I Have a Dream!

I have a dream …

Partly stolen from a brave man. (AKA Martin Luther King).

He had a dream, and so do I.

I really don’t believe that way we live our lives today is the best way for our happiness and well-being. We have never been more stressed than we are today.* So why do we keep on going the same path that has led us to this stress?

I have a dream of ..

.. Where Weekends are Weekdays

We have never been more stressed than we are now. I have never been sick because of it. But I have tried having to many deadlines at the same time, where I had to work 16 hours a day to reach them.

Why don’t we just swap the weekdays with weekends?

Lets have five days a week where we only do things we actually want, and two days where we work.

.. Where We Work to Thrive, Not Survive

Imagine if money wasn’t an issue? What would we then do? I think there is an insanely amount of people who pick an education because of status and how much money they can earn.

What if started to do stuff that we really had a burning desire for.

And not to just to make ends meet? Or impress others?

Imagine if we could be a “Put-in-an-activity-you-love” Instructor, but we didn’t have to worry about the food on the table. Or what about other people would think of us?

.. Where We Don’t Have Mortgages

When did it ever become normal to buy something that we need 30 years to pay off? I have never understood, and I never think I will understand it. Why we would pay that amount of money to have a place to live.

I have been working in the building industry for more than 10 years now. And I have seen both spectrums of how people can live. It is not more difficult to build a 100 m2 house that cost below 100.000 $, than it is to build a +200 m2 house that will cost you more than 1.000.000 $.

Imagine if we only spend 5 years or less to pay off a mortgage. Or not even having one? From day 1 we didn’t have any debt in the house.

So why are we building so big and unaffordable houses?

I can’t tell.

.. Where Meat Is a Luxury

Many of us in a western culture is raised with having meat in every single meal. And we can’t blame our parents for teaching us eating meat. Back in the days we was not informed on how meat-eating can affect the clima. We didn’t knew it was a problem. But we do know that now. I love the taste of meat. But there is no reason to incorporate it in every meal. Let’s start to see it as a luxury we do when we have to celebrate something big. And not something we eat everyday to survive.

There is a cheaper, easier, healthier and more environmental way to eat.

.. Where our Transportation is Awesome

I can often be stoked about how our computers and mobiles seems to have an exponential form of growth. But if we take a look at the cars, trains and bikes, there seems to be almost none growth.

The first car invented back in the 1900 had four wheels, and it run on gasoline. That is over 100 years ago, and it is not until recently that we started to drive in electrical cars.

The same goes with the bike. It still has to wheels, and a metal chain. I think the bike is one of the greatest invention. But it was not until recently that it became legal in Denmark to ride on a Speed Pedelec (a 45 km/hour e-bike). 

Riding e-bikes that goes 45 km/hour is a game changer. My dad who has 30 km for work, can now go by bike instead of the car. Save a boatload of money, being more environmental, and maybe live longer because of a better health. 

.. Where We Quit Social Status and Start Being Compassionate

I’m very open about how many money I have. 

I don’t want my money to earn respect, trust or anything else. My money has one function only, and that is buying my own time back. 

Imagine if everybody quitted the fear of “Not-being-good-enough”, and could stop spend time on impressing people we don’t know. And start to be compassionate about our friends, family and people who are in tough situation because of bad luck. 

.. Where We Have a Green Capitalistic System

Many people think of money as a greedy and en evil thing. And connects capitalism with fossil fuels, cutting down trees and the end of the world. I don’t want to disagree with that feeling. But what if we could use the power of capitalism to make a better world? I’m not talking about only surviving on this earth, what if we could leave the world as a better place for our kids and grand kids?

I believe that we can make a capitalistic system where everyone can benefit from it in their pensions, and still make the world a better place. With sustainable companies that makes this world a better place to live. 

.. Where We Have Time for our Kids

No needing to rush in the mornings because we are in hurry to our work. 

No need to work long hours on work, because you need to pay for the nanny who take care of picking up our kids.

Or paying the house cleaner, too clean up after the kids.

Or paying the restaurant for takeaway food for the family because we don’t feel like cooking after a long work day.

Just having time for the spouse you love, and for the kids you have putted into this world. No more, no less.

.. Where We Don’t Spend Money in Order to be Happy

If we live in modern western country. Most of us will have decent place to live. And a supermarket filled with healthy foods within biking distance. Which is our needs.

