug Twitter Account and Aussie Firebug Blog
All income figures are based on AUD.
Net worth figures are in AUD
Some visuals do not always take into consideration all the answers due to visual issues. There were 78 distinct values for banks for example. Reducing that to a top 20 is more visually appealing. You can always download the entire dataset if you want to know all the submissions
After much thought and consideration, I’ve decided to end my ‘Ask Firebug Fridays’ segment after the announcement from Australia’s financial services regulator.
These new guidelines have major implications for content creators in the FIRE and personal finance communities.
This is why I wanted to share my thoughts and opinions on these new guidelines and what they mean for AFB moving forward.
What?
In a nutshell, ASIC is cracking down on unlicensed creators who they think are giving financial advice or are seen to be ‘influencing’ their audience.
Their definitions and examples for what constitutes ‘influencing’ are clear as mud.
asic.gov.au
They don’t even give a clear answer to what defines an influencer either, having followers ‘In the thousands’ apparently 🤷♂️.
But who’s an official follower anyway? Someone who listens to one episode of your podcast or YouTube video? An email subscriber? A Twitter follower?
You’re probably thinking they’re only targeting people giving specific or dangerous advice right?
Well, you’re in for a rude shock.
ASIC official speaking to afr.com
We can’t even discuss our own investment decisions or strategies apparently 🤔.
It gets worse.
afr.com
So… discussing financial products online such as “shares” or “ETFs” without a licence is now illegal…
WE CAN’T EVEN TALK ABOUT ETFS?!
🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩
This is kinda a big deal.
Stopping people from discussing ETFs is starting to drift into the totalitarian type of conversation. And I don’t say that lightly, but a government that restricts people’s right to discuss certain financial products under the guise of ‘it’s for your own good’ starts to remind me of that book that George Orwell once wrote.
Maybe you’re not worried about these specific new guidelines, but it’s the precedence that they set that should cause alarm. No one cares about anything until it impacts them.
What would you say if one day ASIC released guidelines prohibiting unlicenced parents from talking about money and investing with their children?
That’s perhaps hyperbole, but these new guidelines are one step closer to that dystopian future.
My other issue is there are so many questions and definitions that have been deliberatively left unanswered or are so vague that no meaningful conclusion can be drawn… but let’s move on.
Why?
Let’s give ASIC the benefit of the doubt and say these new guidelines were introduced to protect investors.
This is a good thing!
If an investor loses money after receiving bad advice from an AFS (Australian Financial Services) licenced professional, theoretically they should have a pathway to recoup some of those losses.
If an investor loses money after receiving bad advice from someone on TikTok… bad luck.
AFS licensees have to adhere to a set of minimum requirements which provide important protections for investors if something goes wrong (aka a lot of expensive insurance).
With the explosion of online financial content in the last few years, it makes sense for ASIC to take a closer look at what’s going on. Most content creators are producing honest/useful stuff, but I have to admit that there’s been a trend of creators clearly making content primarily for monetary benefits.
You know what I’m talking about. Creating content for the hell of creating content to make sure their channel stays fresh in the algorithm. Releasing rehashed stuff every second day basically repeating what they’ve already said 100 times.
If content creators are receiving a monetary benefit, there will always be some bias no matter what.
“Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome”
– Charlie Munger
I love this quote and it’s highly applicable to this situation.
Content creators that make money from affiliates and/or sponsors will always have a conflict of interest no matter how small.
And this applies to me too guys. I try my best to be as unbiased as I can but we all have some sort of bias no matter what (sometimes at the subconscious level)! This is especially true when you’re getting kickbacks.
I think the ‘why’ behind ASIC’s new guidelines is fair enough and makes a lot of sense viewed from this angle.
Having said all that…the way ASIC has chosen to crack down on these bad actors is heavy-handed at best, and oppressive at worst.
How?
ASIC’s solution to regulate an influx of online financial content creators is to make them pay for a licence (which can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year) or threaten litigation to the tune of $1M+ dollars in fines and up to 5 years in jail… 🙃
asic.gov.au
To say that this is harsh would be putting it lightly.
To put that into perspective, Australian gangster Mick Gatto has served less jail time than the maximum sentence ASIC can dish out…
A financial content creator might serve more jail time for talking about ETFs, than Mick Gatto… 🤔
I’m starting to think we’re losing the plot here?
Lazy Policy Personified
Let’s recap so far.
ASIC’s solution to a few bad apples within a thriving community of online financial content creators is an all-encompassing blanket rule that will crush independent media.
It’s sorta like dropping a nuclear bomb to get rid of an ant nest in the backyard.
Overkill doesn’t even come close to what these new guidelines are and the only people who are going to be left standing are the big media corporations that can afford to pay the licence fee which can be as high as $30K a year.
Here’s an idea. Why didn’t ASIC just come out and say that anyone who monetises online financial content needs to hold an AFS licence?
It’s a lot more specific and tangible and would weed out people who are only in it for the money pretty bloody quickly.
