
Hello there! As we embark on the transition of the old year to the new year, I thought it would be prudent to provide a post on what the hopes, dreams and ambitions of this blog will be for the coming year of 2020. Given I only started posting a few weeks ago, the content on the blog is a little light, but I’ve completed the first series ‘Road to FIRE‘ – a short guide to getting out of debt, getting saving and starting to invest and I plan to write more such guides in the future. But I’m getting ahead of myself – what is the purpose of this blog and what on earth am I planning to do with it?
Christmas and debt

I set myself the goal of completing the ‘Road to FIRE‘ series before the new year for a very simple reason. People in the UK get into an astounding amount of debt over Christmas. Just read the linked article to see how big the scope of this problem is. The ‘happiest time of the year’ is followed by the crushing reality of January and having to pay it all off. Some people won’t clear their credit card debt until May 2020! And that’s the ones who do actually clear the debt.
My hope is that they will stumble across my articles and maybe be intrigued enough to explore more and find additional sources that will help them out. I truly believe that if everyone in the UK was able to clear their non-mortgage debts and start saving up a 6 month cash reserve we would all be in a better place. That is the bare minimum I would hope the UK to achieve. It won’t happen overnight, but nudging even a few people on their way to this is worth me paying some pretty cheap hosting fees to WordPress.
Goals for Igniting FIRE
I am exceptionally lucky to be in the position I am. Sure, I work hard at my job, and with the relationships with friends and family, but I had an fantastic upbringing and was never near the poverty line. This gives me advantages, no doubt. I am also lucky to have been borne and developed an inquisitive mind and a hunger for knowledge. I can do maths and make an Excel spreadsheet dance. I wish to share some of those findings with you. Some you may already know, some you may never have thought about. I hope you, dear reader, can share your experiences with me as well and we can learn off each other.
My goals for the blog are:
- First and foremost: get people to examine their financial and personal lives
- Increase the readership and get people involved in the comments
- Write about more personal topics and less focus on ‘do this’ guides
- Explore sustainable living with various technology / environmental products
- Showcase that large saving doesn’t mean small living (summary of savings post?)
- Work out how WordPress works… bloody thing keeps eating my posts
Putting the personal in personal finance
Now that I have the ‘Road to FIRE‘ guide out of the way, I will be focusing on the topics more personal to me. I am not a ‘savings rate is all that matters’ type of person – I want some fun in the journey along the way. I have a huge list of topics, products, discussions and random trivia sitting on my hard drive, all shouting ‘pick me, pick me next!’. I don’t think I’m going to have issues with finding stuff to write about for a while.
For a small glimpse of what is coming in 2020, I’ll list some of the topics I am currently musing about (article names pending):

- The Solar House Experiment – a new series looking at how we’re updating the house with sustainable technology and how all the synergies work together
- Blitz Your Bills – a new series looking at the various outgoings of the UK public
- A one year solar panel review (with real numbers!)
- Tesla Model 3 Review – was it worth it?
- Heat your hot water for free!
- Quarterly updates on progress (?) – I’m still unsure whether to do a ‘numbers’ post
- Exploring the UK electricity and gas market
- Personal stories and how they’ve affected me through my life
Stay tuned for more
And that pretty much wraps up 2019 for me. I hope you’ve had a great year and are looking forward to 2020. See you there!