Hello and welcome to my blog. This is my first ever post so bear with me while I find my footing. I thought I’d do a post kicking things off to set the scene. Who am I, why have I decided to put stuff on the internet & what are my goals?
Who am I?
I’m Phil, hello. I’m 36 and live in Wiltshire in the UK. I’ve been investing in some form or other since 2018 when my father in law introduced my wife & I to stocks and shares ISA’s and suggested we start building up our accounts and investing in some trusts & funds. Before this point I had no idea investing was so accessible, I thought you needed a financial advisor and millions in the bank. I found the whole thing fascinating, I’ve always been a bit of a stats & numbers geek, so this was right in my wheelhouse.
I would check my account multiple times a day, amazed by the fact that I could make money (or lose it) passively without having to do anything. I’m not sure if it’s normal to check that often, almost certainly not I would guess. At the time I was running my own garden design business & my wife her own e-commerce business, so it was a perfect avenue to start investing our savings to build a pension and move towards financial freedom.
This was a catalyst for me to start educating myself on investing in general and I started to devour any material I could get on the subject. I stayed with investment trusts for the first couple of years and then started to slowly move my account into individual stocks. At this stage my ISA is pretty much entirely individual stocks, while my wife’s account remains in trusts, so if I completely screw it up it’s not a total disaster.
During this period I found myself constantly thinking about investing and less excited by my day to day work. I eventually realised that my passion no longer lay in garden design and I wanted to pursue this new exciting chapter of investing as a full time endeavor. I’ve always been a bit of a risk taker when it comes to my career, and as long as it’s something I’m passionate about I’ll back myself. Luckily I have an incredibly supportive wife as well. Also the way I look at it I can always return to garden design if it all goes tits up. I should say at this stage that we don’t have kids and have a decent amount of savings, so I’m definitely not saying this would be the right decision for other people.
Away from investing my wife & I have a real passion for travel and like to go on as many adventures as possible. We’ve always seen travel as an essential aspect of our lives, we’re pretty lucky we both align so well in that aspect. We both love nature and wildlife, so these will often be the basis for our trips. Our adventures include safari in South Africa, Husky sledding in Finland and trekking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. I also love golf and running, so spend a lot of time outdoors, which is not always as nice as it sounds in the UK. As I write this there’s 20mph winds and slashing rain outside! Though it is a nice balance to the many hours a day spent in front of a monitor.
What are my goals?
My main goal from investing is to achieve financial freedom for my wife & I. By that I mean that we are earning enough from passive income to both not have to work and live a decent quality of life. Now I don’t think either of us will actually stop working, but I want us to have the choice and be able to take months off at a time if we want to. To be able to spend a couple of months over winter in a sunny climate, doing a bit of work if we feel like it, is the absolute dream. One of the reasons for transitioning my career is for exactly this reason, I can do this from anywhere with an internet connection.
Now I know this goal is going to take a bit of time, maybe decades, but I’m confident we will achieve it. Once we do, we both want to spend our time giving back and plan to set up our own foundations, primarily focussing on education in less advantaged countries and wildlife conservation. Obviously this is a very long term goal, a life goal really, but I feel it’s important to have those long term goals so you always know what you’re working towards.
So why put stuff on the internet?
There’s two main reasons really. Firstly to share my journey from investing newbie to, well, hopefully one day competent investor. Though it could also be a catastrophic failure. Either way it should make for some great content! Selfishly it will also be very useful to look back on in the future, to remind myself of past lessons or compare strategies I may have forgotten about. My own trading diary of sorts, but available for all to see.
Secondly to provide a source of free content, opinions & experiences, to hopefully help other people achieve their own goals. I figure that as I’m going on this journey and learning myself there’s no reason I shouldn’t pass that knowledge forwards. I strongly believe there is a severe lack of financial education in our school system, leading to a severe lack of knowledge on financial management & investing as an adult. It would be great if that could be improved, but until then I will provide content that I feel is useful for people. As I grow & learn more, I’ll be able to create content on more subjects.