About Me

Hi, I’m Andy, a 50ish guy from the North of England. I took 8 years to reach financial independence and am planning to retire this year.

I’ve spent most of my working life being self-employed. In some ways this gives me plenty of freedom - I can set my own hours - but in other ways it’s limiting - I can’t close my shop and go for a couple of months backpacking across Asia without my customers deciding I’ve closed down and them going elsewhere, possibly permanently.

I like seeing the world, and I’ve previously been to around a hundred countries. I’m very happy to travel on the cheap, and have done my share of hostelling, but even so this has cost me a lot of money and meant that I didn't have much wealth built up when I discovered FIRE. Whilst travelling, the thing I most enjoy is dramatic landscapes, so I love mountains, glaciers and volcanoes. My favourite countries are New Zealand, Norway, and Scotland. As a kid my stamping ground was the Lake District - we lived an hour away so we were there most Sundays - and I love being amongst lakes, greenery, mountains, waterfalls and rivers.

When I’m not on FIRE forums I’m often out leading walks locally or helping run a pub quiz. Unsurprisingly my specialist subject is geography.

My other exploits in the FI world include writing a few books, creating the fireplanner website, and co-founding the UKFIREHQ Facebook group - a managed group for Brits pursuing FIRE, particularly pitched at optimisers. It's "managed" in the sense that we try hard to keep it high quality, avoiding spammers, scammers, and distractions like crypto!