Anything else besides that is wants. Whenever we think that this next purchase (besides paying rent, or buying groceries) is going to make us happy. That is the exact same time that we buy a freaking lie.

The lie is that we don’t need to buy anything in order to become happy.

If we feel a little bit sad. And we think a purchase is going to put an end to that sadness. We are going to be sad our whole life.

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned or worn. It is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude. – Denis Waitley

I have no freaking idea who Denis Waitley is. But that is a hell of a quote.

*https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2017/state-nation.pdf

4# My Monthly Financial Independence Update

The Quick Takeaways

This month savings rate: 67 %

This month leverage: 100 %

Rolling savings rate since February 2016: 55 %

Total value of portfolio: 590.000 DKK (90.000 $)

Years worth of annual expenses: 7

% Change since last month: 7.2 % 

So What The F*** Happen This Month

This month has been a very ambivalent one.

The finance is doing great, my portfolio went up 5 %, and I didn’t have to many expenses this month. That is why the portfolio is up almost 8% since last month. With I think is a significant amount.

I have also changed bank. Now I have an account where I make 5 % interest on the first 50.000 DKK (7.500 $). Which is better than the 0 % I made at my other bank.

I got told by the national team coach in rowing, that they didn’t want me on the 2019 season team. Rowing has been the main focus of my life since 2009. It is tough to do something that much, and then get a message that they will not spent more time on you.

My goal for a long time has been to qualify a boat for the 2020 Olympics. And the situation I’m in now is not very good to accomplish that dream.

It is a very weird feeling something I have been doing for almost 10 years, is maybe coming to an end. And it is not even my own decision. This is not my first time experiencing some resistance in rowing. The other times I have had a similar experience, it has been like gasoline on a campfire. My motivation just went through the roof.

This is first time where I’m questioning the whole thing. I have promised myself not to make any immediate decision. I will stay fit, and show up a bit more in my own rowing club, which is also nice to see all of my old friends. But I’m starting to see for the first time in my life, that there is other things in this life besides rowing.

For the first time in 10 years I’m able to go where ever I want, whenever I want. Which is a very ambivalent feeling. I’m used to having a coach telling me when and where to show up, and suddenly I’m able to do whatever I like. I can imagine this might be the feeling whenever a person has been to jail for long time. What would seem awful to the main public (training 12 times a week or being to prison) ends up being comfortable.

And I still love to work my ass off. But the big question is do I still want to do it 12 times a week, if I can’t be a part of the national team?

How Random is The Stock Market?

How random is the stock market?

Many say that they can predict the stock market. While others admit that they can’t and stick to a passively managed solution. (Hint: I’m one of the boring passive folks)

I can’t help it, I keep study how investments works. And no matter how much I study the most frequent answer is that a passively managed investment portfolio is the best solution for the mass.

The other day I learned that we can (kind of) predict the stock market.

There is a certain pattern that keeps showing up in the stock market.

Have you ever heard of the Francis Galton?

He was a super nerd borne in 1822. But he was a nice nerd!

Francis Galton was the man who build the foundation of statistics. Which we are going to talk about.

He invented a board, which later on ended up with the name The Galton Board. (I don’t think he came up with that original name him self)

He discovered that if we want to quantify almost everything. There is a certain trend, or a pattern. Which would look something like this:

Billedresultat for standard deviation curve

This will later on be called “The Standard Deviation”.

That pattern will show up every time we want to measure something. If we want to quantify the average height of a person in this world the mean is likely going to be 1.70 m (Just a guess).

And far out on the left. There is likely to be 1 out of 10.000 which is going to have height of 1 m. And far out on the right, there will be a person who is also 1 out of 10.000. But that person has a height of 2.15 m.

Galton and The Stock Market

In this modern society, we are bombarded with information. There is so much information that we often don’t acknowledge how big of a privilege it is.

All of the statistics and research I can find on almost everything today. Is something that people in the 1920 could not even dream of.

The 4 % rule was is not something people knew about back in the days for example.

The cool thing about Galton’s finding. Is that we see the exact same pattern in the stock market. At ifa.com I have taken a  50 year period (600 months), and looked at the monthly return of a 100 % stock index portfolio. And this was the pattern that came up:

As we can see, it is the exact same pattern as Galton’s standard deviation.

