About

Welcome to Financial Quietude!

I’m a Finance professional with 10+ year experience. I have been a big fan of personal finance blogs for a while and have now decided to start my own blog to share my experience on personal finance.

Unlike many bloggers who hated their 9-to-5 jobs and pursued blogging to gain freedom from office jobs, I actually love my job. I love numbers, I love Excel, and my job is not exactly 9-to-5. It is a quite high demanding finance job in a relatively competitive dynamic environment, but that’s what I love about it.

I’m in my mid-thirties this year and can’t imagine myself ever retiring, however, I like the idea of financial freedom. Growing up from a poor family background, my parents tried many different business ideas one after another to make their ends meet. They fortunately earned enough money to provide me with good education, which I’m very grateful for.

However, when I was in my last year at university, the family business went bankrupt. That was the first time I had ever experienced what it meant to struggle financially. I sought for financial help from the university, from the extended family, and at one time did three part-time jobs.

In the end, I did manage to finish my university degree, landed a corporate job in London, and in the same year met Mr. FQ. During the first ten years of our marriage life, we worked hard to raise our young family, buy our home, support younger siblings, pay off my parent’s debts, travel the world and save for our future. As a young family, we reached our shared £1m net worth landmark in 2018 (when I was 29 and Mr. FQ was 34) mainly from working hard and saving, thanks to the fact that we both have decent corporate jobs.

As many others working in financial services, we did embark on investment activities from the early stage, although much of the results can’t be seen until much later on. In particular, we bought our investment property in 2015. Mr. FQ started to invest in VCT/ EIS/ start-ups from 2017 while I grew my interest in shares/ funds and crowd property funding from 2020. Over the last 10 years, we have learned a great deal about investments from our personal experience. While we didn’t actively plan it out, we did reach our shared £2m net worth landmark in 2024 (I was 35 and Mr. FQ was 40).

Excluding our home and pension, this leaves c£800k, which is unfortunately not sufficient to achieve our financial freedom goals, especially when we are currently paying for private school fees and providing for other family members. However, we do have a plan to achieve the financial freedom in 10 years time, i.e. when I reach 45 and Mr. FQ is 50.

The goal is to grow to at least £2m from c£800k, estimated to generate £80k annual income at 4% return. This should be sufficient for our wandering lifestyle without mortgage and school fees (our little FQ should start to have her own life by then) and should also allow for charitable giving and supporting wider families.   

About the blog

I initially wanted to name the blog “The Quiet Investor” given the focus on investing activities. However, given there are 600m blogs out there, many of which are personal finance blogs, unsurprisingly this name has been taken.

Mr. FQ then suggested this new name “Financial Quietude”, which didn’t take long to get my buy-in. It still reflects very well my original viewpoints on finance when planning out this blog, i.e.

▪ I would like to be financially wise so that I can obtain the financial freedom to provide for myself, for my family, for the people I care, to give generously and to live a flexible life.

▪ I would like to lead a quiet life as it is said in the Bible:  

“To make it your ambition to lead a quiet life…”

(1 Thessalonians 4:11-12)

But I particularly like the name because of the new layer of meaning, i.e. the state of calmness and peacefulness can always be present in our mind when facing the money matters if we approach it with the right attitude and methods.

This blog is a place where I share my thoughts, knowledge and first-hand experience on the personal finance subject, document the journey towards achieving our financial freedom goals and satisfy my thirst for self-reflection and writing.

I hope you will enjoy visiting the blog and find helpful tips on personal finance, including investment ideas and strategies!

You can sign up and get my content via e-mail weekly.

Disclosures

What is shared on this blog is entirely personal viewpoints, experiences, and understandings and not professional advice. Therefore, the blog will not be responsible for any personal loss incurred when using the information from the blog.

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Updated: 05/04/2024