2015 - Moving Forward

So we are into the third week of the New Year before I get around to articulating what I intend or hope to achieve this year.

The financial side is obviously important and it would be a very nice outcome if our assets could continue to generate sufficient returns to pay the household expenses and beat inflation. Given that asset prices are generally high (excepting H shares and commodities), there is a reasonable chance that this will not happen. However, so long as cash flows from rents, dividends and interest more or less meet our expenses we will still be doing okay and we still have two part time incomes as back up and the comfort of knowing that all our outstanding P+I mortgages are slowly being amortized away.

On the non-financial side, I have given myself four main objectives:

1. in 2014 my fitness was impacted by a nagging injury (plantar fasciitis) and another health issue. I am really hoping that those issues are now behind me and I can get back to the kind of level where I can sign up for the HK marathon in 2016;

2. finish the novel I am writing (including all editing). I had hoped/intended to finish it last year but for one reason or another, I got a lot done but fell six or seven chapters short of finishing a rough first draft;

3. finish the MFA. It's been a lot of fun and a very rewarding start to my retirement and I will miss the interactions with the faculty and other students, but it will be good to finish it and move on to the next project;

4. continue spending time on volunteer activities - I've enjoyed all of them so far and get a bit of a buzz about "giving back" so I'll continue with all of them.

2014 - Moving Forward

2014 has the potential to be an important year for a number of reasons:

• it will be the first year in which I have to get used to having no employment related income. Not panicking as the cash goes out and the investments fluctuate will be a good test of my emotional discipline;
• with no job to go to, I will be time rich for the first time since I was a student. Making sure I use that time well will be a good test of my time management skills;
• I should have completed about three quarters of the post-graduate degree (more or less depending on which options I take). By that stage I should have a pretty good idea whether I have any potential as a writer.

In terms of objectives for the year:

Financial: as I have no control over what the markets do, I have limited ability to manage my investment returns in the shorter term. It would be really really nice if the broker forecasts for higher Hong Kong and China stock markets in 2014 proved accurate, but I am not holding my breath. Accordingly, the "don't do anything stupid" policy will apply and I will keep cash or near cash balances at reasonably high levels. I will continue to manage expenses without being excessively miserly;

Fitness: I was going to put the Hong Kong marathon down as the lead item for 2014, but I have done something to my foot/ankle and have not been able to do the training. There is a good chance I will not make the start this year. Just keeping up a regular exercise programme will be sufficient for 2014;

Degree: carry on with the post-graduate studies to the point where I have completed about three quarters of the degree by year end;

Novel: produce a complete first draft by year end. I don't care how rough it is and how many bits need to be redrafted - I just want to be able to say I've finished the first draft by year end;

Housekeeping: I have a number of housekeeping tasks (the list has a life of its own) such as updating my will (a hangover from 2013), redecorating our home (which we will do when we get a vacancy in our rental unit in the same development) and catching up on the backlog of photos to be printed for the album (most of 2013 needs doing). It's a long list;

Volunteer work: while I will continue to do some volunteer work, it may be a less than originally planned - the priorities are the degree and the novel.

Short. Simple. Focused. I don't need a lot of complexity in my life.

HK Trailwalker completed

I managed to stumble my way around the Hong Kong Trailwalker on Friday/Saturday. Completing the very hilly 100 km course across the New Territories brings with it a wonderful sense of accomplishment and a lot of pain. I am tempted to do it again, but really need to (i) train harder and smarter and (ii) figure out ways to reduce the blistering on my feet (which was seriously affecting my speed over the last two stages). Having three great team mates and a wonderfully dedicated support team really added to the experience.

Full credit to Oxfam not only for their consistently excellent organisation and management of the event but also for neatly foiling the efforts of selfish and greedy local residents who tried to block the route as a means of extorting land belonging to the Hong Kong people for their own commercial gain. All  the protesters managed to demonstrate is their own arrogance and greed. It is long past time that the ridiculous apartheid-style land ownership claims of the Kuk were dismissed with the contempt that they deserve.

Early retirement - already getting into the swing of things

Okay, so I am only four days into my retirement but it already feels like a different life. On Friday, I put my daughters on their school bus and, instead of then catching the bus into the office, I went for a short run on the Hong Kong trail and had an uninterrupted day dealing with a few tasks that have been languishing in the in tray for years, working on my MFA assignment and having an afternoon nap. I managed to get more research and writing done today than I did in an entire week while I was working. Not exciting but absolutely pressure free. I'm still notionally part time so I checked the Blackberry ... just once.

