Dad on FIRE

. " Unpaid Parental Leave? What's that?" This is the response that I've got 90% of the time in the past few months when I've mentioned it to friends and family. Heck, I was in a similar position about 6 months ago. In this post, I'll be covering: What exactly Unpaid Parental Leave (UPL) is The benefits A comparison of UPL against Part time work Case study of UPL vs Part time for an average family/salary, and which option is best Why people aren't taking Unpaid Parental Leave I actually write this after taking the previous week off as Unpaid Parental Leave, the first time I've done it. In total, I'm taking 8 weeks off this year to spend more time with my children. I've always done things a bit differently, so I'm reversing the age-old societal arrangement of swapping your time for money, a move that seems to be extremely rare for a father and provider in his late 30s! I also see this as taking my first baby steps into FIRE-life, buying back...

Finance update Another good month in January. All asset classes up. In the months from September to the end of January it is up a total of £150k, although a few days into February has already knocked -£20k off that, so we'll see how we end up come the end of the tax year. On that, I've not done a 2024 summary post like a lot of other financial bloggers as all of my targets are aligned to the end of the financial year rather than calendar year, my ISA allowance and pension contributions mainly. Breakdown for January: ISA  up £11k Pension  up £13k GIA /easy access savings up £7k Crypto  up £12.5k House price  up £3k Total : up £49k My Crypto holdings have exploded in the past few months, doubling in price from September to January. I am still pound cost averaging into Bitcoin, Ethereum and Cardano £50 each a week and will continue to do this. At the moment with my ISA filled and my pension target met for the year I have been ploughing the spare cash into easy access sa...

Frugality I've found that the word "frugality", or "being frugal" is commonly used as a backhanded compliment or an ambiguous term depending on the context, who is saying it and who they are saying it to. Almost like it's the polite word of saying "you're a tight arse"!  But I think there's a key difference between being "tight" or "cheap" and being "frugal". Earning more (over spending less) is the generally accepted way of increasing your stack. There are a lot of payments that are a fixed amount, and so it proportionally impacts people with less income relatively more. For example a £10 cinema ticket for someone surviving on a basic income might be proportionally a good chunk of their disposable spend, whereas for a billionaire it doesn't even register. There are some notable exceptions to this rule though. Consider Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest individuals in the entire world. His frugality is b...

I've been meaning to write this post for a while! Since going to Disneyland I've relayed a few tips to a number of friends so think it would be worth a wider audience!  We were meant to go to Disneyland Paris in 2020 but Covid scuppered those plan, however a few years later we managed to get it sorted. It was my wife that actually recommended going to Disneyland and I immediately had shooting pains right in my bank balance due to my perception about how expensive it can be, however breaking it down it was actually really good value. Roughly adding it all up, for a family of 4 to travel to Disneyland we managed to do it for less than £1000 .  This included: - Ferry transfer from/to Dover - 2 nights in the Davy Crockett Hotel (5 mins drive from the park) - 3 days park passes for a family of 4 - All meals / food / drink bought - 12 months free Disney+ - 2 x Premier Inn stays in Dover - Fuel from Yorkshire to Paris and back, with French toll payments Given you'd struggle to get...