I’ve read this book twice….which probably tells you how good I think this book is.
David Sawyer’s RESET is one of the few books specifically written to target the UK FIRE market and it’s just as good if not better than many of the American classics.
First a word of caution – don’t let the sub-title “The Unconventional Early Retirement Plan for Midlife Careerists Who Want to Be Happy” put you off this book is a great read for everyone.
This books takes you through a step by step way to get your finances and your life in order and follows a logical progression
- Define your values
- Future proofing your career
- Decluttering your life
- Getting your financial stash
The section on defining your values is great it allows you to conceptualise what’s important to you and the philosophy underlying why you want to FIRE and get your FU money.
The second section on future proofing your career and “going digital” is my least favourite section of the book. It’s designed to help tech reluctant midlife professionals digitise their work life in order to open up more opportunities – LinkedIn and the like. If getting your profiles and streamlining your online work is appealing it’s great if you’re already up on digital then it’s not particularly useful.
The third section was brilliant it’s basically a condensed and slightly less extreme version of Marie Kwondo’s philosophies applied to the Restart/FIRE lifestyle. This is also combined with digital decluttering which is great.
The fourth section is the meatiest and it’s the best simple explanation and roadmap for getting enough money to FIRE. It’s written perfectly for a UK audience and discusses all the key index fund options that will work for 90%+ of all UK investors.
The reality is though that this book is better than just the headlines I can quickly give here, it is full of easily achievable and high impact tips on getting your financial life organised, getting your FIRE plans really laid out and actually making them happen.
My only real criticisms are more what it left out rather than what it does cover – it offers a fantastic approach to FIRE for midlife professionals but whilst the principles apply to everyone it would have been great to cover some other investment strategies like buy to let. It is laser focused on index funds which is great but it may exclude some readers looking for ways to FIRE earlier or get their FU money right now. Overall though I really recommend that everyone reads this book in the UK as the book is fantastic at covering the differences in asset allocations for the UK markets compared to the US.
I’ll probably read this a third time soon, or get the audiobook.
The Kindle addition is only £2.95 at the moment so it’s a no brainer for me. Highly recommended. You can grab it here.