But no. In typical government fashion, the corporate watchdog releases new guidelines that are so vague and light on details that 99% of online financial content creators are caught in the crosshairs.
I understand resourcing constraints and ASIC doesn’t have the time to monitor everyone and everything but surely there’s a happy middle ground.
A few bad apples shouldn’t ruin it for everyone.
Is The Cure Worse Than The Disease?
The public opinion of the financial sector has been in tatters ever since the royal commission in 2017.
ASIC released a report in 2019 titled: Financial Advice: What consumers really think which found that 49% of those who were surveyed didn’t get advice because they thought advisers were more interested in making money for themselves. On the other hand, 35% didn’t get advice because the costs were too high.
ASIC Report
ASIC Report
A lot of people are being priced out of financial advice and even more, don’t trust financial planners. The data backs this up time and time again.
I’m not saying regulation is a bad thing, but I think these new guidelines are doing more harm than good.
The truth of the matter is that legislators have made the costs of offering financial advice so high, that the people who need it the most can rarely afford it.
Who should we be prioritising?
The 22-year-old that’s just finished her marketing degree and is trying to make some good financial decisions for the future?
Or the 64-year-old multimillionaire Boomer who owns 7 investment properties?
Why do the legislators think online financial content creators are so popular?
We’re filling a gap in the market that has been created largely because of overregulation.
Some regulation is needed, but these new guidelines are going to wipe out good education material that helps bridge the gap between “I don’t know anything at all” to “I feel confident discussing my financial future with a professional”.
That’s where we content creators thrive! We make stuff relatable and give personality to what can otherwise be a dry topic.
Casualties
One of my favourite podcasts ‘FIRE & Chill’ decided to shut down in April because of these new guidelines.
Sad day today.
Our last episode of FIRE & Chill just went live. @PattheShuffler great working with you over the last 2 years mate, had lots of fun!https://t.co/jejn9MId6H
— Dave Gow | Strong Money Australia (@strongmoneyaus) April 18, 2022
This is a podcast that averages 4.8/5 on 284 ratings on iTunes and has conservatively helped 10’s thousands of Australians with financial literacy.
iTunes Ratings
Here were two guys making relatable content, for free, that had great reviews.
Another victim of these new guidelines was John Palmer from the very popular YouTube channel ‘INVEST for the future’. John spoke about investing fundamentals drawing from his decades of experience and never charged any money for his videos.
John Palmer decided to shut down because of the new guidelines
“I know everybody would still like the videos to be there, but I just can’t afford to take the risk”
-John Palmer
The Family Finance YouTube Channel
Family Finance is another creator that had to delete a bunch of content. She now can no longer give an opinion on financial products 👎
lifelongshuffle.com
The Lifelong Shuffle blog is another one that has gone into hibernation because of the new guidelines.
I could go on and on showing other examples of great content creators that have been impacted by the new guidelines but I think you get the point.
The new guidelines are inadvertently snagging 99% of fantastic freely available Australian-specific resources.
Below is an AFR article titled ‘These young investors don’t want ‘finfluencers’ to go‘ which tells us what we already know. Many young investors don’t trust the financial industry and are looking for alternatives.
afr.com
As I’ve previously mentioned, 49% of Aussies don’t get advice because they think they’re being ripped off and 35% think it’s too expensive.
You’d think that ASIC would be putting more time and energy into ‘cracking down’ or improving the professional industry where the public has clearly lost trust?
Yet, ASIC is targeting online financial content creators who have amazing repour within their communities that don’t charge a dime.
I want to repeat this point because it’s important.
Many young people have lost faith and can’t afford advice in the industry that ASIC regulates largely due to over-regulation. Content creators start to fill this void and collectively rack up millions of views, downloads and sessions from a generation hungry for financial knowledge. The numbers don’t lie. If people didn’t like what the content creators were making, they wouldn’t watch, listen or read.
Shouldn’t we want financial education to be accessible for everyone and not just those who can afford it?
More regulation sounds good in theory but the data suggests that it isn’t working.
I have no doubt in my mind that ASIC had the best intentions when they came up with these new guidelines.
But as the old Portuguese proverb goes…
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
Rules for thee but not for me
One of my biggest gripes with this whole fiasco is the hypocrisy.
ASIC’s position is that unlicensed content creators might ‘influence’ investors to make costly decisions yet ASIC themselves are publishing content that’s detrimental to wealth creation.
Case in point, the Moneysmart website.
Moneysmart is a Federal Government website, brought to you by ASIC.
To be fair, they have a lot of great free resources and tools but their advice for financial fees is downright terrible.
I won’t go into all the details but the important part is what they’ve published as the fees for this case study.
And I want to remind you that the title of this article is ‘Financial advice costs: Pay the right price for the right financial advice’.
Rhett’s total fees for the first year are $14,000 (Moneysmart’s aggregate column is wrong). This is made up of:
$7,660 for the financial adviser
$3,000 for the investment platform
$3,340 for the product issuer which includes full yearly insurance premiums
$14,000 in fees is 3.5% of Rhett’s original investment.
