Very busy month, quite possibly the busiest I've ever been! I turned 40, lots of trips out, too many side quests from school(!) and an ISO audit at work! Phew...strap in! Also, apologies for the late posting of this, it was a bit of a beast to write and also July has continued with the business!
Given the May half term straddled both May and June, I've left some of that for this month. We decided to take advantage of an offer from Merlin a few months ago where they were giving a family annual pass if you stayed a night at one of their resorts. We chose to stay at Warwick at the start of June, and although the cost for a nightly stay was around £300, the value of the pass was worth going for.
We set off for Birmingham at the start of the month and headed first to Cadbury's world for a few hours (also Merlin), stayed the night in a Premier Inn (using the share perk of 4x free breakfasts!), and set off to Warwick Castle the morning after. Such a good place, and the shows were that good that we saw each one twice (Vikings vs Saxons and the Birds of Prey show). Walked to a pub just over the road for tea, had breakfast the morning after and spent another day at the Castle, which was notably quieter given it was an inset day for our kids.
100km bike ride!
This is something I've been building up for a while. I've never really been that sporty, but over the past couple of years I've started cycling a lot more, helped by the fact that where I am in Wakefield, we are spoilt with off-road trails and routes such as the Wonders of Wakefield and the Wakefield Wheel. The longest ride up to this point that I had done was the Wonders of Wakefield at 34km. I was also doing this on a bike that I had owned for 15 years, a trusty (and rusty!) Carrera Subway.
For my plan to do 100km I chose a route just down the road from me, Dunford Bridge, which is an old railway line and now part of the Trans Penine Trail. It is obviously quite flat given its heritage, and the route that I had planned was a 9km ride with a constant slight incline, and then back again. Do that 5 and a half times (the elevation map looks like I'm going over pyramids!). I had attempted this a few months ago but a storm ended it prematurely. A few months later, I was back again, and this time with a new (to me!) bike!
I decided to upgrade my Carrera Hybrid to a Trek Marlin 7 that I found on Facebook marketplace for £200. From my research, it was around 10 years old, but speaking to the owner he got it on a salary sacrifice scheme and hardly used it. Much easier ride than my Carrera and kicking myself that I didn't make the swap earlier!
Anyway, in the end I managed to do the 100km ride in around 7.5 hours, very happy with that. Not sure I'd do it again in a hurry, especially not a route where you are doing the same thing over and over again, towards the end this was psychologically the worst bit, knowing where every stick and patch of horse poo was on that 8.8km stretch.
40th Birthday!
In the middle of June I turned 40! Being quite reflective over the birthday week I assessed the last decade and realised just how much both me and my wife have done and achieved together. We've had two kids, taking time out of work to raise them, I've had 5 jobs across 3 companies, and relevant to this blog I both started my FIRE journey in earnest and achieved Coast FIRE! We'll see what the next decade brings, but it feels like we've absolutely smashed the last one, as a family, professionally and financially. I'm looking forward to finishing the hard work in raising my kids over the next decade, who will be 20/18 when I turn 50! I'm also looking forward to spending more time on meaningful activities rather than work; more volunteering, more allotment, more exercise, more time for friends and more time for slower things (afternoon naps anyone?).
I arranged a birthday meal for my family at a pub voted best in the UK (2025), The Crown Wharf in Stone, Staffordshire. Owned by local brewery Joules, they serve banging Sunday Roasts and have their beer on tap at £3.70 (three pound seventy!) a pint. I thought I was turning 30 again at those prices! Managed to get 24 of us fed and watered for less than £500, private room with it's own bar and a gorgeous view of the canal boats going past. Highly recommend if you are passing.
On my birthday itself my first surprise from my wife was a trip to Catgill Farm campsite, close to Bolton Abbey, the other side of Ilkley. We've been there countless times in the past and have seen the site facilities (and prices!) evolve over the years. We've always camped, but this time my wife had booked one of their glamping pods, complete with Swedish log-fired hot tub and a log-fired pizza oven....log fire all the things!! We spent the evening relaxing with the kids and enjoying the fantastic view, and the day after we completed a 14km walk with the kids around Bolton Abbey and DESOLATION VALLEY (actual name). As a pleasant surprise, the walk was much better than it sounded, a fantastic winding woodland path to the north side of Bolton Abbey with plenty of rope swings and tunnels for the kids (and me!) to try. The path then followed a stream with lots of waterfalls and bridges. We ended seeing a crazy amount of wildlife from baby duckerlings, about a million sheep, to marsh harriers and a snake! My wife told me she chose the route as it's varying terrain was reminiscent of the Lord of the Rings journey, which was extremely accurate! We got back, I sunk about 5 beers and ended the day feeling extremely grateful for what I have.
School Side Quests
Every so often we get some side quests from school, you know the sort, Christmas play, Harvest festival, Christmas Fair etc, but this month it seems to have gone into overdrive! Over June we attended; Sports day for both children, 3 x music assemblies, a Summer Fair, and a French language final to attend, it's amazing that we've actually been able to spend any time at work at all!
This is a nice segue into parenting guilt, and trying to parent like you don't work and work like you don't parent, which is a major theme of this blog as well as the ultimate balance I'm trying to achieve in my FIRE mission. With no parents nearby to rely on, for the past decade me and my wife have tried to juggle two full time jobs with raising 2 children. Key to this has been the flexibility of work, as well as the option of me being able to work from home since Covid onwards. I just cannot imagine the life juggling that has to be done as well as the guilt that comes when a person is attempting to raise kids without any familial safety net nearby, when they have a job that you actually have to leave the house for, and is rigid on when you need to be at certain place at a certain time, office or otherwise. I wake up every day extremely grateful for my work for the past few years, and in a weird way, I also take a silver lining from the Covid pandemic of cementing my priorities in life, which manifested a few years later when I took a pay cut from a job that was forcing people back into the office, to a place that had trust in people to do the work remotely.
Beavers camp
I had a Beavers camp in the middle of the month, great weather for it, and we just tipped the kids out into the woods where they built dens and played hide and seek for the vast majority of camp which made things very easy for us!
Frank Turner
Me and my wife rounded off this hectic month with a gig at Halifax Piece Hall (amazing venue btw!), Frank Turner and Bowling for Soup. It absolutely belted it down with rain for the first half of it, and almost a month later I actually think that that was the last rain we had!
Finance update
Breakdown for June:
- ISA up £5.5k
- Pension up £2.5k
- GIA/easy access savings up £2k
- Crypto down 17.5k
- House price up £2k
- Total: down £4k
Bit of a disappointing month, with my Crypto holdings undoing all of the good work from the rest of my portfolio!
At the moment what with my ISA full and leaving pension top ups to the end of the year I am putting my income into cash, specifically a 5% Revolut savings account I managed to get which expires in December. I am going to use this as a bit of a cash buffer as I won't get paid for the entire month of August as well as half of July given my Unpaid Parental Leave over summer.
2026/27 tax year:
Just slightly down from the £120k figure last month. Still happy with the progress this (tax) year so far.
Overall net work stands at £1.456m, and I'll be happy if I break the £1.5m barrier by the end of the calendar year.
Well done if you've made it through that! It's been a milestone month for me, and on reflection, perhaps the biggest realisation was that FIRE has gradually become less about retiring early and more about balancing buying back my time and spending intentionally on long-lasting memories. Looking back over the last decade, the moments I remember aren't promotions or pay rises, they're camping trips, bike rides, birthdays and days out with the kids.
That's it, that's the update,
See you next time!
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