Financial news detox

I spend too much time following the financial, economic and political news, hanging out at Internet forums etc. Way too much. I also had some non-finance things that needed to be taken care of, some overdue reading to catch up on and a week in New York during which I hoped (when not working) to be spending my time on enjoying one of the world's great cities.

So for the last couple of weeks, I have been limiting my time spent on financial, economic and political websites, news sources and forums. Quite frankly, I don't feel like I have missed anything important. Washington is still playing partisan politics while the future burns, the EU is still asking the German taxpayers to issue blank cheques and the HKSAR government still has no clue how the property market works.

The only two things of any importance that happened (or didn't happen) were (i) CMR (HK:773) has failed to give any updates on its response to the fraud allegations) and (ii) Cyprus will propose a levy on depositors to fund a bank bailout. The former is of more concern to me than the latter.

I should do this more often.

The perks of being unplugged

I have just returned from a family holiday to Australia. It has been close to a decade since my last visit and since I have some money invested there and from time to time consider sending some more money down under, a few observations are in order.

One of the first things that struck me was the comparative rarity of free WiFi. Hotels were charging AUD20 per day for WiFi access. A very few restaurants (i.e. one) and airport departure lounges would offer free WiFi to customers. That was it - any other on line access had to be paid for. Since being unplugged is not the easiest thing in the world, I made the decision to largely do without. I ended up checking on e-mails and a few other things a total of three times over the course of 10 days and enjoyed it. Being unplugged for several days not only had a calming effect, but I also found more time to think and was more interested in getting out to see and do things.

The second obvious thing was that Australia rivals London for the title of the most expensive place I have been to. Meals in restaurants cost about double what a comparable meal costs in Hong Kong. Taxis are 2 - 2.5 times the cost of taxis in Hong Kong. The running shoes I normally buy are 50-60% more expensive than in Hong Kong. A can of soft drink from a convenience store is about twice the cost in Hong Kong (even allowing for the slightly larger can size). But for all of that, Australia is very obviously an affluent society. An article from the 27 December, 2012 edition of the Australian Financial Review noted the following:

• average household wealth rose 6.6% to a record AUD868,000
• the rise was driven more by increased savings than rising asset prices
• while total household debt as a percentage of household disposable income has stayed roughly flat in the last five years, net household debt (total debt less interest bearing assets) fell from 42% of household disposable income in 2006 to 35% in 2012

Australia's compulsory and flexible superannuation regime has a lot to do with the strength of household balance sheets. When it comes to financing an affordable and sustainable retirement, Australia has implented something that actually works - both for the individual retirees and for the taxpayers who are invariably left picking up the pieces when politicans make promises that can never be kept.

Service levels were very good - and consistently so. Perhaps a notch short of what we commonly find in places in Asia, but miles ahead of the US, the UK or Europe.

Australia is definitely a country I would like to spend more time in, but costs are so high as to be an issue.

New camera purchased

Having finally conceded that the Canon EOS 5D that has served me so well for over seven years has reached the end of its useful life I went out and purchased the EOS5D iii as its replacement. I did give serious consideration to the Nikon D800, but decided that it wasn't worth replacing a flash and my lenses to make the switch.

I'm still playing around with it but already notice the improved low light capability. The video function may get a bit of use as well - better quality than videos taken with an iPhone but heavier to hand hold for long periods of time.

Hong Kong marathon

Yesterday I waddled may way around 42.2 kilometers of Hong Kong's highways to complete the Hong Kong marathon. While my time was at the unimpressive end of the spectrum (as always), it was a relatively good one for me and I enjoyed the experience. Switching the latter part of the race from Connaught Road to the waterfront was excellent - not only did it eliminate one over bridge, it also avoided having to run for a couple of kilometers next to heavy traffic. Overcast conditions and a nice breeze for most of the race certainly helped.

The field was more crowded than I would like but no so bad as to unduly impede running after the first few kilometers. The drink stations were well organised and plentiful but I really wish for a better sports drink - the one on offer is pretty awful.

On the downside, it was unfortunate to learn that a 26 year old competitor in the half marathon collapsed and died shortly after crossing the finishing line and two other runners are, at the time of writing, still in critical condition.

I'll be back next year.