Galton and My Portfolio

600 months, is a long period. So I thought it would be a fun experiment to see how my monthly returns would look like.

Will my monthly returns have the same bell curve?

After I read my first book called “A safe investment” I then bought my very first stock in August 2013. That book suggested that you bought 10-20 individual stocks, in different sectors and kept them forever.

Which I initially did. Later on I learned about how almost everyone is better served with index funds. So just before I graduated as a building constructor in November 2015, I sold all of my individual stocks and bought index funds instead.

From August 2013 to November 2015 I had individual Danish stocks, and from November 2015 til this date, I have had global diversified index funds.

From august 2013 to this day there have been 62 months. Only 1/10 of the 600 months I demonstrated from the IFA example.

But you know what ?!

My Galton curve ended up almost the same as the 600 month.

Which I was quiet stoked about.

As you probably can see. I have three months of +9% monthly returns, and I only had 2 months of -4 % or worse. If we believe in Galton’s theory there will be 3+ months of -9 %/month or worse ahead of me!

Yikes!

But what I do know that If I stay in a 100 % stock index portfolio, I will have approximately 1 %/month before costs on the long run.*

How To Predict the Stock Market With Galton

This means that we can predict the stock market. We know that the majority of monthly returns will end up in the middle. Which will be around -2 to +2 %.

But we also know that when we have a monthly period with is either a -20% or  +20 % that it is most likely to be a 1 out of a 600 scenario. And according to the statistics is not going to happen again in our life time.

There will be periods where we will have more negative monthly returns (bear market) and there will be periods where we have more positive periods (bull markets).

But if we stay in the market, we know that this bell curve will show up.

So when a bear market shows up, just stay the course, and remind yourself that someday it will be more tilted to the right.

A Short Awesome Video on Galton and The Stock Market

*IFA.com

Coast FIRE – Ever Heard of That?

The other day I learned a new term – Coast FIRE.

The traditional way of chasing FIRE is to have all of your expenses covered by a passive income, often in a stock index fund.

We know that in order to have enough for the rest of our lives, we need to have 20-25 times our annual spending.

But Coast FIRE is a bit different. And it is quit powerfull for many of the young fellaz out there trying to reach FIRE.

The power of compound interest is very big when we are able to save money as young. If we have a 7 % annual return, our money will double every 10th year or so. This means that if you have a 1000 $ it will double to 2000 $. From there it will double to 4000 $ and so on. If we have a good amount of money when we are 30 years old. That money can easily double 4-5 times.

Or said different. Our 1000 $ at age 30 can easily grow to 16.000-32.000 $ in our life time. 

What Is Coast FIRE?

With Coast FIRE we take advantage of that compounding.

Let’s imagine that you read this in age 25 (no worries if you are older). If you can to get to 500.000 DKK (76.000 $) by the time you are 30 years old, you never have to worry about that retirements saving again. From there we won’t have to add another dollar for the rest of our lives to that account. Because it will compound into A LOT of money.

If we leave 500.000 DKK (76.000 $) in a stock index fund from 1976-2016 we would have ended up with about 13.000.000 DKK (2.000.000 $) (adjusted for taxes, inflation and fees)*. That amount at age 70 will roughly put us in the top 1 % wealthiest here in Denmark.

And that is Coast FIRE. Figuring out how much money you will have to save and invest, and them leave the entire portfolio until the day that you retire.

If we earn 20.000 DKK/month (3000 $) after taxes, and saving 50 % of that in able to reach Coast FIRE, we are only spending 10.000 DKK (1500 $) a month.

If we are able to reach 500.000 DKK (76.000 $) at age 30, we can from there go out and take a part-time job that pays us 10.000 DKK/month. Because that is what our spending is. And with peace in mind know that our financial situation is going to be great because of compound interest.

We can take up jobs that we find more enjoyable than the stressful corporate job. I could see myself as a rowing/crossfit trainer or having a small mason company. Because that is something that I enjoy.

But even if we do stuff that we love for 40 hour/week, that too will be an ignoring task. I love rowing for example, but after two months on a training camp, doing nothing but, eat, rest and train, I look forward to come home. But I still love rowing.

How to Reach Coast FIRE in Two Years

And I’m here to tell you that we can reach Coast FIRE in as little as two years. If you are between 20-30 years old when you read this. You will be able to become very rich and not spend 40-50 hours/week on a job.

