Summary
In 2021, I decided to stop doing annual updates. At that time, I thought I had FI figured out and was just living a ‘normal’ life. A lot has changed since then!
This is the eighth year of freedom post from the man who left his job. He says he's learned a lot over the last three years. He's also realized that things are going to get really weird with AI over the next decade.
I’ve just spent my whole life accumulating it. And if I was using it, that was a mistake because now that money can’t grow anymore. And it’s been a huge mental shift to now try to use it when I’m learning how to.
If you would have told me this eight years ago that I’d want to be a homeowner again after the horrors of my previous two homeownership stints, I would have said you’re crazy. It just shows how much changes as you get older and as your priorities change.
I think it’s mainly because I’ve gone so long without any good stuff. So even though I just was talking about being overwhelmed by too much kid stuff, buying stuff for the house has been a lot of fun. And it adds to my daily joy. So yeah, I didn’t think stuff actually increased my happiness, but it really does.
If I get enough followers on YouTube, then I’ll start doing these in video and I�’d give you a little tour of my home studio, which is incredible. So those are two big changes, my love of home ownership and love of stuff.
I feel like this is the first time I’m appreciating all my past investments. It feels like all my investments are really paying off. So for example, like, like to buy this house I used my portfolio to do it.
So yeah, I did save up a good amount of money and it can be used to buy amazing things like this big stone house in the countryside. But I also feel like, other investments are also paying off. So my focus on health over the last decade and now I’m in my early forties and I still feel like I‘m 20.
So health is a huge focus. I’m trying to think about ways to increase the investment in my friendships. And then the biggest investment, investing in my son.
The pandemic was the thing that really brought that to the forefront of my mind. We were trapped in Scotland for a couple of years and I couldn’t see my family and friends. So that’s been another motivation to use my money more now.
I’m also going to do a Perfect Life version 2.0. I have a post called The Perfect Life that I wrote even before I reached FI and I haven’t read it because I want to read it right before I write this new post. I feel like we’re doing that and we‘re getting very close to our ideal lifestyle, but here we are eight years in and still experimenting a lot and still trying to figure it out.
Back then I was a software developer and I could see that graphics were going to be more important in future years. I thought, okay, investing in the best graphic processing unit producer would make a lot of sense. So I invested and sure enough, I think it went up maybe 20, 25 percent and I sold it. But, that’s the problem with picking individual stocks.
This was in a taxable account too, which is silly back whenever I did that. So I have this huge unrealized capital gains, so I’d ideally not sell it, because I would pay a lot of tax on it. And yet it’s just becoming an increasingly bigger and bigger part of my portfolio.
The Mad Fientist is a weekly podcast hosted by John Sutter. The show airs on weekdays at 10 a.m. ET on CNN.com and 1 p.m.-3 p.a. ET. The Mad Fientsist is also available on YouTube.
The Mad Fientist's new book is called "The Mad fientist’s Guide to the World’’.
