After being a lurker for many months, I've finally decided it was time to make my introductions. The name is Patrick, and I'm from sunny South Africa. 34 years young right now. I've been saving all of my working life, at least 50% of my net. From being a bartender at 17 until today where I put away about two thirds of my net (excluding pension contributions) into my stash. Sadly I was in cash for far too long. I then put everything into my own apartment, followed that up with 2 rental apartments before switching to unit trusts about a year ago, and now finally index funds. Interestingly in South Africa, selling shares or unit trusts before a 3 year period ends means we get slapped with a tax penalty for being traders, so I'll be hanging onto my UTs until that passes.
My financial health is pretty good though, I earn a great salary, and keep costs very low. It would be even lower, but I live own a comfortable house (paid for) and send my son to an expensive school ($400+ per month). I could always rent the spare room of my house, but I'll make that decision another time. To earn a little bit of side income, I've created three websites over the past few years which collectively bring in about $1k a month. I'd love to grow those to cover my living costs completely...
I also have what I call my secret moustache weapon :)
My mode of transport is my
home made electric bike. The trips I need to take are mostly to go visit my boy, 20 very hilly miles for the round trip, and I can't be late as he has an early bed time. A pedal bike wouldn't get me there on time. The other trip I do regularly is to my folks, 30 miles away with average hills. Clearly a pedal bike wouldn't do. But on the plus side, the electric is far cheaper than pedalling! At the current cost of electricity, a 20 mile trip would cost me $0.06 in electricity. The same trip by pedalling would need at least 300 calories, or about $1.50 in my food costs (I spend +-$10 a day on food and eat a great low carb diet)!
I've done the calculations comparing it to my pretty cheap to run Nissan Almera, and it works out to a saving of about $0.25c per km. I do about 4000km's a year (2500 miles) on the bike instead of using the car, so it'll pay for itself in 3.5 years. Show me an investment that'll do that and I'd be throwing money into it!
As another plus, it's incredibly good fun! Electrics have mountains of torque available from 0rpm, so I feel like I'm riding a superbike, but at more sane speeds. Here's a video if you want to see what it feels like, excuse the wind noise:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu0IHH8EAvQOther than riding the bike, I walk a lot. My office is a mile from home (close enough to catch the office wifi with the big antennae on my roof), shops are under 2 miles, and so is the gym, so I ride 2500 miles a year, walk 2500 miles a year and drive about 7500 miles.
My financial goals are to retire in 12 years time, as my boy finishes school. I could stop working far earlier, but the plan is for us to go sailing around the world, so I'll need some spare capital to make that happen. The 12 year period should be plenty though, and with some work on the websites, I could probably cover a lot of the monthly costs with those when the time comes.
Anyway, it's been great reading here, I'll try not to be so quiet in future.
Patrick