Off topic: recent readings

In the past, I've posted reviews of books that were vaguely finance related and, more recently, some non-finance related books (here here and here).  Going forward, I intend to keep a (loose) record of most of the stuff I am reading (other than work related materials which take up quite a bit of time).  The most recent things read:

• Paper, Scissors, Stone: this is a volume of poetry by Kit Fan which won the HKU International Poetry prize for 2010.  While poetry is something I blow hot and cold about (I really struggled with the Wasteland, and that was just the bits that were written in English), I did find some of the language quite mesmerising
• The Sense of an Ending: Julian Barnes won the Man Booker prize for 2011 for this story about a man looking back on his life, specifically his relationships with a small group of friends and one former girlfriend in particular.  I hope when I reach the age of his protagonist, I will have better things to do with my remaining time.  I was surprised at how short the book was
• The Birth of Plenty: William Bernstein's explanation for why some countries become and stay wealthy and others do not.  A more detailed review is here
• The Hunger Games Trilogy:  Suzzane Collins very successful post-apocalyptic novels for young adults.  The first book was the best of the three
• Bad Science: Ben Goldacre's denunciation of people who peddle rubbish dressed up as good science.  Review is here

I've also made a start on Ulysses - quite frankly, it's very heavy going and hard to follow.  This one is probably going to take a few months to get through in small doses.

Off topic: Canon's lack of customer support

I have been happily using an original Canon EOS 5D as my camera of choice for about six years now. Six years of trouble free digital photography. Until now. Until I purchased a new laptop which came with Windows 7 at which point I discovered that the driver for the EOS 5D is not supported by Windows 7 and Canon has no intention of producing one.

This basically means that the automatic selecting and transfer feature which I have long accepted as a basic feature of using a digital camera no longer works. It also means that the ability to use the remote shooting feature through the laptop is gone as well. In practice I now have to use a card reader to select and transfer pictures from the camera's memory card to the laptop. It still works but is less efficient or convenient. There appears to be nothing I can do about remote shooting. (There were some highly technical work arounds but they were beyond my technical comfort level and appear to be even less convenient than using the card reader.)

It is very disappointing that Canon has no interest in supporting a camera that still enjoys widespread use and which I still hope to get several more years of wear and tear out of.

I've been drooling over the EOS 1D X as either a replacement for or an addition to the 5D but am now having second thoughts. It's a lot of money to invest in something which I expect to use for far longer than Canon apparently is willing to support that usage.

Off topic: a literary binge (2)

Carrying on from the October post on an out-of-character literary binge, since then, I've completed:

• Emma - Jane Austin. I found this mildly entertaining



• Walden - Henry David Thoreau. As much as I can appreciate the quest for simplicity in life, on the whole it came across as a snivelling, opinionated call for universal poverty and a rejection of human progress or dissenting opinion



• Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka. Entertaining



• Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad. Grim reading and a sad reflection on the time and place it was set in



• The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Long. Just long. But well worth the read. Unquestionably the highlight of this batch

(These are in addition to other reading material.)

With the exception of Walden, I enjoyed all of these books. I'm not sure what's next for the literary genre, possibly something a bit more contemporary.

Off topic: a literary binge

Nothing to do with personal finance, but I've spent the last several weeks on something of a literary reading binge. This was, in part, inspired by glancing at a (obviously subjective) list of the greatest novels of all time and, in part, by a desire to read something a bit different from my usual fare (mostly non-fiction with a lesser amount of popular fiction).

Books read:

1. Tender is the Night - F Scott Fitzgerald

2. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (previously read at school)

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4. The Trial - Franz Kafka

5. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce

6. The Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde

I'm currently on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

I actually enjoyed reading all of these (with the exception of Jane Eyre which I found rather dull and marred by a plot line that required a most unlikely coincidence to "work"). The Trial was rather disturbing and it's easy to find parallels with daily life. However, Tender is the Night was the most thought provoking - I was left thinking to myself "I don't want to be Dick Diver".

I haven't quite found the courage to take on one of the door stopper long novels like Ulysses or War and Peace.

Longevity and early retirement - revisited

I last posted on this subject back in 2009

Longevity is pretty fundamental so it's worth revisiting the question of whether or not there a link between early retirement and longevity and, if so, is the link a positive one or a negative one? It's a subject that comes up on internet forums from time to time and is clearly an important issue to many people. With my own plans for early retirement well advanced, it is one that is certainly important to me.

There have been at least some studies done on the subject, including:

1. this paper summarising the correlation between life expectancy and retirement age at Boeing - and finding a strong positive degree of correlation between early retirement and longevity;

2. this study of retirees from Shell which found that the earlier retirees (aged 55) included in the studies had shorter life expectancies than those who retired later (aged 60 or 65);

3. there is also the more comprehensive study done by the UK Economic and Social Research Council which was the basis for my earlier post.