Let’s imagine that you get inspired to reach FIRE. but the numbers you need to reach are to overwhelming, so you decide to go for Coast FIRE.

At this very stage, your portfolio is at 0 $, but you have burning desire.

If we earn 20.000 DKK/month (3000 $) after tax, and save 50 % of it. That means we save 120.000 DKK/annual (18.000 $). Because we are young it can make sense to leverage our investments with as much as 2:1. Said another way, for every 100 $ we invest, we borrow another 100 $, so we end up investing 200 $ instead.

Now we are saving 240.000 DKK/annual (36.000 $) instead of the 120.000 DKK. That means that we can hit our 500.000 DKK in as little as two years from now.

But Loui?! Then I would have 240.000 DKK (36.000 $) in debt.

Yes that is correct.

240.000 DKK (36.000 $) can seem like a big sum of money when you are young. But if we compare it to how much money they can compound into AND how much money we can earn in our entire life. That money is only a couple of percentages of our entire earning power.

If you read this, and decide to do it. You can have a full-time job for as little as two years for your WHOLE life. From there you only have to make 10.000 DKK/month, which is something that you could do part-time with jobs you actually like. Or you could work full-time a couple of months, and then travel to cheaper places where 7.000 DKK/month would make you live a royal person.

And that portfolio is going to grow. If we want to, we could start to withdraw from it down the road. Because it becomes big enough to finance everything on our budget, and retire at a traditional age with bit less money than 13.000.000 DKK (3.000.000 $).

*IFA.com

3# My Monthly Financial Independence Update

The Quick Takeaways

This month savings rate: 51 %

This month leverage: 100 %

Rolling savings rate since February 2016: 55 %

Total value of portfolio: 550.000 DKK (84.000 $)

Years till I hit a 7 % SWR: 2.6 Years

% Change since last month: 1.8 %

So What The F*** Happen This Month

I think we all know this month has been a rowdy one. Stock wise. Excluding this day (where everything seems to go up) my portfolio is down 25.000 DKK (3.800 $).

I have been quiet excited about the market drop. I have taken this quote from Warren Buffett quiet serious.

Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful – Warren Buffett

All stocks has pretty much only gone up for a long time.

The Shiller PE 10 were at the second highest ever recorded.*

So I can have a hard time justifying buying stocks. And because of that I have decided to have some of portfolio in cash. Around 10 %. There is several reasons for that:

  • By having some cash I can rebalance if the market should take a big dive.
  • And I think it is a responsible thing to do when I leverage my investments by 50-100%. It means that I can afford the leverage. If everything tanks, I still got some cash reserves to make sure that everything is good.
  • Plus I would like to have a 1-2 years of cash when/if I quit my fulltime job. And this resonates very well by having 10 % cash. So if I end up with a portfolio of 2.500.000 DKK (380.000 $) I would have around 250.000 DKK in cash. Which is equivalent to two years of my spending.

BUT!

When the market did drop this month, I could finally justify buying some stocks. And Morningstar begins to call that the general market is undervalued**

I don’t practice market timing. So I will buy whatever the market does. But I would lie to you, if I said that I didn’t feel an inner resistance when everything just goes up and up and up.  And that’s where my 10 % cash allocation feels good.

Just Bring Another 2008

I think this month would be similar to something that happen back then. We just need to experience them for 9-10 consecutive months.

But this month has just proved that my portfolio can decline 4-6 %, and still be able to make the portfolio rise. 

*http://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe/

**https://www.morningstar.com/tools/market-fair-value-graph.html

The Minimalistic Way of: Eating

I have decided to make a series of different articles with the topic of minimalism. They will be called “The Minimalistic Way of:” and then I will dive into different topics.

This article is about how we can have a more minimalistic approach to our eating habits.

We all know that eating three meals a day is the most healthy way to eat. So the only thing we can discuss is what we are going to eat in those three meals.

WRONG!

Eating three meals a day is only a western cultural norm. There is an avalanche of studies showing up these days how NOT eating is can be healthier for us humans.

How can fasting makes us healthier?*

  1. Reducing Insulin Resistance
  2. Fighting Inflammation
  3. Hearth Health
  4. Boost Brain Function
  5. Boosting Metabolism / Weight loss
  6. Increases Growth Hormone (getting buff as fuck)**
  7. Longevity***
  8. Cancer Prevention

These are “only” the benefits fasting can have to our physic.

