Obviously one of the upsides of being a teacher is summer break. The site needed to be upgraded via a migration, so hopefully all that has now been ironed out and set for a few more years! Having the time to migrate your website is nice (even if the actual migration was a bit irritating). We’re mainly trying to escape the heat by going swimming and booking the local badminton court. Neither of us had ever really played badminton before, but we’ve found we quite enjoy it. It’s super cheap too!

The markets have been rising the last week or so – could this be the beginning of the climb back to new highs? Perhaps. It’s interesting keeping an eye on the financial news sites – Marketwatch is a great example. The headlines are so clearly geared to generate emotional responses. Having a week of bearish doom and gloom followed by lead stories that say the absolute opposite show just how important it is to not be distracted and stay the course. All the froth about inflation in the U.S.A. has been interesting to watch in the news (along with the U.K. with regards to energy bills), but we have been quite fortunate to not really be so affected where we are in Asia.

We’ve been pretty hardcore settled on utilising stocks to fund our FIRE ambitions, but we recently considered how we might diversify into housing in a few years time. Running a few numbers and considering leverage as a way of generating returns was interesting. It’s not something we are going to rush into any time soon. I’m sure I’ll write a post about it at some point in the future.

I hope everyone is staying cool and enjoying the summer!