Worst still, this case study estimates investment fees and insurance premiums to be $9,000 (another summing error) per year ongoing perpetually. And $2,000 of that being the fee for financial advice regardless of changes needed to be made or not.
All up that’s an ongoing fee of 2.25%.
90% of people will have no idea if 2.25% is high or low which makes advice from a government-run website like this so insidious.
How on earth is ASIC justifying this content when they know better than most that normalising these fees serves to further line the pockets of advisers and product issuers rather than the investor.
This is a huge problem because so many people are going to read a case study like this, that is backed by the government and just assume that paying an ongoing 2.25% in fees is reasonable.
In fact, this exact case study was posted in the FIRE Facebook group where most of the professional financial advisors also agreed that the case study fees were too high.
Facebook Group
Facebook Group
But as most of us know in the FIRE community, fees play an enormous part in your wealth creation journey.
How on earth did the responsibility of not being ripped off, fall to a bunch of content creators without any formal education in finance.
It’s almost as if ASIC wants to normalise these fees so AFS licence holders can still profit after paying an arm and leg in regulatory costs impose on them by the very same organisation…
I wonder what would happen if the majority of the population became financially literate and stopped paying these high fees 🤔?
One could speculate that ASICs’ main source of revenue would dry up pretty quickly.
But that’s just speculation of course…
The End of Ask Firebug Fridays (AFF)
These new guidelines have already claimed a few scalps in the FIRE community and AFF will, unfortunately, be added to the list 😢.
I started this FIRE Q&A back in 2018 after getting hundreds of emails from readers each month. I was putting so much time and effort into answering the same questions that I thought a public Q&A podcast would be able to spread the knowledge better.
The AFF segments are clearly in breach of these new guidelines which unfortunately means they will have to be removed.
I’m going to leave the episodes up for the month of July and then remove them from my podcast RSS feed.
The AFB podcast will be restricted to the interview style format which will focus on the journey, mindset, and life philosophy. I’ll have to tip toe around discussing specific financial products.
We’ll see how it goes.
What Can We Do?
If we want to make real change we need to communicate our message to the legislators that make the rules.
Stephen Jones is the Federal Member for Whitlam and the Minister for Financial Services.
He has real power over how the legislation is written. ASIC merely enforce the law, they don’t make them.
Emailing his office is probably our best bet.
His email address is [email protected] but if you’re on a computer or smartphone, clicking the below link will automatically create an email filling in all the important fields.
If you’re going to send me an email, here are some key points you might want to include:
Introduce yourself and the issue
Explain why this issue is important to you
Include an ask (suggest a change or alternative)
Be passionate and polite
Request a follow-up
Wrapping Up
These new guidelines won’t affect me or my family that much. I might have to shut down a part-time hobby I enjoy which is creating content for the Australian FIRE community.
It’s the next generation that I’m worried about.
I can tell you right now that if these guidelines were in effect back in 2015 I would have never bothered creating AFB at all.
There’s a bunch of teenagers growing up right now that will become interested in their financial future in the next couple of years.
Who are they going to relate to?
It sure as hell isn’t going to be a middle-aged Aussie Firebug that’s hopefully blogging about the perils of raising children by that point.
The next generation of Australian financial content creators will most likely never appear because of these guidelines.
The finance industry will keep trucking along and there will be some bigger financial media corporations getting around but it won’t be the same as the independent grassroots movement over the last 10 years.
Maybe we’ll look back and say that the last decade was the golden age of free-flowing information driven by a small bunch of enthusiastic finance nerds on the Internet…
I started full-time work at the end of 2011 and discovered the concept of financial independence (FI) sometime in 2012 after reading Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.
That book (and the concept of FI) changed my life.
It wasn’t until a year after reading that book that I stumbled across Mr Money Mustache and the FIRE movement, which again, changed my life.
10 years. That’s how long I’ve been chipping away at this goal. And a lot can change ya know. My mindset, goals, strategy, desires, priorities have all shifted throughout the last decade. I’ve been thinking a lot about the lessons I’ve learned throughout the journey. What worked? What didn’t? What’s the point of it all?
Let’s get it.
1. The ultimate goal is to be happy. Never lose sight of this
We’re starting this list with the most important lesson.
It’s a bit philosophical but it’s really important and it sets the tone for everything we do. Have you ever asked yourself the following question and really mulled it over?
“What do I want in life?”
Now, there are going to be thousands of different answers to that questions depending on who you’re speaking to but the common denominator will always be the same… a desire to feel joy/to be happy.
Going snowboarding is pretty obvious. That’s fun as hell! But going to the gym 3 times a week and lifting heavy shit is… less obvious. One involves instant gratification whereas the other is delayed by a series of uncomfortable painful sessions.
The driver and end result for both activities is still the same. To be happy.
This driver for happiness is behind nearly everything we do. But figuring out what sort of life is going to be fulfilling and bring us purpose is a personal journey. The sooner you identify the key drivers of your happiness, the quicker you can start to plan out your ideal life.
