Chasing the Fionist Dream

Happy 2023 everyone! It has now been four months since launching our blog and three months since our Rosh Hashana new years goals post, so we bet you’re wondering what we’re up to.

Welcome to our very first Fionist quarterly update! In this post, we will let you know how we’ve been doing for the past three months, both on our FI journey and in life in general. Look out for our quarterly updates going forward. 🙂

Personal goals update:

Of the goals we set for ourselves in September:

• We made some headway on backing up our documents online. (Goal is to back them all up.)
• We raised our charitable donations by 20% so far. (Goal is to raise them by 50%)
• We did a family vacation to Bat Yam over Sukkot. (Goal is more vacations.)
• We have been brushing ours dog’s teeth about 3-4 times a week (Goal is three times a week.)

FI goals update:

• Despite the markets being down, we stayed the course and continued adding to our investments monthly. We are now at 20% of our FI number. 🎉
• As some added expenses came up, including a few refresher sessions with our therapist, we managed to save 25% of our net income in Q4. (Our goal is to keep it at around 30% or raise it to 35%.)
• Income from dividends and surveys totalled 1,800 shekels in the past quarter (600 in surveys and 1,200 in dividends). We reinvest our dividends and use survey money to treat ourselves.

Other noteworthy highlights:

• Our two-year-old broke our fridge. Yup. That happened. He just reeeeealllly wanted some chocolate. Or cake. Or whatever was in there. He blocked us from closing the fridge with his body and then body-slammed it open, farther than it was designed to go – and we heard a crack. Within a couple days the door was no longer attached and we were propping it into position with an IKEA step stool. As the fridge was 9 years old and replacing the door (if at all possible at that point – technician wasn’t sure) would have cost half the price of a new fridge. So we dug into our slush fund and spent election day scouring appliance stores for a fridge that fit our kitchen and would be delivered before Shabbat. Poor kid will be telling this story as a “fun fact about me” when he’s older. 😅
• Finn picked up his camera again. Sometimes life just gets in the way and you lose inspiration. Or all of your creative energies get sapped up by your widely acclaimed blog. Either way, we’re happy that our photographer is doing photography.

• We haggled for a new Kenwood mixer. And paid for it in BuyMe. We’re pretty proud of ourselves for this one. After amassing 1,400 shekels in BuyMe and another 200 shekel gift card from work, we set out to two neighboring appliance stores in the hopes of finding a good deal on a high quality standing mixer. Both stores carried the model we wanted. Store A accepted BuyMe only and not the other card and sold it for 1,550, while Store B accepted both BuyMe and the other card and sold it for 1,650. While standing in the store, Fiona conducted some last minute Googling and discovered that the Store A’s website sold the same mixer for 1,450 and asked the salesperson if he’d meet that price. He happily obliged. We then went next door and asked if Store B would meet Store A’s online price. And they did, thereby enabling us to complete the whole purchase with fake money.
• We have a new reader in our family! It’s such an incredible journey watching your child advance from learning the (Hebrew) letters to sounding out words to reading whole books over the course of just a few months. Serious nachat.
• Our two year old is talking more and growing up so fast. He is so gosh darn cute. Hard to believe that he’ll be in “real” gan next year.

Conclusion

Thank you for joining us on this wild ride. Life is always full of ups and downs, especially when living with little kids. Adding the pursuit of financial independence into the mix makes it even more challenging, but not impossible. It’s a delicate balance between enjoying today while also planning for tomorrow. Look out for more updates in three months.

Hope 2023 is a great year with more happiness and successful opportunities for all of us.