Captain FI

Lil’ Lucky JJ is adapting well to life on the hobby farm, enjoying that coast FIRE / semi retired lifestyle 🤣

It took me 15 years but he has achieved it in 15 days 🤣

A really fun project with one of my best mates, fabricating up a cage for my old box trailer.

Learning how to cut, tac, weld, grind, assemble and paint was a lot of fun… even if I did lose a little bit of my knuckle to the grinder 😅🤣🫣

A few little finishing touches to do at home will be to remove the rust from the trailer body and then prime it, and then paint the whole lot.

My wife thinks it should be electric pink, but I’m not too sure 🤔

Now we are all ready to pick up our sheep!

Yesterday our new solar system produced 153 kWh.

The export is currently only earning 3c/kWh, so 102.86 kWh is worth about $3.09. Not exactly retirement money 😂 — although it does help offset the daily supply charge.

But the really interesting number is what we’re not buying from the grid.

Across the 24-hour period, that saved us roughly 74 kWh of electricity that would otherwise need to be supplied by the grid.

At around 30c/kWh, that’s roughly $22/day, or around $8,000 per year of electricity purchases avoided.

When I run the numbers across the expected lifetime of the system, the simple payback period comes out at around 7 years.

And that’s before considering the potential upside from joining a VPP (Virtual Power Plant).

But the financial return isn’t the only benefit.

I’m no longer stressing about big electricity bills.

I’m not sitting there at night thinking “better not run that now” or trying to curtail our electricity usage because power is expensive.

We can use the house normally (or let’s be honest, very luxuriously) using the battery overnight and let the sun refill it the next day.

And as our family grows, that becomes even more valuable.

More people means more hot water, washing, cooking, cooling, refrigeration and general electricity consumption. Instead of worrying about every extra kWh, we’ve got a huge amount of solar generation and battery storage to absorb that growth.

We’re also looking at potentially getting an EV down the track. Even with the “free” solar to run it, the numbers still don’t quite stack up financially for us yet when you include the mammoth opportunity cost, depreciation and insurance that EVs entail.

But not every decision is purely financial or logical. 😂

We may well end up getting one in the next 3–5 years simply because we want one and it’s a nice car.

There are just a few things competing for the money first — a few house renovations and additions, and of course a larger boat. 🤣🎣🚤

We had a bonfire going last night — Dad and I used to call them “woofies” when we would light them with 50/50 sump oil and petrol.

I guess that was our thing: big fires, simple moments, nothing fancy.

It’s been just over a year since he passed away.

Grief is a strange companion, especially when the relationship wasn’t straightforward.

This past year has been a mix of reflection, acceptance, and trying to make sense of both what was and what could have been.

One thing I’ve come to realise is that even imperfect relationships still shape you in powerful ways, and I’m grateful for the lessons.

And now with a little boy on the way, I’ve been thinking a lot about fatherhood and my Dad — what I want to do differently, what I want to keep, and the kind of legacy I hope to leave.

Because in the end, I don’t just want to inherit parts of him — I want to make sure I pass on the parts worth keeping, and leave behind the ones that weren’t.

Reflecting during an early morning clean up had me thinking.

There are a lot of risks in life that you can insure against.

Some you can diversify away, some you can design against.

Others you simply accept as the price of chasing a career you love.

During my years as a military pilot and working in aviation engineering, I spent thousands of hours at altitude, around jet fuel, hydraulic fluids, oils and solvents, weapons and defensive systems, exhaust fumes, radiation hazards and more chemicals than I could name.

It was a high stress, high stakes environment where I was frequently dealing with a high operational tempo and layers of contingency planning, whilst managing shifting sleep patterns, jet lag and spending most of my time away from home.

Whether those exposures actually affect fertility is difficult to know, but I’d be lying if I said the thought never crossed my mind. It definitely affected our ability to maintain healthy relationships.

Pretty much all of my employers denied any links to fertility issues, but it was commonly accepted at the squadron that if we conceive, it was highly likely that we would only be able to have girls.

So we found out we were expecting again, I was already grateful beyond words.

Then came today’s surprise.

💙 It’s a boy.

For years I’ve written that financial independence isn’t about escaping work. It’s about buying back your time so you can be fully present for the chapters that matter most.

This is one of those chapters.

Money, investments and passive income are all just tools. Family is the reason.

Here’s to our little co-pilot. I can’t wait to meet you.

Progress on the landscaping project 💪

Rather than spending hundreds (or thousands?!) on machinery I’ve taken the slow and steady (and safer) route

with the cooler weather lately we are taking advantage of crisp mornings and cooler afternoons to hand rake and level some fill into the retaining walls.

Great to cool off afterwards with a dip.

Some of my mates think I’m mad, but it is somewhat cathartic and helping me deal with some stress at the moment.

Once we get our bays incrementally filled, levelled and compacted, we are going to shift the water tanks down which will free up space for…

* drum roll *

The BIG FRIGGEN SHED (BFS)!

This is going to house our honey processing facility, workshop, and storage area

I don’t regret a single thing about doing that either. It was some of the most meaningful time we got to spend together

Last week, I asked my readers to reflect on things they might have been taking for granted.
ㅤ
One of them can’t even squeeze in a shower most days but is grateful for time with their mom.

A few recent photos from around our little hobby farm. Enjoying the days becoming a bit cooler allowing us to get stuck into garden projects ☺️

My neighbour bought a really, really expensive pizza oven for their back deck and it’s absolutely brilliant.

She’s nailed the sourdough pizza dough fermentation (and the whole process really!), so we take any opportunity to go over for a visit - trying to make ‘pizza Thursdays’ a thing 🤣

We want one too but you know, frugality and cozzie livs and all that. please send free merch 🤣

Double-banga ‘nana from the garden! Woohoo