I know life sometimes feels really complicated and stressful but at the end of the day, we’re still just another animal on Earth whose needs and desires haven’t changed that much over the ~50,000 years we’ve been roaming around.
In 1943 an American psychologist called Abraham Maslow published a paper called “A Theory of Human Motivation” which included the now very famous Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
This hierarchy of needs is universal and transcends generations.
A spice merchant in Ancient Egypt 3100 BC would still need to cover each level on the pyramid (pun intended).
Start from the bottom and work your way up and don’t skip over the physiological needs either.
You’d be surprised how many people would feel 10X better by just getting a decent amount of sleep each night and eating the right foods.
How FIRE plays a part in helping you achieve a level of happiness can be explained better in lesson 2.
2. Find your why of FI
One of the biggest mistakes I have personally made and that I see all the time is people thinking that reaching financial independence will make them happy.
Spoiler alert. It doesn’t.
You need to find your ‘why’. Why do you want to reach FI? What will reaching FI mean for you? How will it make you happy?
Speaking from personal experience, FIRE resonated with me because whilst I quite enjoyed my job, I resented the fact that I was ‘stuck’ there 5 days a week. I didn’t like that feeling. And before I knew that FIRE was even a thing, I thought I was going to be in the cubicle for 40+ years 🤮
FIRE for me was about gaining more of the most precious resource we all have. Our time!
Free time is crucial for satisfying the top level of Maslow’s pyramid.
Money is just a man-made abstraction that doesn’t have any intrinsic value. We can leverage money to create more time and freedom in our lives. The most important part is knowing how to use this extra time and freedom to enrich our lives. Having a rock-solid ‘why of FI’ will help tremendously throughout your journey.
3. Master behaviours, not spreadsheets
This lesson took me many years to learn but it’s a goodie.
At the start of my journey, I was really attracted to the math and statistical side of FIRE. I loved reading about the Mad Fientist’s tax strategies (even though they were US based), MMM’s shockingly simple math behind early retirement and how the trinity study modelled over 80 years of data to come up with the 4% rule.
I used to seriously whip out the calculator on my phone at all hours of the night to crunch some number because I was obsessing over a 0.07% difference in management fees lol 😅.
But the further down the FIRE rabbit hole I traverse, the more I realise that spreadsheets, modelling and the math behind money management all meant diddly squat if your emotions and psychological makeup are not equipped to stay the course throughout your journey.
I’m not saying the numbers don’t matter, because they most definitely do. But our behaviours matter more.
“Financial success is not a hard science. It’s a soft skill, where how you behave is more important than what you know”
– Morgan Housel
There’s a great story that illustrates this point perfectly. In the intro of one of my favourite books, ‘The Psychology of Money’ by Morgan Housel. Morgan compares the stark contrast between an American Janitor called Ronald Read with a Harvard-educated Merrill Lynch executive named Richard Fuscone.
From his wiki page:
Ronald James Read (October 23, 1921 – June 2, 2014) was an American philanthropist, investor, janitor, and gas station attendant. Read grew up in Dummerston, Vermont, in an impoverished farming household. He walked or hitchhiked 6.4 km daily to his high school and was the first high school graduate in his family.
Read repaired cars at a gas station for 25 years and was a janitor at JCPenny for 17 years. He purchased a 2 bedroom house for $12K in 1959 and lived there for the rest of his life.
Friends of Read have been on record saying that he didn’t really get up to much. Some said his hobby was wood chopping and he lived a very low key life.
Read died in 2014 at the ripe old age of 92 which is where the plot thickens… Read made international news when he left over $6,000,000 (USD) to his local hospital and library. He also left over $2,000,000 to his stepkids too 🤯.
Read’s friends were dumbfounded. Where did he get all that money from?
Friends and family went looking for answers but they discovered there was no secret.
No lottery wins.
No hidden inheritance.
No hidden high paying secret spy job that he’d been keeping under wraps.
Read simply spent less than he earned and invested the rest in blue-chip stocks. The power of compound interest over decades did its thing and his low-income modest lifestyle managed to create a snowball worth more than $8M (USD) 🤯🤯🤯.
Ronald Read
Richard Fuscone was in the news a few months before the passing of Ronald Read for very different reasons.
Fuscone is basically the polar opposite of Read.
To say he’s well educated is putting it lightly. Check this out for a resume
I mean damn! That’s some serious alumni. And for those who don’t know, the University of Chicago offers one of the most prestigious MBA programs in the world. We’re talking about the upper echelon of prestigious education here.
Fuscone was a high flying executive who retired in his 40’s to pursue philanthropy and was once included in a “40 under 40” list of successful businesspeople. Fuscone got into financial difficulty in the mid-2000s after he borrowed heavily to expand his 18,000-square foot home that had 11 bathrooms, two elevators, two pools, seven garages, and cost more than $90,000 a month to maintain.
Then the 2008 financial crisis hit.
High levels of debt coupled with illiquid assets left Fuscone bankrupt.
