Irish Financial Independence & Personal Finance Podcast

Friday 5th September 2025

What are you grinding for?

I recently went back to work after a five week break. It has been interesting. Work definitely doesn’t feel so bad after giving yourself the flexibility of time off, and a five week break was the longest break I have had from work since I started my career 20 years ago.

I didn’t miss work, but equally, I wasn’t upset about going back. If anything, I was somewhat non emotional about going back - happy in a way to have a routine, while also sad to be giving up a little bit of freedom I had got quite used to.

At a meet up a couple of months ago, I met Anne. Anne was grinding hard. She faced a 2 hour commute, working 12 hour shifts - both day and night and worked a 65 hour week every second week. She had come to the meet up expecting us to tell her to keep grinding, that she was on the right path. However, the overall advice was different to what she might have expected. “What are you grinding for?”, I asked. She had to pause a moment to find the answer. I’m not against grinding, it was an extremely successful strategy for us on our way to FI, but it needs to be done with a goal in mind. Without it, grinding is the ultimate race to burn out.

I received an email from Anne a few weeks after the meet up. It was one of the best emails I have ever received. She had given notice for her job, and even though she wasn’t sure what she was going to do next, she knew the answer wasn’t staying where she was. She had enough FU money saved up to be able to walk away and have a bit of a runway.

I met Anne during the week at our most recent meet up. She had just been offered a job at one of the county councils. She had taken a pay cut, but was going into the public sector, standard 9-5, a 5 minute commute and into a low stress role. As someone who works in the public sector, it is so difficult to explain what the environment is like compared to the private sector, however I can’t recommend it enough. Anne, a Type A personality like myself, might struggle to get used to the slower pace of work, but once she embraces that, she won’t know just how lucky she is. The pay cut will have very little impact on her bottom line - she was on the high tax rate, and the money saved from the long commute will pretty much mean she breaks even.

Her relationship with her family, her husband, her kids, will all be so much better by her decision to leave her current stressful job. Anne isn’t yet FI, but she will find that this will matter less. She has likely found a job that she wouldn’t leave, even if she was FI.

This is a position that I have found myself in. I am almost embarrassed to have to share this, but I gave my notice to my main government contract back at the start of July. I was done, ready to move onto the next chapter and semi-retire, working 10 hours per week as a freelance developer.

However, two days back at work in late August, I thought to myself, what am I doing? I had just taken five weeks off. Most would expect it would have been really stressful going back after such a long break, however it wasn’t. I am really good at what I do, and with the introduction of AI, programming for me has never been easier or as stress free. My situation isn’t like Anne’s grind. I have full flexibility on my work hours, my tasks, and how I manage my days. I also have full flexibility on how much time off I give myself. I can take weeks at a time off if I wish. Yes, the work days are full time, but with all the flexibility, there are very few days where it actually feels like full time.

I already have all the ingredients I need to live what I would consider a semi-retired lifestyle. This is the joy of the public sector. We still deliver, I still get my work done, and kill it on tasks as I go, but there isn’t that pressure that comes with the private sector. Those pointless meetings, politics and worrying about quarterly reports just aren't there. Instead, we all respect the fact that we want to get our work done, at our own pace, and around our own hours - and this makes the whole working thing that much better.

The reality is, FI or not, I found the right work-lifestyle balance when I started this contract a couple of years back. It wasn’t until we found our ‘enough’, that I was able to sit back and fully appreciate just how great this role is.

As for the notice - I ended up emailing back and saying that I would like to stay on. That I had been burned out and wasn’t thinking clearly. I explained that the long break was a huge help, and next time I feel any sort of burn out feeling, I will look to take extended time off again.

August 2025 Portfolio Update

August was a solid month overall for the portfolio. Stocks were largely the same, but our rental properties were solid overall. We had a small issue with a toilet and got a plumber out, and had insurance due on one of the properties.

The property I renovated last month had no issues and already having a property manager in place is paying dividends. I heard nothing, and got a letter with a statement from the property manager at the end of the month to say there had been no issues and the money was in the account! Bliss!

We ended up taking our very first withdrawal from the portfolio! €2,500 was withdrawn, we are officially living partly off our portfolio, after nearly 8 years of growing and compounding the portfolio!

Here are the overall portfolio numbers:

Monthly Portfolio Growth Report

Portfolio Breakdown

The table below shows the breakdown of my portfolio into the various asset classes:

2025 Year to Date Returns

Here is a summary of my year to date returns for 2025.

2025 Year to Date Growth Report
Opening Balance	€705,026.37
New Contributions	€0.00
Equities Capital Gains + Dividends	€1,313.28
Real Estate Capital Gains + Rental Income	€81,905.59
Interest on Cash Savings	€245.66
Capital Withdrawn	€-2,500.00
Closing Balance	€785,990.90
Portfolio Return	€83,464.53
% Return	11.88%

Lifetime Portfolio Returns

Here are my returns since I started in 2018.

* In 2020, some of the new contributions came in the form of an equity release, as we turned our primary residence into a buy to let and purchased a new home to live.

** In 2018 & 2019 I made several bad investments in peer to peer lending, forex trading and unregulated investments, which resulted in losses overall.

*** In August 2025 we started partly living of the portfolio, withdrawing €2,500 per month from the portfolio.

< Previous FI Update