Irish Financial Independence & Personal Finance Podcast

Saturday 4th October 2025

Transitioning FIRE Habits towards Heath

Since hitting our “enough” at the end of 2024, I have been finding my focus shift away from money towards other pursuits. Health has become a big goal of mine - it can be funny how as human’s, we tend to work better when we have a goal.

For years, that goal was chasing financial independence. However, when we hit our “enough”, the goal needed to change. I am proud of myself in a way, for not just moving the goal posts and setting a new FI target. I was content, I knew a portfolio value of €700,000 at age 40 was going to compound over time, as humans we struggle to see compound growth, we are linear thinkers. As our portfolio nears €800,000 - even after pausing contributions this year and starting withdrawals - the compounding snowball speaks for itself.

So there was no need for us to keep adding to the pile. I found other great things to spend our money on, which gave me a reason to continue to work full time. Our trip to New Zealand became a motivator, as did paying off the personal loan we took for our solar panels and new car purchase back in 2022. With the NZ trip now budgeted for and ready to go, and the personal loan paid off, we started to think about other things we could work towards.

Goal setting is fun. It is rewarding to set goals and see them achieved. It is also a great way to stay motivated. When we were building our portfolio and grinding, the reward was the number on the screen at the end of each month when we totalled up our new portfolio value.

So how does this all relate to health? With us hitting our number at the end of 2024, I set myself a goal to get on top of my health. I wasn’t badly out of shape, but I guess like many busy parents, I just hadn’t been prioritising my health as well as I should have been. Health was second, being a parent and a provider came first. It was an easy excuse to not work as hard as I should have done on my health.

However, now I had no excuse. Initially, I focused on what I was eating, removing a few things from my diet that were likely doing me no favours. I then moved on to exercise, and found myself making sure I did at least 10,000 steps a day. Later in the year, I then joined my wife at the gym. It was a great way to spend time together, and work on our fitness together.

After 9 months of focusing on my health, I expected to see some results. I felt stronger, better about myself, and liked how my body was starting to look and how I felt in my skin. However, one morning I stood on the scale and was shocked by what I saw - I had put on 2kg since the start of the year - what! How was this possible? Sure, maybe I had put on some muscle, but not enough to account for a whole 2kg. Worst of all, I had been watching what I was eating, and expected to have lost weight, not gained it.

I had a conversation with my gym instructor, I said ”I am really enjoying the gym, we are here regularly, I am running again, I did a 10km run the other day in under an hour. I feel stronger and fitter”..... “Yep” he said, “but...”

He had obviously heard this before! “I haven’t lost any weight”, I said “if anything, I have put weight on”.

What he said was interesting. “You can come to the gym every day, 7 days a week, but even then, unless you control your input and output, you won’t lose any weight. Keep a food journal and bring it back to me.”

I went away from the conversation and decided I would keep a food journal via Chat GPT. While not perfect, it was able to give a pretty good estimate on our food input - even by just taking a picture of our food. We calculated our baseline calories, recorded water input, sleep quality, food input, daily exercise and our daily calorie deficit. Each morning, I started weighting myself.

At first, I didn’t lose any weight, however Chat GPT kept encouraging me, saying that there was always a delay in the scale. I am 23 days into this process at the time of the writing, and I am down 3kg.

It made me think about the power of recording. When I record what I eat, I am accountable. I can’t just pick up a slice of cake and stuff it in my mouth - I need to be disciplined. Likewise, when I see my calorie deficit isn’t high enough for the day, it motivates me to get in a run, or hit the gym.

Over the years, I have talked to people at various meet up groups, who are always shocked at how low our day to day spending is as a family of five. However, after my experience with keeping a food journal, I can reveal that the reason we have been able to do this as a family, is because for the last six years we have been tracking our income and expenses.

Back in 2017, our spending was out of control. I was scared to login to our bank account as I knew I was going to see a much lower number than when I logged in last. It was the equivalent of me not wanting to stand on the weighing scale as I knew it was a number I wasn’t going to want to see!

However, by tracking, you make yourself accountable. It ensures that the impulse purchasing stops. By grouping money into certain categories, you get to see first hand when your money goes. It allows you to take back control of your spending.

Over the years in nearly every FIRE presentation I have given, I mention tracking spending. Yet I think it continues to be one of the most overlooked tools that we have in our disposal.

I don’t really mind which app or system you use to track your spending. I just use a spreadsheet broken down by categories, it keeps it simple. I track over a calendar month, then sum it up and save it on a month by month breakdown.

Here is an example of our basic spending for the last six months, in our essential spending category for our family of five:

I can see that our monthly food costs continue to rise - food inflation is part of that, but with three boys they are eating more food every month, and equally, part of us hitting our “enough” has been about us allowing ourselves to buy more quality and healthy food and stop watching the prices as much when food shopping.

We also had a massive increase in our “Kids Essential" category in September due to back to school costs.

However, overall, there is a consistent pattern with our spending. Part of tracking is that it creates routine. This is what I have noticed with my food journal also. I know what foods are good for me, and what are not - in the same way, I get better at knowing what purchases are going to make me happier and which ones won’t provide value.

I will provide future updates as we look to prioritise our health. My hope is that our food journals will create better health habits for us, in the same way that by tracking our income and expenses we have more control with our money!

September 2025 Portfolio Update

Stocks were up in September and we are in the black now for the year with our equity portfolio. We had a few rental related expenses, such as insurance due and window repairs on one of our rental properties, but they keep ticking over. Very much business as usual.

We took another withdrawal in September, but we are still moving closer to the €800,000 mark, which I expect we will hit by the end of the year when we next value our rental properties.

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	€7,216.53
Real Estate Capital Gains + Rental Income	€84,879.97
Interest on Cash Savings	€249.76
Capital Withdrawn	€-5,000.00
Closing Balance	€792,372.63
Portfolio Return	€92,346.26
% Return	13.19%

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.

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