A few months before Ronald Read passed and left his fortune to charity, Richard Fuscone’s home was sold in a foreclosure auction for 75% less than an insurance company figured it was worth… ouch!
Ronald Read was patient, Richard Fuscone was greedy. That’s all it took to overcome the enormous education and experience gap between the two.
So what’s the moral of the story?
It’s not about how smart you are, it’s about how you behave.
4. Getting wealthy is simple. Don’t overthink it
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” – Confucius
Almost every single wealth-building strategy can be boiled down to three steps:
Spend less than you earn
Invest the surplus
Wait
That’s it… seriously.
Now there’s an absolute chasm between ‘get rich quick’ schemes and long term investing but those three principles hold true 99% of the time. How you invest and what you invest in doesn’t particularly matter. As long as you’re outpacing inflation and have strong conviction in your investments you should be moving towards financial independence.
Fidelity Investments is a multinational financial services corporation based in Boston, Massachusetts. An interesting discovery was made when a customer account audit revealed that the best investors in their database were either dead or inactive.
How could that possibly be?
How could someone that’s not adjusting their portfolio to the macro and micro economic news, outperform savvy investors with all the latest up to date data at their fingertips?
Well, it turns out that when it comes to investing… less is more.
Which is very unintuitive and goes against basic logic.
See the thing is, almost no one can beat the market over the long term. But people (myself included) constantly fall for the trap of trying to add complex financial instruments to somehow gain an advantage over ‘unsophisticated’ investors. I’ve always been raised that you need to put in the effort to reap a reward. You have to work hard to get anything in life worth having. This is true for most things… just not when it comes to investing.
I created and now invest through a trust fund because I associated its complexity and mystic with higher returns.
I thought I needed to do something different. I needed to outwork others to have a good return.
Choosing an ordinary index fund and adding to it each month without doing anything else just felt…lazy lol. I had all this pent up excitement after discovering FIRE and I wanted to channel this energy into the journey. I wanted to work my ass off so I could reach FI as quickly as possible and I felt like boring lazy index investing is only for people who aren’t willing to put in the work. It’s taken me years to accept that not only is this approach perfectly fine, but it’s also statically the most optimal choice most investors can make.
Keeping it simple also frees you up to concentrate on what’s really important in life which ties into the first lesson, to be happy.
Complexity has the potential to steal your most precious resources; time and energy.
Money is the slave that works for us, not the other way around.
5. What’s measured is managed
If I could give only one tip to anyone looking to be better with their money, it would be to start tracking your expenses.
That’s it.
You don’t even have to do anything else. I promise you that you’ll save money and optimise your expenses within the very first session. You might think that you know what you spend money on but I’ll bet the house that the first time you analyse three months of expenses, you’ll be surprised.
This lesson falls under the umbrella of Lesson 3 ‘Master behaviour, not spreadsheets’. It’s been well documented that keeping track of any metric and reviewing it regularly has a psychological effect on humans that can help us improve a focus area.
If a sprinter wants to be faster, they’ll keep a record of how fast they run.
If a presidential candidate wants to become the president, they’ll record and analyse poll data with their team.
If Tesla wants to design self-driving cars, they’ll create, test and record different algorithms continuously and keep track of what did and didn’t work.
I think you get the idea.
What’s measured is managed!
And if you’re not measuring the most fundamental aspect of FIRE, you won’t be able to manage it effectively. Plenty of people can still reach FI without ever tracking their expenses but I know first-hand that measuring how much you’re spending and what your spending it on has a lot of positive psychological effects.
Some of the positives of tracking are:
You regularly review where your precious dollars are being allocated to each month. Think back to lesson 1. ‘The ultimate goal is to be happy’. Is the stuff you’re buying ultimately making you happy?
You can accurately calculate your current FIRE number? Guessing how much you spend each year to maintain your current lifestyle can create stress and anxiety when the time comes to retire. You’ll second guess yourself. Even though things can and will change throughout your life, if you’ve been tracking your expenses for a few years you’ll have a much better idea of what size portfolio you’ll need to retire.
It’s super easy to trim the fat. Unused memberships and subscription services can sometimes fly under the radar. Reviewing expenses bring this wastage front and centre.
But be warned… overdoing this area can actually have negative consequences.
I used to be one of the worlds biggest tightasses (still pretty tight compared to most ‘normal’ people haha) but what I’ve found through the last decade of managing money is that the majority of people will find great success if they focus on the big four areas.
Housing
Transport
Food/drinks (including alcohol)
Holidays
Try to optimise these big areas and don’t kill yourself for paying for a haircut.
I’d say that the top one (housing) is probably the most important. Buying a huge house at a young age can stunt your wealth creation potential. Spending 50+% of your paycheck on rent has the same effect. You want to get your snowball up and running asap and let the compound interest do the heavy lifting over many years/decades.
If you optimise those big four areas to a point where you’re living a great life whilst having a decent savings rate it’s only a matter of time before you hit FIRE 🎉.