But fasting can also benefit us in our daily life.

Different Ways of Fasting

Fasting can be done in many different ways. But one of the more popular one is called 16/8, 8 hour diet or time restricted eating.

This means that we will be fasting for 16 hours (including sleep) and eat for 8 hours. The benefits of fasting already occurs when we have not eaten for 12 hours. But the sweet spot is around 16-24 hours.

Some of the most popular fasting patterns looks something like this:

16/8: This where we eat for 8 hours and fast for 16 hours (including sleep). This can be done by skipping breakfast, and only eat lunch and dinner. This is often done daily, or every weekday. When you get used to it, it is not that hard to do daily. This is also my favourite, because you save time daily.

OMAD: One meal a day. There is not much to it than that. It is one of the more extreme regiments. We could also call it 23:1. Fasting for 23 hours, and eating for 1 hour. I have heard some rumors about that Jakob Lund Fisker from earlyretirementextreme.com should eat this way.

5:2: Is more extreme the days we do fast, but we have more “normal” days. It suggest that in two non-consecutive days we will eat 500 kcal/day for women, and 600 kcal/day for men. For the other five days we eat normal. The fasts are typical done in Mondays and Thursdays.

How Fasting Can Save Us Time

If you decide to do the fasting I prefer, which is the 16/8. You will end up saving time each and everyday. 16/8 means that you fast for 16 hours (including sleep) and eat for 8 hours. And we can do that by only eating lunch and dinner, and skip breakfast.

Breakfast is the least social meal in our daily routine. Lunch is often spent at the job with co-workers, and dinner with the family.

But if we can skip breakfast, we don’t have to prepare that meal in the morning. When I have days like this. I can wake up at 7 AM, and be out on my bike on my way to training/work 7:15 AM. That is awesome. The only thing I spent time on will be:

  • Take a piss
  • Getting dressed
  • Drink a glass of water
  • Brush my teeth
  • Pack a gym bag

And if I’m super lazy this will take me 30 minutes. And if I’m in a hurry, it can be done in 5 minutes. No need to spent hours in the morning. Instead I can sleep for another hour, rather than sit crunched over a bowl of oatmeal.

How Fasting Can Save Us Money

Let’s imagine again that we decide to give the 16/8 protocol a chance. So we skip one meal, and we decide it will be the breakfast. Breakfast is not the most expensive meal. It is cheap to eat breakfast at home. That won’t cost us more than 2 $/meal. But if we are one of those types who grabs something on our way to job. It can easily cost us 10 $/meal, for a croissant, coffee and a juice. But I imagine that people who reads this site is not that stupid with their money.

So let’s go for the 2 $/meal for the breakfast.

Preparing and eating breakfast can take between 15-30 minutes, give or take. If we imagine that we can be 30 minutes earlier on work each day. Because we don’t have to think about breakfast each morning. This leaves us with 10 hours/month of more work. If we have a job where we can work overtime, of course.

If we earn 15 $/hour after taxes the equation would look something like this:

15 $ x 10 hours = 150 $ + (2 $/meal x 30 days = 60 $) = 210 $/month

210 $/month for doing absolutely NOTHING!

How awesome is that?!

But it’s getting better.

Because you are an avid reader of this page. You do some index investing. If you can form this habit for the next 10 years. And invest those 210 $ each month.

If we have an annual 7 % ROI for those 210 $/month, your portfolio is going to be about 37.000 $ higher 10 years from now.

37.000 $ FOR DOING FREAKING NOTHING!

I think it is insane.

We are not doing anything. Research shows us that we are likely to be healthy doing so. AND we will be 37.000 $ richer.

Not to mention CO2 emission. ****

What’s not to like?

Think about this. In the western society we have never been fatter than we are today. And we are causing to much damage on the world. Food is one of the major reasons for this. The equation look like this:

Eating the we way do now + We will get to fat and sick = To much CO2

It seem so obvious. Everybody will win in this situation, just by skipping a couple of meals each week.

Just try it.

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*https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/fasting-benefits

**https://leangains.com/

***https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/longer-daily-fasting-times-improve-health-and-longevity-mice

****https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=325&v=nUnJQWO4YJY

Budgets. Don’t do them.

Still to this day I don’t understand budgets.

I have hated them back when I was young an idiot with my finances. But I still don’t like budgets.

