About Kenneth Bonnici and Enough to Quit
Enough to Quit began with the question that mattered more to me than any savings target: not how much more I could accumulate, but whether I already had enough to stop. This is the story of the spreadsheet that answered it, the life I wanted it to buy back, and what does and does not qualify me to share it with you.
The hardest part was knowing I had enough
I retired in 2024, at 53. It was not a dramatic escape from work I hated. I genuinely enjoyed much of my career as a corporate executive and business consultant. But within six months of leaving, that world already felt distant and, if I am honest, a little artificial. Having my time back felt very real.
Money had always meant independence to me, not the new luxury car, the label on my clothes, or the villa with a pool. I wanted the freedom to decide what my days were for. Even so, when I was forty I used to say I would retire at fifty, and then drifted past it without ever properly checking whether I could. It is a strange admission for someone who spent a career telling other people to check their numbers.
In the year before I retired, I finally sat down with a spreadsheet and mapped my cash flow for the rest of my life, all the way to 95. Not a rule of thumb or a multiple of spending, but every year of income, pensions, assets, costs, cash and net worth. For the first time, I could see the whole shape of the life ahead and recognise that I had enough.
We spend years learning how to accumulate money. Almost nobody teaches us how to recognise the finish line. Every extra year spent working simply because you never checked has a cost no spreadsheet can give back.
I am not built to take someone else's word for something this consequential. I assumed a tool like that already existed, but everything I found either produced one big number and stopped, or asked for an email address and then produced one big number and stopped. Nothing showed me the year-by-year interaction between work, spending, pensions, property, investments and the unexpected. So I built the model I needed. That personal spreadsheet became the engine behind this website.
There is no secret formula behind my own retirement. Spending below my means, investing before upgrading my lifestyle, resisting purchases made for image, and building skills that increased my income all mattered. So did looking after my health, because freedom is worth far more when you are fit enough to enjoy it. ETQ cannot do those things for you, but it can show you what they may already have made possible.
I put ETQ online because I believe many people could retire earlier than they think, especially if they use their final five or ten working years deliberately. This is not a promise that everyone can retire at 53. It is a way to replace a vague fear with an honest projection, and perhaps discover that work can become optional sooner than you imagined.
Who built it
Thirty years in advisory, finance and operations, most of it at partner or executive committee level, a lot of it powered by financial modelling. This was in my job description as a senior manager in the 1990s, it was what the business valuation work rested on, and it is a large part of what my career was built on. ETQ started life as one more spreadsheet.
I began in senior management accounting and financial control, spent many years building a business advisory practice, latterly as a partner, then served as a chief financial officer and board director in a regulated financial business, and finally held chief financial officer and executive committee roles at an international group. The work ran across corporate finance, business valuation, investment appraisal, funding rounds and performance measurement, with a long run of interim CFO mandates along the way. The common thread never changed: turning a messy real-world situation into a model you could actually interrogate.
I am a chartered management accountant by training, with postgraduate qualifications in business and management. None of that is really the point of this page, though. What matters is the section that follows.
What that does not make me
I am not a financial adviser, and ETQ is not advice. CIMA is a management accounting qualification. It is not a licence to advise anyone on their personal finances, and I do not hold one. ETQ is not authorised or regulated as a financial adviser, investment firm, pension adviser or insurer in any jurisdiction.
What I can reasonably claim is narrower and, I think, more useful: I know how to build a financial model, and I know what a model can and cannot tell you. ETQ shows you its working, so you can check it rather than take it on faith. That is not a promise that it is right. It does not know your circumstances, it does not account for tax, and it cannot tell you what to do. It comes with no warranty of any kind. Before acting on anything it shows you, speak to someone qualified to advise you.
Having retired early myself is experience, not authority. It means I have had to live with my own numbers, which I think is worth something. It does not mean my assumptions will suit you. That is why the methodology page sets out every default the model applies and every thing it does not do, so you can disagree with it precisely.
How ETQ is paid for
It is not. There is no charge, no subscription, no advertising, no affiliate links and no sponsored placements. The books and tools I recommend are listed without affiliate links, deliberately, so that a recommendation cannot be confused with a commission.
There is also no account and no data collection. The calculator runs entirely in your browser and the figures you enter are never sent anywhere. I do not have them and I could not sell them if I wanted to. See the privacy notice for the detail.
I built this for myself and put it online because it seemed useless not to. That is the whole business model.
Away from the spreadsheet
I live by the sea in Malta. Most of my time now goes on wind sports, mainly kitesurfing and wing foiling, on running and trekking, on mentoring business owners and younger professionals, and on volunteering at a local residential home, where I help out with cooking activities for residents. I have a rescue dog called Reggie, who has more emotional intelligence than a number of executives I have worked with, and who is unimpressed by all of this.
Get in touch
Corrections, disagreements about the model, and reports of things that look wrong are all genuinely welcome. The contact address is on the disclaimer page.
Educational information only, not financial advice. ETQ produces illustrative model output that is sensitive to your inputs and the tool's default assumptions. Speak to a qualified professional before acting on a projection.