Welcome to the first page of The Progression Playbook – a personal finance blog that aims to form a team of people who will progress towards financial independence.
Who am I and what are my motivations for this blog
I am Luke Girling, a qualified Accountant here in the UK and a long-term personal finance enthusiast. Feel free to look me up on the ICAEW registry of chartered Accountants here. Visit my ‘about’ page for more information on me and feel free to leave a comment below if you want to get to know me further.
My motivations for creating this site are:
- To assemble a group of people who share the goal of becoming financially independent in as shorter time frame as possible and working as a community to each achieve our financial goals.
- Use what I have learned to date to help people improve their financial literacy and enable them to live better financial lives.
- Document my own journey towards financial independence and share advice for those following a similar path.
- Improve my own understanding of certain topics by researching them in-depth and reporting back to the readers of this blog.
Who this blog is for
Everybody – the people who will benefit from it the most are those who have the desire to become financially independent and live a more fulfilling life but who are less clear on the practical steps to take to get there.
The blog will be written from a UK perspective but the majority of the posts will be applicable regardless of where you live.
The topics covered in The Progression Playbook.
1. Financial independence
This is the key theme of the blog. For me, financial independence is the point in life where you are no longer dependent on an employer or a particular type of work to cover your living costs. You can start living your life and spending your hours doing the things that you enjoy and take the greatest satisfaction from.
I’ll explain what financial independence is, why it’s my number 1 goal and why I think it should be yours too.
2. Personal finance
Here’s the uncomfortable part – to become financially independent, you have to know what you’re doing with money and this involves dedication, consistency and sacrifice.
The better news is, when your making these choices in the knowledge that it’s to fulfill your future ideal life and escape the tedious 9-5, 5 days a week for the rest of your life drudgery, it becomes an enjoyable challenge.
3. Career & Employment
Outside of the minority of us who are already entrepreneurs, most of us find ourselves in a job or formal career. Whilst we may like our jobs to varying degrees, I think most of us can agree that if we each had 5 million dropped into our bank accounts tomorrow morning, we wouldn’t be spending 40+ hours per week doing these things.
So whilst being in a full time career may not be the ultimate goal here, it’s without doubt a tool for us to use to get their faster.
4. Life skills
Becoming financially independent in a short period of time lends itself to people who develop certain traits and cultivate positive habits.
Developing some of the skills talked about on this website has two-fold benefits – firstly, it will help you achieve financial independence faster.
Let’s say as an example you work hard and use the guidance here to develop and master the trait of calmness under pressure. I’d guess the next few years would look something like this:
- Your employer starts to notice you are someone who can accept accountability for difficult tasks and begins to trust you more.
- After a while this new found level of responsibility is reflected in a higher pay grade and as a reader of The Progression Playbook, you’d recognize that this is a great opportunity to increase your surplus (cash in minus cash out).
- You invest the increased surplus smartly and the basic maths of financial independence does the rest for you.
Secondly, once you achieve financial independence, you now have a rock-solid foundation to make the most of your new found freedom and abundance of free time
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5. Tech skills
Pre financial independence, the three most important resources in our life are health, time and money.
Whilst improving your tech skills may not directly lead to more money, it will almost certainly lead to better performance in your current job, save you hours of time and give you a more confident platform to develop other sources of income.
I can point you in the direction of the tech tools and resources I plan to use during the search for financial independence.
6. Reviews and recommendations
Please take a look at my ‘TPP recommends‘ page for some resources which I think you should consider using.
I will be posting content which gives full in-depth reviews of these resources and others to help make sure we’re all reading the most important books, using the best investment platform and downloading the most helpful applications.
What this blog can and can’t do for you
This blog can…
- Help you understand both financial independence and all of the underlying financial literacy needed to achieve it.
- Lay out the steps I’m taking in my goal to be financially independent by age 35 and provide guidance for your journey.
- Make you question your currently held beliefs about money, your employment and your wider approach to life.
- Steer you onto the right path for a more secure financial future.
This blog cant…
- Make you rich quick (and you should avoid any website that tells you they can)
- Offer you individual, tailored financial guidance or investment advice.
- Please everybody – I have strong opinions on the fundamental topics of this blog that are created from years of research, discussion and tweaking. I’m open to changing opinions on any of the building blocks discussed on this site – but my commitment to the belief that becoming financially independent is the best route to life fulfilment will not change.
Final word
The Progression Playbook is a blog that is first and foremost about increasing your wealth. This, in my opinion, is the building block for creating the type of life that you want.
But, here’s the thing, nobody becomes financially independent by accident. So bookmark this blog, subscribe to new post alerts and let me assist you, play by play, on the route to financial independence.
This article has been written by Luke Girling, ACA – a qualified Accountant and personal finance enthusiast in the UK. Please visit my ‘About’ page for more information. To get in touch with questions or ideas for future posts, please comment below or contact me here.