Ultimately, this lesson is super effective at improving your behaviours when it comes to money management.
6. Income potential is often overlooked
Over the last decade, I’ve met and spoken to a lot of people who have reached financial independence and there seems to be a common theme.
They are good savers
They have a higher than average income
The funny thing is that a lot of these people are actually below average investors. I heard all sorts of stories about how they might have lost money on a development, got swindled by a pyramid scheme or lost it all on a speculative stock. Yet they seem to reach FI decades earlier than most after eventually figuring out some form of investment that works for them.
The bulk of their wealth comes from a healthy savings rate powered by a high income.
For the first 7 or so years on my journey towards FI, I focussed solely on saving a whole lot of money and investing it in both real estate and stocks.
It wasn’t until I moved overseas in 2019 and more than doubled my hourly rate did I truly appreciate the power of earning more money.
I mean it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?
The more you earn the more you can save and reach FI quicker. But for some reason, I always prioritised saving more and reading the same investing strategies over and over again making little tweaks here and there.
Having a high savings rate is really important. I reckon we managed to optimise our expenses after 1 or two years at most. After that, it’s pretty much been on autopilot. We have a pretty good idea about what brings us joy and where our dollars go.
I’ve spent way too long (especially at the start) obsessing over the ‘investing’ part of the FIRE equation. There are soooooooo many articles, videos, books, podcasts etc. that dive into all sorts of whizz-bang investing strategies that it can be confusing as hell.
It’s sorta like when you go to the Cheesecake Factory. Their menu is so bloody big and confusing that it can be overwhelming. I’ll try to read absolutely everything because I don’t want to order a meal and then have food envy because something better was further down the menu 😂. This is what’s known as analysis paralysis and a lot of people can fall prey to it (it personally took me years of reading about the stock market before taking the plunge).
It’s natural to feel like you need to know absolutely everything before dropping your money into the markets. But the truth is that we all make mistakes and the most basic concept of investing is buying things (real estate, stocks, precious metals, bonds etc.) that make you money. Don’t stress too much about building the perfect portfolio because I’m telling you it doesn’t exist.
Index investing appeals to so many people because it’s passive, diversified, low cost and provides a great return with little effort. Don’t overthink it. Work out a portfolio that you have strong conviction in and one that will allow you to sleep at night. Save your money and keep adding to the portfolio regularly.
If you still have time and energy to commit to FIRE after your expenses are under control and you’re happy with your investing strategy, I’d seriously start to look to increase your income.
High savings+high income +below-average investments
is better than
High savings+below-average income+above-average investments
Obviously, it does depend on how epic your investment returns are but generally the above is true from what I’ve personally experienced and seen over the last decade.
There are heaps of ways you can increase your income. I wrote about a few of them in this article here.
7. Compound interest takes years to notice
I learnt about the power of compound interest pretty early. There’s that famous story about two colleagues that’s told 100 different ways but it always illustrates the same point. Investing early and taking advantage of compound interest pays off in the long run.
This little graphic is one example.
Image Source: Mark Catanzaro
I’d like to think most people in the FIRE community have come across this (or something similar) before.
But most people (myself included) have a hard time truly appreciating the magnitude of compound interest and it doesn’t start to feel real until you’re near the end of your journey. There’s something about exponential growth that makes it difficult to grasp from an emotional point of view even when we understand the math. I think it has to do with most other things in life being linear. We do basic arithmetic almost every day in our lives but I don’t know anyone who can compute exponential growth without a calculator.
If we need half a dozen eggs for a recipe and know we already have 2 at home, that’s a simple subtraction problem that’s easy to think about on the fly and makes sense. If we choose to buy a car worth $10K instead of $15K. That’s an obvious savings of $5K which makes it easy to immediately appreciate on the spot.
But it’s hard sometimes to come to grips with putting away large sums of money now so the future you in 10-30 years can live a better life.
Here’s one of my favourite examples of exponential growth that you can play with your friends.
The story of the monthly coins.
If I gave you $1 each day in the month of January, how much money would you have at the end of the month?
Most people would be quick to shout $31 right.
But suppose I gave you $1 on the first day of January and double it every day until the end of the month ($2 on the second day, $4 on the third and so on), without cheating, try to have a guess in your head how much money you would have at the end of the month.
Take a few seconds to think about it and keep a mental note.
….
….
….
The answer is $2.1 billion dollars. That’s a billion… with a B 😱
Try this example with your friends to see what number they guess. 99% of the time they won’t get anywhere near the correct answer.
I use the example to illustrate the point that compound interest is not intuitive to grasp and it really only starts to take off in the later years. Speaking from experience, I really noticed compound interest once we had around $400K+ invested and our FIRE number is $1.25M for context.
Before that, it feels like you’re doing all the heavy lifting yourself through savings (which is pretty much what’s happening).
But boy oh boy it’s an amazing feeling when the freight train starts to pick up steam and suddenly your investments are making more money than you can save each month. After that, there’s no stopping it and you’ll feel like you’re almost cheating as you race towards the finish line.
