I’m a 36 year old self-employed data consultant living in Europe.
My story begins in university, penniless and pretty clueless like just about everyone else.
However I thankfully had the sense/luck to pick a field that (1) I had an aptitude for and (2) had
strong career prospects (Computer Science & Economics). As such, I breezed through the next
four years and got excellent results. However I had little success with women and the number I
hooked up with for any length of time was only in the single digits. This actually didn’t bother
me as much as it probably would most guys because although there’s obvious pros to spending
time with girls (one in particular!), for me at least there’s plenty of cons too. For example, I’ve
never had much patience with the general irrationality and flakiness that almost every woman
seems to possess to some degree. That said, I guess I’ve never had much patience full stop!
I decided at graduation that I should define my top priority or Mission. This was easy as
my priority was definitely freedom, so it seemed clear that my Mission should be financial
independence. To me this meant enough assets that work was optional, with a provisional target
of becoming a millionaire. I also defined my secondary targets or goals, which in order of
importance were (1) stay in top physical shape by exercising (both aerobic and anaerobic) every
day, (2) hook up with attractive women and (3) travel to new countries as the opportunities arose.
Fortunately I could take my pick of jobs and joined a consulting firm. The starting salary
wasn’t huge but still gave me a decent amount to invest. I had some understanding of finance
from studying Economics and put what I could into stocks and bonds. I’d also learned about the
type of stocks that could do really well and successfully identified several of these, which really
helped towards my Mission.
As time progressed, because I was smart, productive and got along with colleagues even
though I didn’t particularly like some of them, promotions and salary increases followed
regularly. To accelerate the process, I moved to a technology company and then a boutique
hedge fund. By my late twenties, I was earning well over $100k and investing most of it.
Unfortunately as I lived in Europe, taxes also inevitably took a big chunk out of this, which over
time became a big issue for me.
After university, my success with women initially showed little improvement, mainly I
think because it simply wasn’t a high enough priority for me. Online, day and night game all
seemed to require a big initial time commitment for good results, which I didn’t think I had to
spare if I wanted to make my Mission a reality. It was then I began to realize the potential of
business events. As anyone who’s even reasonably successful in business will know,
opportunities to attend conferences, breakfast briefings, seminars, networking events etc. present
themselves every week, which can be great opportunities to meet women. This goes double if
they’ve travelled to attend as they often seem to lose the inhibitions they have on home territory.
In addition, these events are designed to allow attendees to meet so women are only too happy to
be approached and asked about themselves. Obviously this starts with their professional lives but
it’s usually easy to eventually get them talking about their personal background too. This is
especially the case when they’re approached by a man who’s made rapid progress in his career,
clearly knows the field very well and is also in excellent physical shape. I think of this strategy
as “business game”, which I’ve seen little or no discussion of online. Taking it to the next level
involves setting up a professional networking group and organizing events, which is actually
quite easy for anyone who’s an authority in their field.
Some time after the property bubble burst, I got the opportunity to buy an apartment in an
area with huge potential as there was lots of commercial development nearby. Because I had a
significant amount of assets by then, I was easily able to come up with a big deposit which meant
I got a very low interest rate with small repayments. I could in theory have just bought in cash
but thought I could easily get investing returns far higher than my repayment. As expected, the
value of this property has now gone up quite a bit.
By 32, I had almost $800k in net assets and realized that the passive income from this
alone was covering my living expenses. This basically meant that I no longer needed an active
income or in other words, I was financially independent. As a result, it was mission
accomplished, so time for a new Mission!
My experience and skills were based on developing software to analyze big datasets, so
my decision became which problem to apply these to if money was no object. There’s lots of
really cool domains to choose from but ultimately I decided the biggest impact could be made in
genetics. My Mission therefore became using my skills to analyze big genetic datasets and in
layman’s terms, attempt to decode DNA. As this is a highly technical field, I decided to do a
Ph.D. which normally takes four years but I finished in three.
During my twenties I’d been a full-time employee reporting to a boss but because of the
many cons, I finally set up my own company and switched to consulting. This has loads of
advantages including being my own boss, the flexibility to choose the work I do, when and
where (including remotely) I do it, a big reduction in income tax due and many tax-free expenses
including business travel. Contract rates here given my experience are about $600 per day.
My main client is now a company that analyses huge genetic datasets for commercial
gain, while I can also take additional contracts in other interesting domains as I choose. Since I
can set my own hours and am basically location independent, I’ve been looking into moving and
becoming tax resident in a country that’s a better fit for my preferred lifestyle and Malta seems
like it may be the best option for me. Among other advantages, it’s English-speaking with a
fantastic climate, a low tax rate (15% and only on remitted income) and close to Europe’s biggest
cities. I’m now looking into the logistics of living there for at least six months of the year, with
the freedom to travel as I please for the remainder.