Today I am financially independent, I run a cool little company (PopUp Business School) with a team of 12, changing the way entrepreneurship is taught globally and I spend my time travelling around the world working with some of the coolest people. Life wasn't always this way! At school I was the shyest kid you could meet, I struggled talking to strangers, I was paralysed by fear approaching girls, making phone calls or anything else. My family went from wealthy to £millions in debt and we had to do car boot sales (yard sales) at the weekend to raise the money to buy food. So what changed? This is what I want to share with you and it is going to be in 3 main parts: entrepreneurship, financial independence, and making dreams come true.

I’m writing from the position of having already achieved wealth and financial independence, and I want to help you get there too. My intention is not to re-hash the basics of the FIRE lifestyle or journey. I like to focus on the behaviors and lifestyle factors that drive money decisions.

I’m a family guy living in Colorado with my wife and two young children. I studied biology and chemistry in college, but somehow turned into a software developer. From as far back as I can remember, I liked to save and earn money. My goal was to build a portfolio of $1,000,000 by February of 2017; 1500 days from the birth of this blog (January 1, 2013). And hey look, I’ve since retired!

Hello and thanks for checking out my blog! First off, I go by the moniker "Cubert". Early Retirement, powered by Financial Independence, also known as “FIRE” — that’s the real premise of this blog. My career in technology has had its ups and downs, but for as long as I can remember, I’ve had a nagging itch to take on passion projects. Effectively, I just wanna be my own boss.

This is a blog about my journey towards financial independence/retiring early in Australia, with the aim of continuing to earn a high passive income after attaining FIRE. Many blogs in this sphere are focussed on financial independence through extreme savings and a fairly lean income at retirement, and are often directed towards those with a low to average income during working life. Those blogs are still great and that style of FIRE is completely valid! However my aim as a higher income earner is to try to attain financial independence while enjoying the journey there, as well as setting myself up for a very comfortable life after retiring from work – sometimes referred to as FatFIRE, though I prefer the healthier sounding term coined by Aussie HIFIRE. This blog therefore will be about my journey towards this goal – and the optimisation to my lifestyle that will still be necessary to achieve it!

I started Banker On FIRE to achieve the following three objectives: Give me a creative outlet from the pressures of my job as an investment banker. Explore, document and debate the various ways to build wealth and achieve financial independence. Help others make better decisions, grow their net worth and live their best life possible