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...