Irish Financial Independence & Personal Finance Podcast

Monday 4th August 2025

What Happens When You Don’t Actually Retire Early?

This might sound like it has been a long time coming, and perhaps those who have been following me for a while, might not be fully surprised by this update. I have been talking about the power of working after hitting FI for a while, and mentioned in the past that this state is known as being semi-retired. In fact, I have gone further in the past, to say that early retirement is more about just leaving your 9-5 than anything else.

But what happens if you decide not to leave your 9-5? We hit a technical FI state at the end of 2024, yet I have continued to work full time. I am working a lot less, and as at the time of writing, this is my fourth week without working, but I am still technically working full time. And here is the thing - as much as I have been preparing to give up my full time job, I am starting to see so many positive benefits by continuing to work full time.

I wouldn’t be the first to do this - as I have no doubt many before me who hit FI have done. However, my story might be somewhat unique. You see, I’m not talking about moving the goal posts here. As far as I am concerned, our FI number is big enough - hell, it has jumped €75,000 this year and I haven’t even added a contribution to it. We have one big FI snowball that is doing its thing! I do plan to start taking withdrawals from next month - but long term, I think our FI portfolio is going to be somewhat secondary to our life plans.

This is because we are enjoying expanding our lifestyle a little. I’m not talking about lifestyle inflation here - we aren’t putting ourselves in a position where our lives cost more just to live. Infact, as we have continued to track our expenses, I have noticed our day to day essential spending actually has remained static, or even dropping in parts. Our core accommodation, transport and food costs have remained largely the same. But boy, we have spent some money on a few neat things this year, including:

• Our big trip to New Zealand coming up at the end of the year
• A trip to Lanzorote
• Two trips to London to visit my sister
• A holiday home

You read the last one correctly - we are currently in the process of putting things in place to buy a holiday home. Something that is likely the least FIRE thing we could do - but something we feel will make a big difference to our quality of life.

As much as we love our routine most of the year, we find the school holidays tough. Our kids love the beach, and being outdoors and just having a change in routine, and we feel a second home is going to give us so many more lifestyle options. It will be a place for us to go during school holidays, long weekends and more. We have been actively looking, arranging mortgage approval etc and hope this might be something we can secure within the next six to twelve months.

This is not a place I ever thought our FIRE journey would take us, but I feel when you hit your FI number, you have two options:

1. Continue to live your frugal life, cut back on work, and enjoy your time freedom but within a budget.
2. Continue to work within parameters that work for you, and allow yourself the freedom of abundance.

My wife and her family have always dreamed of owning a holiday home. They grew up taking day trips to the beaches in West Clare, meeting cousins who had caravans down in Kilkee. They were never in a strong enough financial position to stay down in a beach town and were confined to day trips. While my mother in law is in her 60’s now, it isn’t too late to make a dream come true for her of being able to spend summers at the beach.

The traditional FIRE movement was all about escaping work. It was about building up a big enough portfolio to leave something. But what happens if one finds that work isn’t that bad - that along the way to hitting FI, you actually find work you love! Or perhaps not even work you love, that helps alright, but how about that feeling that you are good at what you do, you can contribute to society in a somewhat meaningful way - I don’t want to throw away 20 years of experience in a field I am gifted in!

I enjoy so much about work - it is the burnout that I find that is tough. But burnout is manageable, and the reality is, if you continue to work in some sort of capacity once you hit FI, and stop making monthly contributions, it allows you to build a life of abundance instead. You get to decide - frugality or abundance - and for me, FIRE is a better tool if it allows you to live a life fully on your own terms - not just within a budget.

Here is a message I shared on our FIRE whats app group recently which I thought summed up my thoughts on this nicely:

“I've recently been thinking that the real issue with work is burn out, more than the work itself. Like work isn't the enemy but burn out is. If we can balance work with regular breaks from work, I think we can create a situation where work is far more enjoyable than just the daily grind we often find ourselves feeling.”

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again, if we can find a way to bake work into our ideal “early retirement”, then this whole FIRE thing becomes a lot more achievable. No doubt I will continue to provide further updates as I keep exploring my new post FI life.