Both the Boeing and the Shell studies have been subject to comments that they fail to properly take into account factors such as the health of the individuals involved, whether the retirement was voluntary or compulsory, diet, attitude etc. This suggests that neither study can be regarded as conclusive. The UK Economic and Social Research Council's study did address a number of these issues.

My own take, after reviewing not only the materials cited above, but also a selection of the extensive commentary available on the internet is that early retirement is likely to be positively correlated with longevity if, following retirement

1. retirees experience reduced stress levels;

2. retirees remain physically active;

3. retirees remain mentally active;

4. retirees remain socially active;

5. retirees have the financial resources to support their chosen lifestyle;

6. retirees live a reasonably disciplined lifestyle;

7. retirees get sufficient good quality sleep;

8. retirees contribute to either their families or society.

This is not exactly rocket science. Most people who can follow 1-8 will be in pretty good physical and mental health regardless of whether they are retired or working. The issue for retirees is that you have to create or achieve all of these things on your own - the discipline of turning up to work each morning will be gone - no one is going to do it for you (although Mrs Traineeinvestor would probably have some thoughts on this subject).

For my part:

1. work is a cause of stress. I expect that retiring will reduce stress (although it is possible that other causes of stress may emerge post-retirement);

2. retirement will enable me to spend more time in the gym;

3. I have a number of bucket list items and hobbies which will keep me mentally active and challenged. If all else fails, I will do some studying;

4. remaining socially connected is likely to be my biggest challenge. By nature I am an introvert and have a very limited social circle. Right now I prefer it that way, but I have to recognise that I may need to start interacting with people more;

5. finance should be fine. Building a bigger cash/near cash reserve and (possibly) paying off the home mortgage should give additonal peace of mind once the pay cheques stop arriving each month;

6. I don't anticipate too much difficulty in maintaining self discipline. Getting out of bed in the morning has never been a problem. I initially thought that maintaining a healthy diet might be an issue, but since most of my dietary sins occur during office hours, I'm not too concerned;

7. sleep is an issue. I am a chronic insomniac. I have no idea whether I will sleep better after retiring or not - I only know that it's very unlikely that I will sleep any less;

8. I already have a couple of volunteer activities and can expand on these easily enough.

It's also worth bearing in mind that I will be retiring by choice - I am not retiring early due to job loss, ill health, technical obsolescence or other adverse reasons. Also, for me retirement is not only about leaving my job, it's also about moving on to embrace a different phase of my life.

Looking forward to it.

Something a little bit different...

...for me at any rate. Ashley Ambirge at The Middle Finger Project (I really love that blog name), had a link to the Seth Godin's The Domino Project . The latter is is running something called Trust 30.

Trust 30 is "an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself" . The basic idea is that if you sign up you will receive a daily e-mail for 30 days each of which will set you a writing task. I'm not much of a believer in these sorts of exercises (I usually don't show up for team building type time wasters at work and seldom participate when I'm forced to put in an appearance). However, with the goal of transiting from my highly structured life (where I have relatively little need to actively find things to keep me occupied) to early retirement where the potential for boredom and sloth is a serious concern, I decided that this might, just might, be (a) interesting and (b) useful.

Having signed up, the first exercise was something of a disappointment, being both predictable and unoriginal - you have just discovered that you have 15 minutes to live etc. The "you only have x time left, what are you going to do with it" exercise is a staple of motivational speakers and writers. Steve Chandler's 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself included such an exercise (although with a longer time frame).

Notwithstanding the absence of novelty, I still went ahead and did the exercise. I'd read about and listened to people describing the exercise and their (or someone else's) experience with it - but I'd never done it myself.

In summary, if I was down to my last 15 minutes:

1. I would not be wasting time on regrets, apologies or cleaning out my sock draw. 15 minutes isn't long enough, there will be no benefit to either myself or anyone else and items #2-4 are more important;

2. I would spend all of my 15 minutes with my wife and children (multitasking on Skype to the rest of my family);

3. I would open one of the bottles of Chateaux Mouton Rothschild 2000 sitting in my wine fridge. It's way too soon and there's no time to properly decant, but what the hell, it was brought to be drunk;

4. I would provide my wife with updated passwords to my on line accounts and transfer enough money to carry the family through the probate process. Fortunately, I have a current will and my wife knows where everything is.

