My millionaire by 30 blueprint
Building a 6-figure personal brand and what freedom means to me
There’s one financial goal that has been with me since I became conscious about money, to become a millionaire. Defined by having more than £1m as a net worth i.e. your assets (stocks, property or a business) minus liabilities (debt, car on finance etc), this goal secretly lives rent free in our minds. You’ll often hear people who have no interest in personal finance say that they want to win £1m in the lottery, or jokingly say that one day they’ll hit it big, because it seems so far away - it’s a fantasy left down to the already rich or lucky.
We’d be right in being sensitive to where we are as a society. There is a cost of living crisis, many people are in debt, housing prices are through the roof. Not to mention, due to inflation, £1m isn’t the magic number of wealth we believed it to be growing up. Nowadays, that buys you a family home in London, let alone any lifestyle costs you may have. People have many different circumstances or backgrounds, I think we can all agree we must play to the hand we are dealt. My belief is if someone is truly determined and committed to a lifetime of learning, failing and enjoyment from what they do, this goal is very much within reach.
You could say that my initial goal of getting to this number was shallow. When you don’t have a lot of financial abundance, you think £1m will be the answer to all your problems and you tend to think about the things it can buy, as opposed to what it can do for your freedom and autonomy. This was shaped by perceptions of wealth in the 2000s, wealth was to be displayed visibly through flashy designer goods. Nevertheless, having that initial shallow desire to be rich, was the catalyst for me digging deeper into finance as a topic and eventually learning about the FIRE movement. Sometimes, a shallow goal leads to a meaningful result.
FIRE means Financial Independence Retire Early and after your emergency fund, it’s probably the most meaningful number in your personal finances. It’s the number at which you, in theory, could live off your investments passively for the rest of your life. You could see it as an early retirement number, or simply a number which symbolises your freedom. You don’t have to aspire to reach it, but I would say it’s valuable to know what yours is. You can work it out by multiplying your yearly expenditure by 25. It gets complicated when you account for inflation, so I built this to help.
My FIRE number is £1.25m based on the 4% rule and my goal age of 40. I could withdraw a £50k ‘salary’ year on year without running out of money (because the stock market historically returns an average of 10%). That’s why £1m became such a crucial number for me. Once, it was a symbol of success and flashiness, now it became a signifier that I could quietly remove myself from the treadmill of mandatory work.
When I talk about the FIRE movement, people jump to a few conclusions, one of them being, why don’t you want to work? I started following this concept when I was at a 9-5 starting out in the fashion industry. I was deeply unhappy and unfulfilled but I felt trapped. As most entitled Gen Z do, I questioned, “is this really the next 40 years of my life?”
The FIRE movement felt like my escape plan, that if I could invest aggressively, increase my income through pure hustle, even shaving off 10 of those dreaded years would be deeply meaningful.
However, my life took a turn.