House Renovations

A tenant moved out from our second rental property in July, and boy did I have to do some repair work! This house was our worst house in terms of needing work, and over the last three years we had three different tenants in the property. I recently decided it was time we took on a property manager, and have an old friend who I contacted. She is the perfect person you want on your team when it comes to managing a property, but boy, she was strict! She wanted the property cleaned and painted and it needed a lot of repairs after the last tenant. Here is a sample of some of the jobs we had to do:

• Paint the whole inside of the house
• Replace the shower door
• Fix a shower switch
• Fix the shower fan
• Paint the shed
• Trim a big tree
• Powerwash
• Put in an outside tap
• Replace some bathroom taps
• Install a fire extinguisher
• Degrease the kitchen (which was terrible)
• Loads of new curtains and curtain hooks
• New mattresses on the bed
• New carpet

All up we spent around €3,000 on getting the property up to scratch. It was the ultimate sweat equity, but wow, what a difference it made from start to finish. The new tenant moved in at the end of the month, and they likely won’t ever fully appreciate the work that was put in!

A property manager is going to change how we look at property moving forward. It is going to be less about cashflow, and more about two things:

1. Making property more passive
2. Protecting our property assets

The property manager will take away the day to day aspects of managing property. But she is also going to cost us more - both in taking a percentage of the rent each month, but also because she is going to deliver a higher standard for our tenants. This will cost us more in the short term, but will pay off in the long term.

I decided it was time we got a property manager for two reasons:

1. With me continuing to work, we can afford one! We will no longer be relying so heavily on our property income, so rather than have the stress of being on call as a landlord, I can outsource this job, and gain more time freedom.

2. The new rent rules coming in force in March 2026, will allow a property’s rent to be returned to market rent when a tenant moves out voluntarily. This is an absolute game changer for us. For the first time, we can actually invest in our property between tenancies. For example, if a tenant moves out voluntarily, we might decide to put in a new kitchen, or solar panels - a tenant would then be more likely to pay a higher rent for a nicer house! So it is a win:win. Our property manager can handle renovation work for us next time - and after the blood, sweat and tears of my recent renovation work, I will seriously consider using her to handle this next time! She will charge for this, but this might work out better than me taking extended time off work.

Long term, this might result in us having less money to withdrawal each month, but in the longer term, this will result in our property valuations being higher as the quality of our properties will be much better. Time will tell how this plays out, but I am excited to be moving away from the day to day tasks of being a landlord.

Portfolio Updates Beyond €800,000

I have been sharing our portfolio numbers since our journey started in 2018, and have shared a lot. I recently decided that once our portfolio hits €800,000, that this will be the last time I share a specific breakdown of our numbers on a monthly basis. I am doing this for two reasons:

1. €800,000 is one of the original targets I had to hit “FIRE within 10 years”. Once we hit this, one of our final goals would have been met.

2. Beyond a certain number, it no longer matters for us to record it. At €800,000 by age 41, we have made it. What more do you need to know? €800,000 is enough for most of us to at least semi-retire in some capacity. It really becomes less about the numbers at this point.

I will continue to provide monthly updates and I love writing and sharing FIRE stories. This won’t change. I will also continue to provide portfolio updates within those updates. I just don’t think it matters about sharing the exact specific numbers and breakdowns beyond this point.

It also allows me to protect a little bit of my privacy, especially as the number has grown a lot larger.

July 2025 Portfolio Update

We aren’t at €800,000 yet, so let’s share a monthly update! As mentioned above, the big news story in July was renovating our second buy to let property. This cost us around €3,000, so our property income was down considerably in July.

I had hoped to hit a €20,000 cash cushion by the end of July, but with the property renovations we aren’t there yet. I am still going to go ahead and start making withdrawals from next month, but I might have to adjust this if we find that our cash position doesn’t grow.

Our stock portfolio was up in July and was in the black for the year! It is interesting reading comparing my returns in property VS my returns from stocks this year - there is a clear winner!

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	€707.52
Real Estate Capital Gains + Rental Income	€79,022.38
Interest on Cash Savings	€240.28
Closing Balance	€784,996.55
Portfolio Return	€79,970.18
% Return	11.34%

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.

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