Reset: How To Restart Your Life and Get F.U. Money: The Unconventional Early Retirement Plan for Midlife Careerists Who Want to Be Happy

I had been reading some FIRE blogs and saw this book reviewed on another site. It was good timing as I had been seeking some reading that would be a good jumping off point for formulating my own next steps in terms of finances, living, career, etc.This definitely fit the bill. I loved the author's conversational tone and accessible approach, which was highly relatable and also made for enjoyable evening reading. This is not a boring personal finance book - nor does it require any advanced knowledge or being of a certain net worth or station in life. The messages and advice are highly universal. David injects helpful wit and self-deprecating humor to topics that likely cause a lot of folks to want to bury their heads in the sand. I actually requested that my husband read this book (as opposed to others on related topics) so we could get on the same page for that very reason.Cons: if you're farther along on your FI journey, this is probably not the book for you. You've likely thought through a lot of the concepts and will want more specialized, tactical advice. Also, with the more tactical recommendations in the book, some of the nitty gritty is more specific to overseas audiences (given the writer is based in the U.K.), though he does a good job of specifying when that is the case.

This book covers a lot of ground for mid-career professionals, everything from keeping up with the latest skills to future-proof the back end of your career, to getting on the path to financial independence, and most importantly why are you doing all this in the first place--what really matters! The author shows you a really clear game plan and much of the writing is very direct and specific, which forces you to really think about your particular situation based on his questions/examples. I found the first-person style (lessons learned) authentic and engaging. Some of the financial info and advice is UK-specific, but most of it translates regardless of location. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who isn't 100% sure of their current career journey.

I'm well on my way to my FIRE number and heard the ChooseFI podcast with David. Brad singing the praises of the book as one of the best, if not the best, he's read on the topic sold it for me. I'm 67% through the book according to goodreads and have to say that this a fantastic synthesis of the recent wellness themes with a healthy helping of FI. He covers minimalism, mindfulness, with a good baselayer of FI to really help someone a little further along reset their mindset and their life. Well done.

Really enjoyed this book. That said, I'm probably exactly the target demographic. 47 years old. A little unsure of my future. Not completely satisfied. The stories are inspirational and the advice rock solid. Already working on incorporating some of these ideas into my life. Also, while I've been working on financial independence for years, finally realized all the ways I've been shooting myself in the foot. Worth it for that reason alone!

Great book for every person looking to get financially independent. The book is very detailed and well documented.The part with DO’S / DON’TS was great

Amazing insights especially discussion against the popularistic views on happiness and fulfillment.

As a career public relations man, it’s been David Sawyer's job to create copy, spin things in a company’s favor, and craft a positive image for his clients in this digital age.He describes RESET as his creed, the culmination of six years of self-discovery that led him down one rabbit hole after another, the most influential being the US-based financial independence blogosphere.He’s a Scotsman, a scary-fast marathoner (2:40), and a father of two boys that happen to be the same age as mine. At 45, he’s a ways away from financial independence, but he knows what it will take to get there, and he and his family are making strides to make it happen within about 10 to 15 years.He took the better part of a year off to write his manifesto, and I’m glad he did. It’s clear he did his research and homework; he lists about 10 books just on writing that he consumed as part of this quest. He read hundreds more on personal finance.In the testimonials, William Danko, co-author of The Millionaire Next Door, sings the praises of the text. Now, you’ve got my attention.The book is a bit eclectic. At times, I felt I was half-heartedly laughing so as to seem I was in on the inside joke even though I didn’t quite get it. Think Tim Ferriss meets Mr. Money Mustache meets Groundskeeper Willie and they all pay Marie Kondo a visit. That’ll happen when you explore all the rabbit holes.I did laugh full-heartedly a number of other times, and Mr. Sawyer did a great job of bringing together many philosophies to synthesize his own take on financial freedom and how it can be achieved. This book is ideal for someone living in the U.K. as there is some specific investing talk pertinent to that part of the world, but 90% of his story and recommendations could apply to anyone.

