Katie DoneganKatie Donegan is the world record-breaking, co-founder of Rebel Finance School! Katie, alongside her husband Alan, helps people from all walks of life to avoid debt and build a better relationship with money with The Rebel Finance School’s free courses!
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Katie is our resident bad B. She has used the principles of the Financial Independence movement to be able to "retire" at the age of 35 and now gives her time to help other people get on top of their finances. She uses her new found freedom from corporate life to travel the world, run courses on finance and train in calisthenics. Recently, Katie was SUPER excited to do her first ever chin up, a goal she has been working on for many years! She has also been on a mission to help level the playing field; In June 2017, Katie was one of 28 athletes from around the world who gathered in Tanzania for a historic eight-day trek. They summitted Mt. Kilimanjaro and played the highest altitude official football (soccer) match ever played. A full 90-minute game, 11-vs-11, this match went down in the Guinness Book of World Records. The game was played by all WOMEN in an effort to inspire unprecedented awareness in the fight for gender equality and as a result, Katie has been featured in two documentaries about the trip and women's equality in sport. |
Financial Independence
What is Financial Independence (FI)?
Financial independence means that the income from your assets is greater than the amount of money you spend each year. Once you achieve this, and your expenses are taken care of, you don't need to work for a living if you don't want to. There are lots of ways to do this, such as investing in property, investing in stocks and shares, starting businesses to earn more money, reducing your income and so on. It is something very few people even understand, let alone achieve, and Katie and Alan want to help more people reach their own financial independence. Katie's journey to Financial IndependenceKatie has a degree in Statistics from the University of London and worked as an Actuary for various firms before setting up her own Actuarial Consulting business in 2015.
The same year, she read a blog about the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement, which involves keeping your outgoings low and putting those savings into low cost index funds. Katie's mind was blow and she and Alan decided to follow this strategy with the aim to eventually live off the money their funds generated. The couple had the goal of retiring with £1million in savings by the time Alan was 40. They lived modestly and saved hard. By September 2018, the month of Alan's 40th birthday, although they had not yet reached their goal, their investments were making enough for Katie to retire. Alan supported Katie’s decision to stop working. Alan chose not to fully retire, he still oversees his business but isn’t involved in the day-to-day operation. With their new freedom, Katie and Alan decided to sell everything they owned in the UK and started a nomadic lifestyle, living on the road and travelling everywhere from Thailand to Mexico. In 2020, Katie and Alan co-founded the Rebel Finance School, a free 10-week online course to help people from all walks of life build a better relationship with money and take control of their finances. |
If you want to get hold of Katie, use the contact form here. Katie was featured in The Sun article "I retired at 35 with nearly £1M in savings" and has been using her platform to help other people to take control of their finances. She built Rebel Finance School in lock down (what else are you going to do?) with her husband Alan and has so far inspired 3500 on their own journey to financial independence.