Welcome to a special bonus episode of the This Is Money podcast.

Not with me, Georgie Frost, but with editor Simon Lambert and Barney Weiter.

Following on from last week's episode about the fire movement, Financial Independence and Retiring Early,

our Simon went off to find out more. He spoke to Barney, who has done just that. He paid off

his mortgage at 32, built up an investment portfolio, and then quit his job in 2014 at the

age of 43, all whilst supporting a family with three kids. No lottery wins, inheritance or

illegal activity involved. Barney now helps others do the same in his blog, The Escape Artist.

Barney, welcome to the This Is Money podcast.

So I guess I kick off by asking, what does financial independence mean to you?

And are you financially independent?

Yeah.

So to me, financial independence is synonymous with financial freedom.

So to me, it's about freedom, it's about choices, and it's about having the option, whether to work,

and if you do choose to work, you know, what sort of work you do, what hours you do, what sort of

people you work with, etc. So to me, it's all about optionality. I'm financially independent. I used to

work as an accountant and I quit that in 2013. So I've been essentially financially independent for the last, whatever, eight years or so.

And have you continued to work in that time?

Yes, I, there's always a period, I call it the decompression period.

So after I quit, you know, there was a period I didn't want to do anything.

I just wanted to kind of chill, relax, you know, throw away the alarm clock, wake up naturally.

But after a while, you look for things to do.

And so, you know, since then I've been writing my blog, the escape artist.

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