My wife and I hit FI aged 43, three years ago. I keep an eye on the FIRE community from time to time in order to keep building my knowledge around FI, and came across this book via Barney's blog, theescapeartist.me.There's a lot to like about this book. For starters, David's targeting of 'mid life professionals' makes a lot of sense to me, as IMHO this is the demographic far more able to achieve FI through relatively simple life changes. His leaning towards motivational topics makes a lot of sense too - the financial tenets of FI are straightforward enough (earn as much as you can, avoid spending all of your income, build an emergency fund then invest as much of your savings as you can, eventually income from investments pays for your relatively low financial needs) and the real difficulty is the change in mindset needed to enable these changes.As per almost all of the FIRE community he focuses almost entirely on the use of equities and bonds as investment choices, writing off the idea of renting out property in a couple of short paragraphs. Since our personal FI journey has been largely driven by letting out houses we used to live in, this is a shame. The suggestion that property isn't passive income is fair, but we've used full-service management agents for many years, and have been able to travel full time abroad while they took care of finding and vetting tenants, rent collection, checking the houses, holding deposits, making repairs, arranging gas inspections, everything. While if we were starting from scratch now we'd go down the index tracker (shares) fund route David suggests, renting out property is well worth investigating more outside of this book, if only to ponder a wider asset diversification.One area David couldn't comment on is what happens post FI, as he's not hit that point yet. My hope is he'll update this book over time as he gets closer to the 'trigger point'. Getting to financial independence has been a great thing for us. It has enabled the many freedoms David discusses. But it's important to understand it's not a panacea. Removing the need for work for money also removes the character-reinforcing struggle David talks about, which needs replacing with something else, or (in my case) anxiety takes over. Having a million hours on your hands can also lead to a downward spiral unless the time's channeled into positive action, and after decades of commuting/office work, the imagination has been somewhat dulled for me, and needed re-igniting. If you're on the path to FI, start planning early what you're going to do if/when you pull the trigger and quit work. And once you've planned, plan for what you'll do after that. We planned to travel but after 4 years full time on the road, that eventually became stale, and we've still got (maybe) 30 years of 'retirement' to go.All in all, I really enjoyed David's book - like reading one a (much) better version of me would have written (that said, I've since written 'The Non-Trepreneurs')! We thought about what would make us happy, we minimalised, we downsized, we reduced consumerism, we evaluated and pondered every purchase, we tracked our spending (notepad and spreadsheets for us), we drove less and walked or ran more, we read about and tackled fears, we researched investments and invested. All good stuff, and of course it works. If you go down this path, you might spend your life pondering while so few actually do it.Cheers, Jay

After reading a quarter through this book I got bored of constantly reading the word careerist. This book is written for the midlife 70 to 100 thousand a year type who are looking to quit their jobs. It isn’t written for the majority of people. It’s a plan that includes getting yourself online ready and promoting yourself to would be employers not for people who are looking for a alternative route through an ordinary life. It’s tips are focused towards the professionals and it seems to be so focused it is almost exclusive written for the author himself. Useless for me and will be dropped off at the charity shop at the earliest opportunity

Are you a middle aged, middle class high earner with no retirement plan or clue generally about how to run your life? Then this book has collated the information you need. Essentially, get on LinkedIn, konmari your 4 bedroom house, and start shopping at Lidl so you can free up a grand of disposable income a month and start investing it. The UK investment guide is quite detailed so if you do have that spare cash lying around this may be of use to you.Personally I found this book a bit frustrating as I am already quite frugal (and don't earn that much), and a lot of it was just recommending other people's books or techniques rather than explaining how to do or apply anything directly. There are also many lists, 11 tips for this, 25 steps to that, that read like a cobbled together series of blog posts and become overwhelming when read all at once. And by the way, if you do decide to look up the konmari method of decluttering and organising, ignore the author's suggestion to skip rolling your socks - being able to instantly find the right type of socks while avoiding saggy ankles will make your life 1% better.