I think they are boring, and a waste of time.

“But Loui? How can you save money if you don’t do budgets?”

There is a law called Parkinson’s law.

It states that:

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”

Putted in other words. If you give a project two weeks, you are likely to come up with tasks that takes about two weeks to complete. And the same goes for our finances.

If we earn 3000 $/month and we would like to save the largest amount of those money. The traditional way of figuring out how much money we can save would go something like this:

  1. Do a budget in the start of the month
  2. Figure out how much you can save
  3. Save and invest that amount

What is wrong about that is that we focus on the budget first. Just like Parkinson’s law affects deadlines on projects. It effects the same way on our finances.

If we budget 400 $/month for groceries, that is likely the amount we are going to spend on our groceries.

If we however look at how much we want to save, and make that the first thing we put aside. Parkinson’s law is going to work its magic for us.

Lets say the we make 3000 $/month, and we would like to save 50 % of that (1500 $). That would be the first thing we do when a paycheck arrives.

From there, our job is just to live on whats left.

I have even done periods where after what I have saved and invested, my account balance would be zero. So I knew whenever I wanted to buy something, my account would go in debt. That of course was just an experiment to see if I could spend even less by doing that. And I did. But it was tough.

I would recommend people try out such an experiment. Start a month with nothing on your account.

There is two reasons why it is has some benefits:

  1. You are going to love just to have SOME money on your account the next month.
  2. You are likely going to save and invest more than you normal would.
Do you want to read some life changing books?

I have been asked a lot what I could recommend people to read. And because of that. I have made a “Shit I Love” site,where you can find all sort of things that I use myself, and what I think can benefit you.

As I’m writing this there is only a couple of books that I recommend. These books have been life changing for me, and that’s why I think you should read them to.

All of the links are affiliate links, so if you use on those links. You will support this site without it’s costing you a dime.

Check the books out here:

CLICK HERE

 

 

So You Think Your Workday is 8 Hours?

We think our full-time work is an 8 hour workday, which is a lie.

A workday for normal person would go something like this:

Sleep: 8 Hours

Work: 8 Hours

Free time: 8 Hours

Total: 24 Hours

While that is true on paper. It is far from how we really spend our precious time. To have some healthy sleep we need to sleep between 7-9 hours. The older we get the less sleep we need.

But how does our workday really look like?

How many of our daily activities is work related?

Let’s try to sum it up.

Our Job Hours/Week
(Before adjustments) 40
Adjustments
Commuting 7.5
Costuming 2
Relaxing at home 5
Talking about job 2.5
Escape entertainment 5
Job related illness 1
Job, with Adjustments 53
Hours/Day 10,6

If we count every minute there is job related we end up on 53 hours/week, and not 40. And this has several disadvantages.  (And this calculation exclude working overtime and in weekends.)

If we think we have an hourly rate of 15 $, we are more likely to have a 11 $/hour. But because we spend 2,6 hours more than we think on something work related and we only have about 5 hours of “free” time.

This free time includes all of the household chores as laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, picking up kids and so on.

If  we on average spend two hours a day on all of the household chores, we end up with only 3 hours of free time. These can be used for family/friends/spouse, training, reading/writing or whatever that brings us joy.

But is that how we want to spend all of our 50 years of working?

I know how those 3 hours feel. I’m often super exhausted, and I don’t feel like doing anything.

And is that what we want?

Three hours of not feeling like doing anything?

Just looking forward to the weekends and the holidays three months from now?

That my friend is just sad.

Fortunately there is a solution to all of this nonsense we call “normal”!

Not Spending All of Our Income

It can be done in extreme ways, saving +50% of our income (Which is what I prefer). But saving “just” 10-20 % of our income can make a huge difference for a start.

Doing this has a lot of different advantages.

  • We can work for six months, and then take the next six months off.
  • We can work part-time. So we only have three workdays instead of five
  • We can save and invest for 10-15 years and quit our job for good

And this is something we can do this very day. It is just a decision not to spend all of our money, and maybe quitting some monthly subscriptions.

Living A More Minimalistic Life

Less is more.

And let me show you how.

Whenever we do/have less, we make space for the more important things.