What else is there to say? While this is what I would do, it's neither original nor inspirational. Perhaps I just failed this project? Or maybe not. I did spend some time thinking about regrets and the thing I regret most was not finishing the fantasy novel I started writing in the late 1990s (work was a bit slow during the Asian crisis). I started picking this up last year but haven't really made much progress. The novel is on my retirement "to do" list and, if not finishing it was my biggest regret, should be prioritised.

So I did get something useful out of the exercise after all - a new feeling for my priorities and (possibly) a little motivation.

Hong Kong Marathon

It was that time of year - my almost annual pretense of being an athletic person when I sign up for 42 kilometres of pain, otherwise known as the Hong Kong marathon.

Near perfect weather (12-15 degrees) made for ideal running conditions. The split starts reduced congestion enabling people to run at close to their desired pace after the first couple of kilometers. The all important drinks stations were well managed (although the sports drink on offer was not one that I would willingly consume if I had a choice) as was the event as a whole.

More due to the good weather than anything else, I managed to lumber around in a few minutes under four hours - nearly half an hour quicker than last year when it felt like I was running in a sauna. A great experience.

Foster parents to a kitten

We recently acted as foster parents for a two month old kitten rescued by the SPCA. While our own cat (adopted from the SPCA in 2008) did not take kindly to the presence of the intruder or being denied access to part of our apartment, the experience was a good one. As expected, he spent most of his time hiding (either behind our bed or under a cabinet) and would bolt for cover whenever anyone came into the room. At night we could hear him running around, scratching furniture, unravelling the toilet paper, knocking things over and generally having fun. By the end of his stay it took very little effort to coax him out from hiding to play. I was tempted to keep him, but decided that it will take more work to get our own cat used to the idea of sharing her territory.

Yesterday I received a call from the SPCA to say that he had been adopted. Yeah!

Definitely an experience that was enjoyable and will be repeated.

Hong Kong Marathon

There must be an easier way to atone for my dietary sins.

Inadequate training (longest training run was about 27K) combined with a warm (27 C) humid (95%) day to ensure that I had no chance of putting in a decent time (by my rather mediocre standards). I decided to treat it as a training exercise (although I'm not sure what I would be training for) and just enjoy the experience of running across three bridges, through three tunnels and the Causeway Bay shopping district.

The event was well organised and coped well with the increased number of entries. The extensive and well managed drink stations offering water and sports drink (although not one that either I nor anyone else I know actually likes) were the key to enjoying the event.

I'll be back next year and hopefully will be in shape to come in under 4 hours.

Why wait?

I've obviously been spending too much time hanging out at Early Retirement. Either that or the level of satisfaction my wife is getting from becoming a SAHM is rubbing off on me. Or it might be another mid-life crisis. Whatever the cause, I am really looking forward to retiring at the end of 2013 (TBC).

Having had a few days off to actually do some thinking over Chinese New Year, gave me some time to think about the reasons for wanting to retire. I was quite pleased to realise that it is mostly about the things I want to do. Escaping from the things I do not like about working seems much less of a driving factor (in spite of not being particularly happy at being treated as if on call 24x7).

But I still have about two years to go until the numbers work and an additional two years to give myself a safety margin that I am comfortable with. Three years, ten months and thirteen days is a long time to wait. It is a ridiculously long time in which to put my real life on hold while I go about the business of earning a living.

So, I have this list of things I want to do when I retire. I also have a shorter list of things I need to do before I make the transition. I have started on some of the latter items (life insurance, medical insurance) but there is a lot more to get done.

The question I have been asking myself is - why wait? Why can't I start doing the post-retirement things now? Time and energy are the obvious answers. Working hours and the tiredness than goes with working very long hours are limiting factors. But there is still room to start doing things - and the flexibility to drop some of the in-office activities will increase as I get nearer to retirement and have to worry less about preserving my position.

So, I am going to dust off my retirement list and make a start on some of the items, beginning with:

#1 - a holiday in New York. I have to go to New York for business next month. I'm adding a few days so I can spend some time in an unfamiliar city. Since we didn't have a holiday together last year, Mrs traineeinvestor will be coming with me;

#2 - writing the novel. I started writing a novel during the Asian crisis - more than ten years ago. I still have soft versions of what I wrote. Career advancement, marriage and children put that project on hold. While my chances of ever getting published are (like most wannabe authors) remote, writing a novel is something I very much want to do. I'm going to dust it off and have another go. Given the limits on time, it will probably take at least 2-3 years to finish but there is no reason not to get on with it.

