I first met G at a FIRE meetup, her cheerfulness and confidence makes it easy to talk to her. 

When we met again for lunch in Central London a few weeks later she arrived by bus. From her home in zone 6. Her journey took her 2.5 hours but ‘I had time and a good book’. Laudable!

She stopped working at 49. Her path to FIRE feels like a natural progression of a lifetime of good habits, but she also knows that it was not all plain sailing.

Getting the basics right

Originally from the Caribbean, she moved to France with her family as a child, then to London as a young adult. She first taught French in Oxford and London for 7 years then, somewhat by chance and thanks to her French skills, she ended up in the finance sector working her way up from a receptionist to a senior analyst. She stayed at EBRD (the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) for 15 years working on energy efficiency loans for developing countries.

G is hard-working and tells me of how much energy, enthusiasm and long hours she put into achieving every single promotion and consequent pay rise she got. At the beginning she would take the bus into work from her home in zone 6, sometimes arriving late but happy to save money by not taking the tube. 

As her career progressed she understood the importance of being at work at a reliable time, so she gave up on the bus. By then her salary and bonuses had risen as well as her responsibilities and she describes how ‘I would walk into the office in the morning and the sensors would activate one row of lights after the other as I passed, I was the first one in. Then in the evening the same would happen as I was the last one to leave the building.’

The benefits were (and still are) amazing, here some of the most interesting ones:

  • Subsidised lunches
  • Subsidised mortgages
  • A final salary pension plan
  • A Money Purchase Plan (MPP) in which she saved 10% of her salary topped up by an employer match of 10%! 
  • Medical insurance 
  • Annual leave (25 to 30 max days)

Lesson we can learn: pick an employer with great benefits!

A flat to live in, one to rent out

In the mid-nineties while working as a French teacher she had the brilliant idea of buying a one bedroom flat in zone 6 in London for £50,000 😮

G paid it off in 13 years thanks to the low purchase price and the low interest rates at the time. 

Mortgage-free, in 2011 her brother-in-law, an estate agent in Cannes, convinced her to buy a one bedroom flat there, which she paid off in 5 years. The rental money represents a large part of her passive income.

In hindsight she thinks she should have bought a bigger property in London, probably a two bedroom flat, but she is very happy with her home sweet home.

She’s been smart and chose good properties at the right time.

Frugal living (most of the time) while enjoying life

She is a master of low-cost living, we can all learn from her. From her love of busses to her frequent use of Groupon and Topcashback sites. She even sold her car when she realised she only drove it to the shops and back. 

She follows the keto diet (loads of meat, few carbs) to keep in shape, yet when we meet for lunch she chose a baguette which she only partly nibbled on ‘because I only eat when I’m hungry, and now I’m not hungry’. Most people eat when we think we are supposed to eat, even when we are not actually hungry. 

With a cruise booked for this summer in the Mediterranean with her sister and brother -in-law, she wants to look her best.

The breakup from her life partner of over 20 years feels both a natural evolution (‘I’m a minimalist, he’s a maximalist’) and a sad event for her, but one doesn’t get the feeling they were not happy during their time together. Yet being single she is now pondering moving to France to be closer to her sister and other relatives, or stay put in London.

In the meantime she hangs out with her friends and goes for long walks with groups of people through Meetup.com. She still sees her friends from her previous life chapter, but they still work full-time which makes it less flexible to meet. 

Side gigs are something else she has checked out and worked out: she tried being an extra in films, which is fairly well paid but requires her to be in Central London for pick up at 6 am and often mean long hours. She considered being a Food Waste Hero with OLIO but the only spot available in her area was on Friday evenings, which she didn’t want to commit to (‘Friday evenings are for going out’).

Occasionally she helped out her friends, for example her florist friend who needed an extra pair of hands the day before Valentine’s Day. G got some cash for one day of work and time with her friends.

The curiosity to do something new and the opportunity to earn a bit of money need to fit into her social life – rightly so.

G is happy and well grounded, though still deciding the details of her life as a single early retiree in London. I’m sure I’ll meet her again at another FI meetup very soon 😊


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