And there is several ways we can do this: 

Skipping breakfast. Yes you got that right. Breakfast is not the most healthy meal of the day. There is several studies on if we decrease the time we eat everyday from 16 hours to 8 hours we will have several health benefits. One of them is longevity. In other words. Only eat lunch and dinner. This is called Intermittent Fasting or Time Restricted Eating.  This does not only free up the time we need to prepare extra meal, but we will also save some money since we do not need to shop for breakfast.

Having less stuff can benefit in SO many ways.

  • Less stuff in our homes makes it easier to clean and tidy up.
  • Having fewer parts of clothes makes it easier to laundry.
  • Having fewer parts of clothes makes it easier to decide what to wear.

Commute on our bike to work. By doing this we can skip the membership of our gym, and we exercise five times a week instead of a couple of times. Time and money well saved!

Let’s imagine that you listen to what I say. And you will start to:

  1. Skip breakfast.
  2. Wear the same dress shirt for a week.
  3. Cleaning and tidying less.

I think you are going to at least save 30 minutes everyday which you can spend on your free time instead of your workday!

Let me help you!

If you feel overwhelmed in your daily life. And you would like to have a more simple life, where you are in charge of your day and finances.

Then let me help you!

I walk the talk. Trying to live my own life to the fullest. By ditching the shit that doesn’t matter to me. And making room for the awesome stuff.

Click on the link below, and let me know your story, and I will let you know how I can coach you.

If you are based in Copenhagen we can meet up, but I can coach you online aswell.

CLICK HERE

FIVE FIRE FAQs

There has been a lot of focus on the FIRE community from the media lately. And I get a ton of questions from people who have never heard about financial independence before.

So I thought a FAQ article was a good thing to post.

Why do you strive for FIRE? (Financial Independence, Retire Early)

I have reached a point in my life where I have realized that none external things is going to make me happier. If I can’t be satisfied with what I all ready have, then I will never be happy.

Because of that I end up with a lot more money than I need. And that gives me the opportunity  to reach for financial independence quiet early in life.

That is something I think I will appreciate more later in life.

What If you get hit by a car and die tomorrow?

This will take us back to the first question.

If we imagine that someday in the future I will declare myself as financial independent, that would be lovely. But. I’m not expecting that day where “I finally will be happy”.

Far from it. I will see it as an awesome opportunity to do more or less what I want. And I can’t see how that can harm me.

So I would be very sad if my last day will be tomorrow. But only because my life would come to an end, and not because I had money in my bank account that I didn’t spend.

Are you willing to mooch on your community because you won’t pay taxes?

The media loves to bring up the word “retirement”. And whenever people hear that word, we immediately think of a person who is laying in a hammock or playing petanque all day.

And that is not what I’m attending to do.

I love to do stuff. And I can’t imagine me going through a week where I don’t do something I enjoy, and not making some kind of money out of it. Maybe it won’t be much but I think I will keep working.

But let’s imagine that I manage to save enough to pull the plug from a full-time job at age 35 and NEVER EVER earning another dollar from manual labour. I would still be paying taxes from my investing. Which I gladly do.

What if everybody did like you? Then there won’t be no stock market you could benefit from.

And that is true. If everybody decided to only work on Saturdays and Sundays, and then do what they like on the weekdays. Mostly commuting by bike. And 80 % of their meals would be vegetarian.

Then yes, I think the modern way we see capitalism would have a hard time. But if everybody lived liked that, we would fix the environmental problem in no time, and I genuine believe that people would be happier.

And this is a price I’m willing to pay ten folded. If people read all of this and they think the whole point is for me to get rich (at all cost), they are misunderstanding the whole thing.

If we don’t take action about the environmental issues on our own, it looks like we won’t be here on planet earth for much longer.

What about kids, don’t you wanna have a family?

Sure I do. That is also one of the main reasons I’m doing this.

I keep hear friends and co-workers how tough it is to have kids. And I believe them. I love visiting my friends with kids. But it is just as big a relief to leave them again. Because it is awesome just to arrive home with some quiet time. But if you are a parent, you can’t just leave your kids.

It is more or less like a full-time job for the first 5 years of their lives, and from age 5-18 it will be more like a demanding part-time job.

And I can’t imagine how a full/part-time job (having kids) combined with a real full-time job is the most optimal to our wellbeing.

I think it is way better to give the kids the attention they need, without the stress a fulltime work can give to your child raising. Plus it can give myself some free time. Where I can do some work if I feel like it, or just let the day pass by as it suits me.