What else? Lots. But one or two small action points at a time is better than a huge list.

Ten reasons to retire

Yahoo Finance carried this article : 10 reasons you shouldn't retire.

Five of the ten reasons are essentially a statement of the obvious - if you can't afford an acceptable standard of living on a sustainable basis then retirement is not an option.

As far as the five non-financial issues are concerned, these are all points to consider. However, their validity will depend on individual cases and your mileage may vary.

To put a different perspective on the table, here are some reasons why we should retire:

#1 You can afford it. If you have worked hard for a number of years, enjoy it. You've earned it. Why wait?

#2 You're not getting any younger. Your life span is a finite sum. Each day is a resource you can only spend once. Do you want to spend more of your finite days in the office or on the beach? Let's face it - no one ever died regretting not spending more time in the office

#3 You don't need more. Enough is enough. Seriously - if you need more money, fine keep working. If you have enough stop. If you can never have enough, get some therapy. Get a life

#4 You will get old. Your health will deteriorate. There are some things which most of us can only do while we are young and in good health. The longer you delay retirement the greater the risk that physical or mental deterioration will mean that you will never get around to them

#5 Priorities. People matter. Family. Friends. Others. Very few people can legitimately claim that their job is a priority item. Give priority to the things (people) that matter

#6 Personal interest. Most of have a list of things we want to do. Whether we make up a list and whether we call it a bucket list or not, it's there and maximising the part of your life spent in the cube farm has no place on the list. Why not get on with it?

#7 Physical health. Quitting the rat race means you have more time. Time to spend getting in shape. Go biking. Hiking. Swimming. Get out and smell the daisies before you start pushing them

#8 Stress. Some people thrive on it. Personally, I could survive very well without it. If the office is a stress generator, it's time to move on

#9 Mental health. There's no argument that the office can provide mental stimulation. But there are lots of other places you can find the mental equivalent of daily brain exercises - and get some refreshing variety into the bargain

# 10 Giving back. Call it the quest for meaning if your like. Retiring gives you more time to give something back. It's hard to spend your days volunteering at the SPCA if you're chained to a workstation

Of course, I could say that retiring early is good for the economy - by stepping down you open up a job opportunity for someone else - but I have taken the selfish approach and confined my list to personal reasons.

A quick search of the internet talks about the benefits of working part time to bridge the transition from working full time to living full time. This is something I support and intend to do myself.

Equally, if retirement means spending your days sitting in front of the TV or wandering aimlessly through the mall, it is hardly surprising that health issues will follow. Making sure you are in a position to address the potential for boredom, physical inactivity, mental inactivity and social isolation before you retire (preferably years before) is a fundamental part of retirement planning.

From two incomes to one (1)

Mrs traineeinvestor will make the transition from a full time career woman to a full time stay at home mum when she leaves her office for the last time on Friday. With our children starting school and needing a degree of supervision and support which is difficult to provide through other means, we felt it was the right thing for one of us to take on this role.

What does the shift to a single income mean for our household?

The loss of income. Having run the numbers through the spreadsheet a few times, we have concluded that it should not affect my plans to retire in 2012-2013. If it does, it will only be by a year - because we are so close to hitting our number savings have less of an impact on the timing than return on investments.

Vulnerability to job loss. Clearly, if I were to lose my job we would have no income coming in and would need to live off investments until one of us could find a new job. This does not cause us any concern - if we really had to we could make some significant cuts in expenditure and probably get by indefinitely on our investments.

Boredom. The only thing worse than a bored spouse is a bored spouse who tries to relieve her boredom by going on shopping binges. We have come up with some projects to keep Mrs traineeinvestor busy - both physically and mentally. One of which will be tracking our spending in far more detail than we do at present. There are also some projects around the home which need doing. She is considering doing some further study.

Expenses. We are unsure whether expenses will go up or down and will monitor the situation carefully. In some respects, this is a dry run for my own retirement.

Savings. With time on her hands, we will be looking to get better deals on some of our household expenses. At the moment, we simply do not have the time to search out the best deal.

Portfolio. At the moment we do not keep any money set aside for an emergency fund. Having considered our situation, I see no need to change this arrangement. There will still be enough cash coming in from my job and our investments each month as well as money set aside to pay tax to deal with just about any emergency which could conceivably arise.

Insurance. Our medical insurance is provided by my wife's employer and will cease at the end of the week. I have arranged replacement insurance through my employer but have to pay for it myself. This is a significant expense.

Looking forward to the day when I retire.