As a mid forties midlifer (I hope) who never made any plans, never looked beyond the next pay cheque and certainly never troubled himself investing in anything so boring as a pension, I woke up from a latte-induced coma recently and found myself staring down the sawn-off double barrels of an impoverished old age where I will be forced to work in an industry I hate with people I loathe until the day I die.Something better change I thought, I need to find a purpose, I need to find some meaning that gives me some hope that things might be different. So I started scrabbling around for inspiration, dabbling in self development, poring over the mind body and soul section in bookshops, looking for the answer, but with thousands and thousands of titles out there to choose from it's difficult to know where to start.Then I was sent a link to download a copy of a book by this bloke who's stood in the very same shoes as me.RESET is a godsend for anyone who finds themselves in our situation, because Dave has done all the reading for us and created a step by step guide for resetting our lives and reaching financial independence. Easy to read, I blasted through it in one sitting, his prose skips along at a fair lick: two parts motivational guru, one part knowing Northern curmudgeon. And whilst I might not decide to retrace every step of Dave's journey, I'll certainly be stocking up on index cards and dipping in and out to make some long overdue changes. Who knows, by the time I reach my sixties I may be able to finally say F.U. after all.

Key audience - are you a single earner on ~£40K, or a couple/family on ~£60k who don't enjoy your salaried job and don't know where your money goes (and probably in your 40s/50s) then this could be a great book for you. If you are paid much less, or are rolling in it then you are unlikely to find much of interest.The book is basically a more UK specific approach to FIRE (Financial independence retire early) .The book provides a good summary of many self-help texts (mindfulness etc.), decluttering, self-promotion but the core is careful budgeting and rational investing. The author clearly identifies the various sources for his ideas (with copious references) but attempts to pull it all together in a single volume.So why only 2 stars- I think the book covers too much ground and fundamentally is the authors own personal story and outlook on life, I suspect many readers won't consider many of the authors suggestions/lists/rules as applicable to their situation. Arguably as the author has gone self employed and enjoys his job, some of the advice seems a bit debatable.- I think concentrating on the core of careful budgeting to identify surplus income to invest passively in stocks and shares is the key point and it gets lost amid all the other areas (or takes a long time until getting to the specific point of the book). Their could be a link between de-cluttering and identifying how much money you can waste on buying stuff to help with tight budgeting - but as the author is prepared to ignore the decluttering rules (for books) - so you get the impression this isn't a well grounded set of clear consistent rules- the budgeting stuff is pretty much covered by Martin Lewis and his money saving expert website (and his earl;y book on the money diet) but effectively is shop around for all utilities, insurances, switch to budget supermarkets (and the author is very keen on Home Bargains) and only buy stuff/experiences if you really need to. This allows you to both create a frugal budget and stick to it - for what it's worth, in my experience once you start shopping carefully you can ignore the budget after a few years- the budget then should free up cash to invest in either an ISA or SIPP (pension) in investment funds. This pot will grow (& compound) until you have a 'stash' and can retire early. You need to invest in passive tracker funds with a low cost provider. Very specific advice is provided for which ISA/SIPP provider to use and the funds to invest in. You can work out how big a stash you need based on a realistic safe withdrawal rate.Specific issues with the advice- the suggestion to not prioritize clearing your mortgage (even considering interest only) is probably incorrect, I doubt it is realistic to stop work, live off your stash whilst still paying a mortgage. More specifically many lenders won't accept non-guaranteed investment income when you apply for a re-mortgage.- the chosen ISA/SIPP providers use % based charging, once your stash is large (£100k+) I think Fidelity would end up being an expensive provider, and going with a fixed-fee model would be better- the suggestion to consider transferring final salary pensions is very dubious based on the audience for this book (& level of investing expertise) - given the majority of the book audience won't have final salary pensions it would probably be better to remove it- as the majority of the book audience will have some death in service benefit in addition to their defined contribution pension, this combined with a reasonable stash, means you probably don't need to pay for any extra term life insurance (well before achieving FIRE).Finally- the author is pre-retirement and doesn't actually provide any advice on living off the stash (other than a suggestion to move to a 80% equity, 20% bond mix). In particular how to extract income from the ISA/SIPP- other books cover this but its bit of a gap- it may actually be difficult to modify the mindset from the frugality of building up the stash to enjoying it. It may even be better to be less frugal when you are younger (in better health), just consider the impact of COVID-19 on travel plans.So worth a read, if applicable to your circumstances then it may well be useful.