Financial Independence Retire Early

Interview with Money Flamingo: Slowing Down and Pursuing Passion Projects

First I must start off by saying this interview was a few months ago at the start of 2022. In the interview, I talk about my husband’s and I’s goal of reaching Flamingo FI at the end of 2022.

First off if you’re not following Money Flamingo and the amazing Mrs Flamingo who first coined the term Flamingo FI I encourage you to head on over to their socials and blog and subscribe to their content.

As you know I love following and talking to people in the financial independence community who are treading an alternative FIRE path. Mrs Flamingo uses the Money Flamingo blog platform to focus on the less extreme strategies to achieve financial independence. This includes content on Coast FI, Barista FI and my favourite type of financial independence Flamingo FI.

For those who aren’t familiar with Flamingo FI:

The premise of Flamingo FI is simple: save half the required FIRE nest egg, then semi-retire and let your portfolio compound in the background until you hit your FIRE number. (Source: Money Flamingo)

So why the flamingo reference well according to Mrs Flamingo that’s simple

We stop saving and investing when we have saved 50% of our FIRE number it’s FIRE standing on one leg – like a Flamingo. (Source: Money Flamingo)

This brings me to my own opportunity to be interviewed by Mrs Flamingo from Money Flamingo about my plans to reach Flamingo FI by the end of 2022 and semi-retire. This involves our FIRE portfolio hitting 500k (a very ambitious goal indeed).

In the interview we answer the following questions:

Why we have chosen to reach Flamingo FI as our goal in 2022?
What are our plans after we hit our goal?
How does owning a house form part of our longer-term plan?
Do we have any regrets about the sacrifices involved in the early stages of our FIRE journey?
What advice would we give someone in the situation you were in when you started your FIRE journey 2.5 years ago (in your 30s and with kids and responsibilities)?

If you are interested in reading more feel free to read the full interview here via Flamingo FI’s website.

I’m will be writing an update shortly on how our Flamingo FIRE goal is tracking this year via the blog and socials shortly so make sure you’re following so you don’t miss it.

Thanks for your support

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Interview with The Fioneers: My experience downshifting to a lower stress job

In the second half of 2021 I had the absolute pleasure of being interviewed by Jessica from The Fioneers about my experience downshifting to a lower stress job.

If you’re not following The Fioneers I encourage you to head on over to their socials and blog and subscribe to their content. I love their content because they don’t cover the usual path to Financial Independence (e.g. reduce expenses to the bone, and invest at least 60% +++ of your income).

Instead, they are taking a different slower and more sustainable approach to Financial Independence coined Slow FI and write about their own journey via their blog. My favourite recent blog post is their experience in 2021 ‘Designing a life we don’t want to retire from‘.

The Fioneers also have a number of interviews with others who are taking a different approach to the conventional financial independence journey. My recently favourite interview was with Mr. 1500 who reached financial independence in 1500 days (no that’s not a misprint). But, this achievement wasn’t what The Fioneer’s interview focussed on at all. The interview with Mr. 1500 was around why he was telling people to slow down and enjoy the journey. The interview is aptly named ‘Avoid the “Death March” to Financial Independence‘, and I strongly encourage you to read it.

This brings me to my own opportunity to be interviewed by Jessica from The Fioneers around my experience ‘downshifting’ to a lower stress job and still working towards financial independence. For those who aren’t familiar with ‘downshifting’.

‘Downshifting’ your career involves taking a step down in the role you have now to a level with less stress or minimal management duties.

For a long time, I loved working having a high pressure / high stakes job role. But over time, the stress and expectations of it wore me down. I didn’t want to be on call every day. I didn’t want to deal with the politics. I just wanted to do a great job and come home.

If you are interested in reading more feel free to read the full interview here via The Fioneers website.

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FIRE Calculator / Compound Interest Calculator – Free Download

Do you know how much you need to invest each month to retire in X number of years? Well today I’m sharing a Financial Independence Retire Early and Compound Interest Calculator I created in Microsoft Excel that assisted me in finding the answer out for myself.

Late last year as I was approaching burn out I decided that in 2021 we would be taking a different approach to achieving our financial independence goals. We decided to calculate how much we actually needed to invest each month to reach financial independence, and contribute just that amount. Anything above that would be put towards living our best lives now (and not waiting for early retirement).

In the process of calculating our monthly figure I decided to create a simple calculator in Microsoft Excel. After creating the calculator and inputting our details it was clear that we could to take the pedal off the gas a little from 2021 onwards, and adjust our investing goals. This had the awesome consequence of me being able to reduce my hours at work, and will enable us to do more renovations to the house to improve our comfort levels.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who could benefit from doing a similar FI/FIRE Calculation so I’ve decided to upload this free to my blog (no sign up required although I would love it if you did).

I’ve included a few screenshots below of what the calculator looks like so you can make the decision to download or not (Please note the data in the spreadsheet and screenshots is example data only – not mine). The link to download the file is at the end of this post.

Screenshot – Tab 1 – FI / FIRE Goal Calculator (Example Data Only – Not Mine)

The spreadsheet contains two worksheet tabs:

FI / FIRE Goal Calculator – Where it calculates your FI number and gives you an indicative amount of how much you need to invest to hit your FI/FIRE goal.
Compound Interest Calculator – This is just a bonus really so you can have a play around and see what the future value of your investments may be.

Screenshot – Tab 2 – Compound Interest Calculator (Example Data Only – Not Mine)

To download the file simply click on the download link below.

Financial Independence FI / FIRE and Compound Interest Calculator Download

To view my other Personal Finance Templates please feel free to visit me at ‘The Frank Basics’ Etsy Store.

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