Week one recap

The grid is clear; the tyres are warmed; the lights are out; and we're off!

Week one of our quest to find financial independence and drop out of the rat race was all about getting set and understanding the lay of the land. We've

• Started this blog;
• Worked out the targets we need to hit to make this work;
• Brainstormed a few ideas of where we might focus our efforts;
• Reviewed our domain portfolio to see if there are any untapped goldmines awaiting some development;
• Pored over our spending to make sure we have everything accounted for.

We've learned (or re-learned) a few things this week too.

Blogging can be fun, but it's surprising how much you get sidetracked with the little things. This blog is setup as a completely static site (cheaper to run; faster; more resilient; exercise in technical understanding), which adds a little complexity early on in terms of how we do templates, how categories search is handled, etc. We expect this approach to form a cost-effective backbone to our domain portfolio, so spending a ltitle time upfront isn't a major issue, but making sure you stay focussed on the content and not the colour of the little badge icon in the 3rd paragraph is as hard as I remember (OK, that may just be a me thing...). We'll do a little bit of a walkthrough once we're a couple of weeks into the programme in case anyone's interested.

We earn a lot, but spend way more than we should be; and little costs soon add up to big drains on your finances. Not something we'll be losing too much sleep over - this exercise is about increasing earning potential to secure a simpler future, not saving our way to retirement - but nevertheless, surprising how innocuous little habits here and there can put a dent in even the larger salaries.

We've acquired a lot of domains over the years, which have all served a purpose along the way. We'll be picking this off one at a time to see if we can turn any of them into a regularl money-earner, so it'll be nice to see if they can not only serve their initial purpose, but provide a bit of financial independence as we develop them further.

Ideas aren't hard to come by - time to execute is. In little over 20 minutes, we braindumped a bunch of ideas, all of which are both exciting and with potential; and all of which could take months and years of work to develop in order to get some kind of traction. We'll need to be both diligent in our time management (lol, not a strong point), and ruthless in our pursuit of our goals to make sure we don't get sidetracked in some technical meandering if that 199 day target is going to be achieved.

So what next?

Next week, we're hoping to achieve a few things:

• We're aiming to put together at least three new blog posts - this seems to be the accepted widom as to where the sweet spot lies for good content sites. Let's see if it holds true (and we can find the time and subject matter to manage it);
• We should be able to start the first of our domain renovation projects;
• We'll strawman out the plan for the non-fiction book we have in the old grey matter;
• We'll probably look into some research around an app or plugin build to see what makes sense to spend some time on here, and what the potential cost/benefit might be.
• We're ploughing ahead with a large house extension (yeah, I know, save money; achieve financial independence; throw £100k at a building project - spot the odd one out). Nevertheless, methinks there's an opportunity and we'll be blogging the crap out of the project in the hope that there's affiliate income, or adsense revenue, or just free stuff in it when people read about the inevitable trials and tribulations such a mammoth project brings;
• And of course, we'll be responding to the thousands of comments, questions, requests for interviews, sponsorship and 'instagram influencer' gigs that come about from all the hard work we've put in so far.

Join us soon, for the next thrilling episode of... Financial Freedom in 199 Easy Steps. Brought to you by the letter X, the number 199, and the wonders of pipe cleaners and sticky-back plastic.