Welcome to the Humbug and Fagin blog detailing our journey towards financial independence and financial freedom.
We update the details of our stock market trading and investing every Monday and Friday.
Humbug has been semi-retired for the last twenty years and has no plans to ever fully retire. Fagin does still work for a living, but it doesn’t really count because what he does is his passion and his hobby.
Neither of us wants to walk everywhere and live on a diet of mung beans. So because we both like the good things in life, our journey towards financial independence and financial freedom involves a lot of noughts.
Our focus is on boosting our capital by earning more and getting better returns on our stock market investments and trades, rather than by cutting our expenses to the bone and living a frugal life.
This is the public part of our drive for wealth creation, financial independence and financial freedom. This is a real life, real money, real blood, sweat, toil and tears trading contest between the two of us.
The competition started in April 2017 on the city website DIY INVESTOR.NET, it’s featured both on there and also here in our own blog in more detail, as well as on Twitter. Our plan is to run it for five years by which time we should know whether investing or trading is the better way to Financial Independence and Financial Freedom.
HUMBUG IS THE INVESTOR, FAGIN THE TRADER.
We each committed £100k. Fagin, perhaps because he’s younger and in more of a hurry is the more ‘gung ho’ and is using his money to aggressively short term trade the stock market. Humbug who invests in funds for the longer term is more chilled and laid back, or is he just more risk averse because he’s older? Who knows.
Either way its a fascinating exercise, is short term trading or longer term investing the safest and most effective way to build financial independence, financial freedom and capital for the long term.
We welcome you following our journey over the next few years as we seek both financial independence and financial freedom. We’re greatly excited by all that we’re doing and hope that that enthusiasm shines off the pages of this blog.
Both of us believe that the best route to wealth creation and financial independence is to own and run a profitable business. Then living off the business and investing the surplus monies it generates into either the stock market or property or both.
To guard against the almost certainty that markets will crash and asset prices will fall every so often in the future, its important to have a margin of safety and for some of a portfolio’s income to be re-invested each year, so that the underlying capital that underpins the financial independence continues to grow over time.
The trick to being Financially Independent and semi-retired is doing it early enough in your life, so that you can enjoy the freedom it brings. Humbug for example semi-retired at 52. Its then vital to have the right sort of business. It has to be highly profitable, otherwise what’s the point of it? But it must also be something you enjoy.
Going to work has to be a pleasure rather than going to work on the corporate treadmill and flogging yourself to death just for the money. It needs to be something your passionate about.
Within reason its also important to be able to fit your work around your life, rather than the other way round.
On this site and on Twitter we are writing about what trades and investments we’ve made in THE GREAT BRITISH TRADE OFF and expressing our own opinions about FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE, FINANCIAL FREEDOM and SEMI-RETIREMENT We are not offering you financial advice in any way shape or form, not least because we’re not qualified or authorised to do so.
Please do not follow any of the trades or investments we make as you could well loose your money. Be pleased for us when we get it right and by all means have a damn good laugh behind our backs when we get it badly wrong.
Nothing we ever post should be construed as personal advice.
This site is not interactive in any way, its only purpose is to be read, or if playing the podcasts, to be listened to.
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