Life during lockdown

Hey everyone. I really hope that you are all keeping safe and as sane as possible during all of this shared experience that is affecting us all. It really is such a unique situation indeed.

We are all just about to start the 9th week of full lockdown and the final bank holiday until Christmas is upon us. I thought I would give a quick update by sharing some of my experiences of lockdown both positive and negative.

Home life & Personal

I moved in with my partner the night Boris announced the full lockdown that would commence the day after on March 23rd. I knew that we would probably be in lockdown for a few months at least and really didn’t want to be apart for so long as I took the rules seriously and wouldn’t of broke them. I rang her straight after his address and asked.. ‘I can’t not see you for weeks and weeks….could I maybe…perhaps… move in?’. This has been a big change for us both on top of the lockdown changes themselves but we have no regrets at all, it’s made all this much more bearable for sure for us both. We have got on really well and haven’t killed each other yet, so it’s all good😅.

I have been doing things that I should have done long ago without doubt. I have been kindly taught by my partner who is an awesome cook how to bake a cake… and to properly cook food from the initial peeling and chopping vegetables to making curry sauce from a powder and adding some extra spices etc. The closest I had ever got to real cooking was literally putting pizzas and food in the oven or microwave and not much else – I do an awesome beans on toast I can tell you…

Further below is the cake I made and my Chinese vegetable sweet potato curry (sweet potatoes, mushrooms, peas, red onions, quorn chicken pieces). The bit when you add the vegetables and food into the curry sauce and mix It all together is so satisfying, I can finally understand why cooking can be so fun and rewarding! 

Personal development 

Have I got completely bored at home? Have I become a zen meditation master and finally done all those things on my To Do list with all of this free time and almost no excuses? Well I would say it has been a mix really. I wrote out a few pages a couple weeks into the lockdown of how I wanted to turn this into something positive. I wanted to come out of it having achieved and accomplished some things at least but knowing full well I couldn’t expect to just come out a different person. This is what I come up with at the time;

• Lose weight, get back to my ideal best weight (9 pound loss needed)
• Stay fit (do some form of home work outs and stretches most days & go for daily walks)
• Declutter my digital world (I have several external hard drives full of stuff and my phone/tablet and laptop to sort through)
• Read some books and watch some video learning (expand the mind a little)

So how did I do so far? Well I got off to a bumpy start on the Weight loss front. For the first 4 weeks of lockdown I had a different takeaway each Friday (Indian, Chinese, pizza and chip shop food). I also drank beer on Friday and Saturdays at home which didn’t help too much. I have however stopped the takeaways now and only drink on the Fridays. I can happily report I have now lost 6.5 pounds which I am very pleased with. I need to make sure I now don’t undo the hard work and carry on to lose a few more pounds. I feel so much better for having lost the weight. 

Onto the fitness front. Well this has been less successful. I have gone for walks every couple or few days and have done occasional work out routines but not as much as I would have liked. I need to try a little harder at this for sure! I seem to do splurges when it comes to fitness and I always have. I can do it for a few days but then I just start to stop. I can eat healthy for months and months on the other hand.

When it comes to the declutter digital world challenge of mine. I have made big progress on this. I have managed to ensure I have backups of all my key documents pictures and videos etc and have also put some of this into the cloud as well. I have also removed loads of unused applications from my phone and iPad and sorted out the shortcuts only to those things I actually use and value. I still have more to do though as I need to go through more of my external drives to delete the content that I really don’t need any more. It’s similar to physical clutter in some ways, I find it hard to delete some stuff as I feel I might want to look back on them one day or get conflicted and go down memory lane when looking at older things.

My Work

I am really enjoying my work still and during lockdown being able to work from home a few days of the week and then going into work once or twice on a rota has really helped break it up a bit. I must admit, I wouldn’t like to work from home permanently. I miss the closer social interaction, the work banter and just the ease of walking over to someone and asking a question. I also find that I sit down far more when at home as I don’t need to get up to run upstairs to speak to someone or to go into the difference offices on my same floor, I really do miss this aspect of work as it keeps me active.

In terms of how busy my work is, well we initially were very busy in preparing our infrastructure for the changes in home working for our users and also many of the top priorities were switched over night. We had to rush in certain projects to help with our COVID19 response for example as those new functions actually directly helped with our ability to triage patients safely within the hospital. I feel very relieved now for our frontline staff more so that due to us being able to cope with the demand and footfall into A&E at the hospital that we have now returned to pretty much mostly BAU for my role.

It will be interesting to see how long we have to work from home for. I can do 99% of my work from home and it doesn’t need to be me specifically that does the other 1% where I do need to be in the office, it can be any of us really. I imagine that we will be carrying on working like this on a rota for many months to come, it might even last the rest of the year.

The FI Pursuit

FI Pursuit Hardened

One of the things I touched upon on my last post was how I was really pleased with how I handled the biggest financial loss of my portfolio so far. I had lost around £27,000 at one point and yet I remained fairly calm other than an initial stomach twist so to speak. This was the acid test, this showed I can handle losses. I didn’t sell, I had no intention of selling. In fact I wanted and looked forward to investing even more than normal every month as I really did feel like I was able to buy more chickens with their prices being lower now. I knew those extra eggs produced would be more valuable one day…

I feel I have graduated now from FI university and I am here to stay for the long haul. I think there could be another drop from all of this and I am still surprised how optimistic the markets seem to be. Either way though whether there is another even bigger drop or if it steadily rises back to pre crash levels. I feel confident in my ability to weather future FI storms as a result.

FI Pursuit Safety Net

The other thing I have really appreciated during all of this experience thus far is how lucky I am to be in the FI Pursuit game at all. The safety net of owning my own home mortgage free, having low expenses and having liquid cash and a mighty portfolio however diminished still puts me in a great position compared to so many. The gratitude muscles are ripped as a result. When disaster strikes, it really does put you in such a better position to weather the storms and get through financial obstacles. I don’t really fear losing my job as I know I would be fine and eventually would get another one. I can’t exactly feel sorry for myself because I will add a couple more years to when I become FI. I feel very privileged to be in this game at all.

Financial Update – May 2020

So…It would be rude of me not to provide a financial update for those longing for such content 😃…

• Monthly investment – £1500 
• Savings rate – 55%
• Investment portfolio – £167,172
• Cash is king fund – £10,000
• Emergency fund – £1020.70
• Big expenses / holiday fund – £3831.11

I hope you have enjoyed my post. Please share your experiences of lockdown in the comments. I would love to hear them. Most importantly keep safe.

Chris @ TheFIJourney