Dad on FIRE

Hello and welcome to a series of thought pieces I’ve been meaning to do for a while, “Reel Freedom” will explore what films can teach us about Financial Independence, anti-consumerism, and the search for meaning beyond the nine-to-five. Each piece looks at how the film in question reflects our struggle to live freely in a world built on consumption — and how the FIRE movement offers a quieter, more intentional rebellion. This article might contain a few film spoilers, so if you haven’t seen Fight Club then what are you waiting for, it’s an awesome film! “The things you own end up owning you.” — Fight Club When I first watched Fight Club in my twenties, it felt like a wild, subversive middle finger to consumer society — a film about liberation, chaos, and breaking free from the suffocating grip of capitalism. It’s probably one of the many reasons I became so libertarian in my beliefs, and so disillusioned with mainstream society and finance, graduating on the eve of the GFC and pissed o...

September marked a return to the normal routine after the mad summer, I was back at work the day after we got back from the cruise (well, sat in the office at home anyway!), and the kids were back to school. Still plenty to update you lovely people on though! Finance update Breakdown for September: ISA  up £14k Pension  up £10.6k GIA /easy access savings up £2.8k Crypto up £5k House price  up £5k Total : up £41.2k After a slight lull in gains during August, normal service seems to have been resumed, ending up £40k for the month. There's been a lot of talk of frothy markets at the minute, and seem to be in an "everything bubble", where everything all goes up at the same time, rather than opposing assets which 'should' behave contrary to each other. This seems to suggest that there is too much liquidity in the markets, not enough buckets to put your money, so people are piling in to everything; equities, houses, Gold (see last months update ), and yes even crypto. 2...

  Phew! What a month! For those of you that have been following me for a while, you'll know that I took the entirety of August off work, 6 weeks in total, through Unpaid Parental Leave. And boy did we pack a lot in, more on that in the non-Finance update but first...   Finance update After being up £60k in May and £55k in July, August was fairly meh, closing at up just £2k. I've also had a fair amount of negative months this year (-£36k in Feb and -£25k in April) so at least it wasn't that bad! Breakdown for August: ISA  up £2k Pension  up £5k GIA /easy access savings up £1.5k Crypto  down £8k House price  down £2k Total : up £2k Such is the way with Crypto, it's a hell of a rollercoaster, and one that I've been sat on for approaching 10 years now. I'm used to the ups and downs, but as Crypto - and Bitcoin especially - become more mainstream and thus the price gets bigger, the monthly ups and downs become bigger and bigger. Not necessarily all down to big c...