Welcome to my journey to retire early!

Hello, I'm Jack and welcome to my blog.

I want to start by saying I am not a financial advisor and any advice/content I post on this blog will be from my own personal experience. Do not take my words as gospel, but I will share anything I think can be of use to people who have similar goals. 

Here I hope to share my journey to achieve FIRE (Financial independence, retire early) for anybody that isn't aware of the fire movement. In the most basic essence, it's maximising your savings rate from your income and getting your savings to a figure where you can live off your investments, retire early or at the very least not work very much and, if you are still working, it's on your own terms. 

At almost 30 years old, I really want to buckle down and increase my savings, which at the moment is around 50% of my household income. I have focused the last year or so on getting to a 6 month emergency fund. An emergency fund is how much cash you need to cover yourself for bills/expenses should your income/job suddenly go away. This has given me a peace of mind that things could come crashing down and I will still be clear of any debts for 6 whole months. I feel this has given me a mini taster of what achieving FIRE would be like. Imagine how it must feel to have enough money to last you for the rest of your life!

My main reason for wanting to achieve FIRE is to spend as much time as possible with my wife and two kids. I don't dread work, but I feel no real passion towards what I'm working on at the moment and would love to spend more time on my hobbies. I was hooked on FIRE after seeing the picture below on a well known FIRE blog by Mr Money Moustache.

Albeit I was sceptical at first, once I had read about the 4% rule, I understood this was a real possibility for people of all incomes and I set upon my goal of managing my money better. 
With the UK economy looking as bleak as it is, I thought this could be a helpful resource for people and hope I can alert as many people to the FIRE movement as possible.

Another one of my reasons for writing this blog is, I feel there is a lack of UK-based FIRE blogs and I want to try and help fill that void. I will share updates of my journey along the way and hope anybody who comes across my blog can find something useful or relate to the journey I'm on.

Thanks for reading and I hope you can join me on my journey to retire early!