The monthly finance meeting is one of the highlights of our month. We find a cool location for a wonderful breakfast or brunch, open the spreadsheet and input the numbers and work out which direction our finances are going in!

This is the exact opposite of most of the population who don't like to look at their finances at all; scared of what they might find.  Your average person uses the "bury your head in the sand" strategy to manage their finances; with an occasional peek at the current account to see if they can afford things.  

If the saying "what gets measured gets improved" is true; then why are so many people so scared of looking at their personal finances??

UPDATE: this article was originally written in 2022, we've now updated it as at May 2023. Hello future!

I was bursting with energy to share what I had learnt when I saw her.  I was hopping from foot to foot to tell her, but knew I had to wait until we connected.  I listened to what she had been up to in the day and then told her about Financial Independence and what I had learnt. 

The reaction I got back was not the one I was expecting.  I was expecting a big "YES! Let's go!" What I got was a unenthusiastic nod and silence.  The energy drained from my body and my head drooped to the ground as I started to see my dream slip away. 

If you have a partner, if you have a boyfriend, girlfriend or other, it can be a make or break piece of the puzzle of FI getting them on board with your vision to be financially independent. 

It doesn't have to be about Financial Independence. Talking to your partner about money and having a comfortable retirement and being on the same page is SO important!

​How do you talk to your partner about money?

On top of all the finance terms the FIRE (financial independence / retire early) community has invented it's own set of terms and definitions for you to learn. In this article I am going to break down all the different FIRE terms from Lean FIRE to Fat FIRE and all the way to Coast FIRE and beyond. 

​FIRE Terms explained.

Back in 2015 it was just called Financial Independence (FI) and Katie and I loved the idea of becoming financially independent so that we could spend our time doing whatever we wanted!  Read on for our definition of FI, more about the history of the FIRE movement, and how you can get involved!

After 3 years of talking about money, running the Rebel Finance School for thousands of people, and reflecting on our journey to financial independence, I can tell you that most people believe their only routes to wealth are:

1. Winning the lottery (slim chances but why not, it is only a few quid each month)
2. Inheritance  (maybe great Aunt Tilda will die and leave me money)
3. Building a business and selling it (but I can't do this as it takes money to make money)
4. The latest get rich quick scheme (of course they convince themselves that it's legit and it'll work for them!)

Is wealth really a game of chance or can anyone do it?

When you feel like you are doing something important, you don't care about the cold, you don't want to fall asleep and you just want to keep going.  Read on for the big announcement of dates for this year and more about how Rebel Finance School has grown and changed over the 4 years we have run it. 

Given we're three months in, I thought it was time for a Donegan update and hopefully this will be the inspiration that you need to either keep on going towards your dreams or reignite the fire inside you.  

The Rebel team called me and told me that Google had cancelled our Business School event in New York.  Over the next couple of days, every live event that Rebel Business School had on its books was cancelled, one by one.  We went from a healthy business with lots of money coming in, to only having money going out.  We had fixed costs of £15,000 a month for wage bills, services and more and we had no money coming in.

This was the biggest crisis of emergency that Rebel, and I, had ever faced.

We had so many plans, Thailand and then off to the USA to run an event, travel to New Orleans for Katie to learn jazz piano and beyond.  You may have read our recent post Travel with Purpose.  Somewhere along the way we lost our purpose........

You can learn so much from failure and we often spend more time learning from success.  For the next 6 minutes as you read the article maybe you will learn some things you can avoid. 

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

Recently, Katie and I have been inspired to create a mission statement and to start thinking more broadly about our why, our purpose.  That lead us to write about travelling with purpose and about uncovering your why/purpose.  

In this article we will share our why for the blog and give you some ideas as to how you can identify your why, uncovering your purpose.  Not only that but Katie also shares why she is now joining me full-time in the blog and why we are rebranding as the Donegans not just AlanDonegan.com

Katie and I have discovered that purpose can be the difference between either being driven, happy and full of energy or dreading the week, wishing away the hours and praying for the weekend.

If you are praying for the weekend, if you are dreading Monday then something in your life or the way you think about your life is broken.  Use how you feel in the mornings as a barometer for your success in life.

After 4 years of travelling around the world, Katie and I have started to work out some of the things we love most about travel.  This post shares some of our ideas and comes with a HUGE offer at the end (well we think it's pretty cool, you can judge for yourself!)  

No matter whether you travel or not, want to travel in the future or not I think this article has a message that can help you.  Read Onwards.........

They want to know what school (university) you went to, what car you drive, where you live?  Then last one really defines you.  Which neighbourhood, which town and what location tells us everything we need to know about you.  Do you live on the right side of the tracks, do you live in the nice side of town?

Do you measure up to societies description of success or sometimes do you feel like you don't fit in?  Don't measure up? 

Even now at 44 there is SO much that I know I don't know about, let alone the stuff I don't know I don't know! 

​How do you know what exists, how do you know what is possible for you and how do you get comfortable having a go?

This article is designed to make financial independence as simple as possible (not easy; simple) so that you know what to do next - which lever to pull and how to make progress. 

To celebrate I have a huge announcement for you at the end of the article.  It is customary to give away a gift on your birthday, isn't it?

​But first, let's back up to how Rebel Business School begun and how I went from frustrated Entrepeneur to global movement. 

What should we do?  Sell before it crashes even further?  Put it all in cash under the mattress and wait for the world to return to normal?  PANIC: read the news to get insight and feel even worse afterwards? Engage with the doomsayers predicting the end of capitalism?

Here's how Katie and I have trained ourselves to react when the market drops and why doing the opposite of what everyone else does is the route to financial success.

My messages, email and other channels lit up with messages of doom and gloom.  The market is down! We need to stop investing!  The £ is at an all-time low against the $! Should we halt all investments until it goes back up?  Is it different this time?  It is all going to pieces!  PANIC!

But what actually is in VTSAX?  Do you know what you are buying when you get it? Obviously, Katie got excited and created some charts and graphs to show you exactly where your money goes when you buy this legendary fund!  Read on to find out exactly what is in VTSAX!

​Katie and I started a new diet in lock down in 2020 given to us by a coach, we followed it to the letter, gave it our everything and after 12 days we had lost so much weight but I was falling asleep in the afternoons from no energy.  The diet was literally stripping me of my vitality and energy and I was falling to pieces.  katie wanted to press on, I couldn't take it and we argued.  

Sometimes we all have the tendency to take things to the extreme when we find something we are passionate about. What does this all have to do with financial independence? Some people take it to the extreme when they find out about it, alienating the people around them and sacrificing happiness. 

Over the last 4 years of running Rebel Finance School, Katie and I have had the honour of helping people avoid and unwind some of these mistakes. We have seen up close and personal the damage that these things do to people's financial lives.  Some have happened to us and I am sure we will make mistakes in the future!  This article is designed to help you avoid making some of the biggest mistakes we see people  making in the world of finances!