8. Most people are really after semi-retirement
Every single financially independent person I’ve ever met, read about or listened to still ‘works’ and makes money outside their investments one way or another.
I’ve added talking marks to the letter ‘work’ because it’s not really traditional work but people can get really anal when it comes to the word retire. I’ve always interpreted RE (retire early) part of FIRE as the moment you quit your cubicle/wage slave job and pursue meaningful work that brings you purpose.
But this can be confusing because not everyone has something they’re super passionate about. There’s a large portion of the community that really likes the social aspect and comradery of their normal day job but just want a little bit more free time in the week to get stuff done and enjoy life.
Based on the emails I’ve been receiving for the last 7 or so years I’ve come to the following conclusion. Most people in the FIRE community are really just looking to work 2-3 days a week and maintain their current lifestyle with some passive income to cover the rest/set them up for retirement in their golden years.
And as someone who is currently only working 3 days a week, I must say that I’m becoming more convinced that semi-retirement is the sweet spot for the bulk of the community too.
Full financial independence is great and it’s what we should be aiming for later on in life, but building up a portfolio that kicks off enough passive income to free up one or two days a week can have astonishing results.
And the best part about compound interest is that the momentum you build up early on in the journey only gets stronger and can carry you all the way to full fledge FI without you needing to add to your portfolio after a certain point.
This concept is known as Coast FI or Flamingo FI and the end result is the same. Full financial independence.
But if you drop down to semi-retirement during your journey you’ll obviously not have as much money to contribute to your portfolio and won’t reach FI as fast.
The odds of someone never working and making any sort of income outside of their portfolio ever again after reaching FIRE is incredibly low. I’ve been saying this for a few years now but the 4% rule is over-conservative in my book. Putting aside the fact that the author of the 4% rule has increased it to 5%, any additional income after you’ve reached FI completely blows out the modelling.
Let me give an example.
Our FIRE number is $1.25M which will generate $50K per year based on the 4% rule.
Let’s assume that we get to the $1.25M, declare FIRE but decide to both work 1 day a week for 8 hours at $30 an hour.
Would you believe that our combined take-home income would be ~$25K a year? That’s half of what we need to bloody live on!
The portfolio could easily cover the rest and here’s the amazing part. Because we wouldn’t need to be drawing down 4% of the portfolio, it could compound away for longer at the higher amount.
Here’s what half of the portfolio ($625K), if left alone, could potentially grow to given an 8% return after 10 years.
~$1.35M is more than our original FIRE number!
And it’s really important to realise that we only worked one 8 hour day at $30 an hour in this example. You could imagine how dramatic the modelling changes if you worked an extra day or charged a higher hourly rate.
There are two main points here.
You’re almost certainly going to be earning money post FIRE
The 4% assume no extra income ever. This is extremely unlikely if you reach FIRE in your 20’s, 30’s, 40’s or even maybe 50’s.
9. Find your ‘enough’
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer now dead, and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island. I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel ‘Catch-22’ has earned in its entire history?” And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.” And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?” And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
— A poem for The New Yorker in May of 2005 by Kurt Vonnegut
I honestly think there’s something in our DNA as humans to always want more.
It has to be some sort of evolutionary trait right.
Imagine two homo sapiens coming across an enormous fruit tree bearing 50 ripe Apples.
The first human decides to only eat enough to be full and then leaves.
The second human gorges themselves and then picks and carries as many as they can hold back to camp with no consideration of others.
Which personality traits do you think has the better chance of surviving and passing on their genes to the next generation? As unfortunate as it is, selfishness is rewarded in the animal kingdom. I know it’s hard to imagine with all our fancy pants technology and civilisation, but we’re not actually that far removed from our prehistoric ancestors and evolution hasn’t yet caught up to deal with the current situation we find ourselves in.
Most of us are hard-wired to always want more.
But you’ll never become FI if your desires and wants continue to increase forever.
Think back to lesson one “The goal is to be happy”.
If you desire something and you don’t have it, this usually results in a feeling of unhappiness. And there are only two ways to fix it.
You work hard and get what you want.
You find happiness elsewhere and stop wanting it.
Depending on how exorbitant your wants and desires are, option 1 could mean many decades climbing the corporate ladder working 70+ hours weeks to fund your:
3,000sq m Toorak mansion
6 beds, 5 bathroom holiday house in Byron Bay
5 cars
3 jet ski’s
And so on
Now I don’t want to be judgemental here. If you really want all those things and think the work required is worth it. Sweet. Go for it. Everyone is different.
But if you’re reading this article, odds are that you’re more attracted to the idea of living a simple yet great life that prioritises freedom, autonomy, health, relationships and ultimately happiness.
Figuring out what your ‘enough’ is takes a long time. This is partly because our wants and desires evolve as we get older and our circumstances change.
I for example, never really put too much value in travelling before 2019. I’d been on a few trips here and there and whilst it was good fun, I used to think that international travel was insanely expensive and overrated. Travelling around the world and living in the UK for 2 years completely changed my outlook on a lot of things and broadened my horizons. I now consider travelling to be part of our lifestyle and something we will need to factor into our numbers.
