In January 2017 Jay started up a new blog called The Matrix Experiment. Here’s his introduction to what it was all about. You’ll also find all the posts from this blog in the Financial Freedom section of this blog.

This is a blog about leaving the corporate world behind. It’s about taking control of your life. It’s about shifting to a simpler life and achieving financial freedom as a result.

The Matrix Experiment is written by Jason, one half of a UK-based couple who made themselves financially free at age 43. It’s written by and for normal people, who live in the real world. Neither of us are business gurus and we’re not much of an entrepreneurial pair. This held us back for years, as we struggled to think of a genius business idea which never came.

Why the name ‘The Matrix Experiment’? Let me tell you a quick story to explain. Just before I quit work around 15 months ago, I had a brief conversation with a work colleague in the office. This colleague didn’t know anything about how my wife and I were gearing up our financial freedom plans. When I told him I was leaving work to travel for a few months, his jaw dropped. “A few months? seriously?” He was shocked I could call a halt to work for months on end without the bills piling up. I didn’t dare tell him I need never work again, and maybe I had 40 years ahead of me ‘off work’, not just a few months.

“The Matrix Experiment” refers to the 1999 science fiction classic film, The Matrix. In the film the human race lives in a dream world created for them by computers and machines which have taken over the planet. No-one knows it, but their eyes never see real light, they remain closed throughout their lives with the computers feeding imagery direct into the brain as their bodies lie in stasis in a feeding fluid. In the real world, the one which we inhabit, I feel as though I’ve stepped outside one such matrix. My colleague was blind to the possibility of having unlimited free time, of not needing to swap his time for money, he was inside another kind of matrix: one in which he could perceive no option but to keep slaving away for his salary.

By altering our mindset around money, the size of the space we needed to live and the things we needed to own to have a great life, my wife and I stepped outside of the matrix. We’re now free. For the past 15 months we’ve been travelling Europe, from winter high in the French Alps down as far as the Croatian Adriatic and high as far as Nordkapp, the northern tip of mainland Norway, well inside the Arctic (it’s all here: ourtour.co.uk).

Few people we know have done a similar thing 12 years before even their private pensions start to become available at age 55, and we’ve therefore few role models to compare our lives to. We’re living in the unknown to a great extent, working out the practical and emotional aspects of our new lives as we go along, so we think of what we’re doing as an experiment. We don’t see any aspect of our lives as fixed, and we’re committed to making changes over the years as the experiment continues.

The purpose of this financial freedom blog will be to:

1. Share what real-world experience we have of making ourselves financially free.
2. Build our own knowledge of financial freedom from like-minded individuals.
3. Generate an income, as an unashamed side-hustle, and to demonstrate how you can do the same.

The blog will gradually grow over time as I get time to add more material. As well as writing my own content, I’ll point you in the direction of blogs, videos, books and other resources which helped me along the way, and which continue to guide us.