There’s a faster way out (and accelerate your FIRE journey) than saving a slice of a salary: build something that pays you more and needs you less. I started at $1,700 a month. Here’s the date it gets you free:
The short version
My first salary was $1700, before deductions and taxes. I still remember looking at the pay slip and wondered why I didnt ask anyone first before signing up to be an occupational therapy student. This was in 2005.
Later in 2008, tired of the low salary, the high politics and clique-play and nonsense, I started freelance therapy practice in 2008 which brought my salary to net $4800 a month.
No business degree. No idea what I was doing.
Of course I failed a few times.
A clinic I lost overnight when a landlord played me.
Another I had to walk away from.
The fourth time it worked. We built it up and sold it for seven figures in 2014.
Then came the years inside a business I’d sold, with a vote that wasn’t mine. I’ve written about what that costs.
So I built again — a physio and hand therapy group, this time with the deciding vote.
And a property company underneath it, because of the experience with landlords. We own what the clinics rent.
The money goes into one global index fund. Boring on purpose.
The target is a date, not a pile: financially independent by 50. Not to stop working. To choose it.
The endpoint isn’t spending it down to zero. It’s a trust that outlives me, with a line in it for the church, forever.
Everything on this site is the working. Real decisions, real numbers, the reasoning shown.
Take what’s useful and question the rest.
Three things most money writing gets wrong
- The business is the asset, not the salary. Most FIRE maths treats a business as a big salary to shovel into index funds. It’s a thing you can sell — and the price depends on how little it needs you.
- You can own what your business rents. The landlord layer most owners pay forever can be yours. I learned that the expensive way.
- The endpoint isn’t zero. Every calculator assumes you spend it down to a fixed age. Mine assumes a trust that pays the next generation a floor — and pays the church first.
Where to go next
- No business yet? Start with the six levels of a service business — where you are, and what each rung is worth. Then run your two dates: the one saving gets you, and the one building gets you.
- Already own one? The calculator will tell you what a buyer would pay, what you’d actually keep, and your date whether you walk away or stick it out. Most owners have never seen those three numbers next to each other.
One letter a week, Fridays. The reasoning behind what I’m building toward my own date — By Design Fridays. Drop your email below.