And even though I think a little bit of lifestyle inflation is perfectly normal and healthy, you’ll never have peace of mind until you discover your ‘enough’.
If you don’t figure it out, you’ll always be wanting more.
10. We’re all dealt a different hand in the game of life
There’s a quote that I can’t seem to find that loosely goes like this.
A CEO was perfectly happy with their $1M bonus until they found out a competitor CEO received $100 more
Comparisons. We’re all guilty of making them.
And the messed up part is sometimes we were happy until we see what someone else has.
It happens all the time and is part of the reason I’ve disconnected all of my social media accounts.
Practising the art of gratitude can be really helpful to remind yourself of all the great things in your life. But we’re humans and I’ve fallen victim to unrealistic comparisons a bunch of times. It’s perfectly natural to stumble across someone who you may have gone to school with and be jealous of the life they’re living now.
What I’ve come to realise after hearing from literally thousands of Aussies on their way to FI is that there can be a gigantic gap between peers within the same cohort. I’m talking about the advantages and disadvantages between two people who on surface value seem to be pretty equal.
There’s a great book called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell that explains just how incredible one little advantage early on in someone’s life can completely change their trajectory.
Did you know that 40% of the best hockey players in Canada are born between January and March?
This is no coincidence. It turns out that in minor league hockey, children are grouped by birth year and players born in January are, on average, bigger and taller than December-born players.
This seemingly unimportant attribute gives players born in the first months of the year a head start that turns into a lifelong advantage.
That one little leg up can have the following flow-on effects:
They are bigger and stronger than their peers which makes hockey easy for them
They are noticed by coaches and identified as a good player. Extra coaching or special treatment may be given
They will most likely be chosen to represent their squad team which means more playing time against a higher level of competition and access to better coaching
They continue to get extra playing time against elite competition with the best coaches in the country year after year
These sorts of advantages happen all the time and compound throughout one’s life.
The same is equally true for disadvantages.
But it’s really hard to know what cards a person has been dealt even if you know them quite well. And it’s almost impossible when reading a stranger’s blog or listening to a guest on a podcast.
The goal of FI is a mastery of money that’s a personal journey.
A little bit of healthy competition can be good but never feel inadequate when you come across someone similar who seems to have it all figured out. They may have been dealt two aces.
The reverse is also true.
We have no idea what has happened in someone’s life that has influenced the position they’re in now.
In summary, compete against the person in the mirror.
Wake up each day trying to be a better version of yourself.
Because…
“Comparison Is the Thief of Joy”
— Theodore Roosevelt
That’s a wrap! 10 the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the past 10 years pursuing FI!
I’d love to know what was your favourite lessons in the comment section below 🙂
Welcome back to the second annual Aussie FIRE survey results!
In case you missed last years results, you can grab them here.
It’s an honour to be able to run the largest FIRE surveys in Australia. This year’s survey has a focus on time intelligence and being able to track the progress of participants for future analysis which was the most requested feature from the Facebook community group (other than Super which I somehow missed last year 🙈). This identifier can’t be used until next year but I’m already really excited to track the progress of the cohort over time and there is some really cool analysis that can be done with the introduction of this data point.
This project took some time to put together and a major shout out to Sandra for building the extremely cool showcase site below.
This year’s survey goal was to get 1,056 submissions which give the dataset statistical significance (95% (industry standard) confidence level with a 3% margin of error of the community). I used the sample size formula found in statical modelling to come up with 1,056 as the number to aim for. If you’re interested in the math behind the modelling, you can check out this site that I used.
I’m so happy to report that the survey had 1,298 submissions across 21 countries 🤯🏌️♂️
I was originally assuming a community size of 100,000 but because we got so many submissions, this dataset should actually be accurate assuming over 1M+ community size (don’t ask me how statistics works) which is very promising because I doubt very much that the Australian FIRE community is anywhere near 1M!
Feel free to download the anonymized results of the survey here under the Open Database License (ODbL). I really look forward to seeing what you find—if you share on social media, make sure you tag me and I’ll give it a shout out!
Enjoy!
Aussie Firebug
Methodology
This report is based on a survey of 1,298 Firebugs from 21 countries around the world.
The survey was fielded from February 8th to March 15th 2021.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t a timed component in the dataset which means I could not qualify responses. Google forms don’t have timed settings. I might look into new software next year
Respondents were recruited primarily through channels owned/ran by aussiefirebug.com which included: Aussie FIRE Discussion Facebook group, Aussie Firebug Twitter Account and Aussie Firebug Blog
All income figures are based on AUD. I’ll add a note to next years survey to make sure international submissions know this
Net worth figures are in AUD
Some visuals do not always take into consideration all the answers due to visual issues. There were 86 distinct values for banks for example. Reducing that to a top 10 is more visually appealing. You can always download the entire dataset if you want to know all the submissions
