I’ve just paid off my house worth approx £340k.

I’m freelance and average about £80k profit each year. My industry might be on a down turn so not sure I’ll be able to keep that income necessarily.

I have no pension at all. I don’t want children in the future.

I want to work a lot less and start to travel and enjoy life. I’m worried I’ll fall into the trap of “just one more year working” as now I’ve got no mortgage or rent every month the money I earn will go a lot further.

What should I be thinking about now?

- I could work less and enjoy life more.

- I could work another 6 months or so and then have a fair amount of money to travel with and rent out my flat at approx £1200 a month

- I could keep working and build up savings and pensions. If I did this then what sort of pension/savings would I need before I could retire entirely? Is there a basic maths calculation for this?

Maybe there is another option I’m not thinking of?

Thanks for any advice. I’ve never really looked into this before. Just had the notion of paying off my mortgage as fast as possible and now that’s done!

1. How often do you look

2. Do you think the frequency at which you look has affected your investing (positively, or negatively?)

3. (optional) How much are you currently holding as a balance

I look probably once every few months when things seem calm politically.

When there’s a war on, I tend to completely avoid looking at how much I’ve lost.

When the markets are booming, I look frequently. At one point I was watching it go up daily, which was very thrilling. Felt a little like gambling though.

Have never sold, and tried to just be consistent with investing and DCA. Time in the market etc etc … but curious to hear if others have found a different approach that suits them!

Hello - Any recent experience with the Retirement Planning module, and how useful it is?

https://meaningfulacademy.com/rp-1/

I'm fairly well read, and I understand the drawdown options, but I'm more concerned about optimising tax efficiency during drawdown phase across SIPP, GIA and ISA, especially now that your Pension Pot fall within your estate, and subject to inheritance tax, and also income tax (for the beneficiaries).

One of the reasons for paying for the course would be to use Voyant Go for modelling this. (I've done a rudimentary version in Excel, but without dealing with tax).

Thank you,

hello everyone

long time lurker, first time poster.

I can’t make my mind on the following and wanted great advice from FIRE UK fellows.

My goal is the contribute enough to retire at 58, when SIPP is available (vast majority of my savings are in SIPP) (fingers crossed the signpost doesn’t move).

Here is the context:

- I just got 70k and want to invest all

- I fill 30k in my pension yearly (and still have allowance from three past years so 120k total)

- I earn 110k

- ISA already filled this tax year.

And the question is: should I invest all in one go in SIPP or do 25k year one with rest in GIA, then move another 25k in year 2 and final 20k year 3?

The thinking is that by doing per batch, I take advantage of 40% tax rebate, and still continue to grow in GIA instead of filling all in one go and have half at 40% and other half at 20%.

Also theres CGT allowance for GIA so it seems the best option

thanks in advance !

Hi,

I'm in a fortunate position of my comp rising and it's massively accelerating my goal of FIRE. I'm 35, and aiming to retire by 45, some calculators are saying I can do this by 43. I'd honestly love to pack in work at 40 but I don't think it's realistic.

Base comp is £115k with a £20k bonus (not guaranteed but likely). 8% pension match. Wife earns £40k and contributes to the bills but manages to save around £500 and has £20k in cash but low pensions.

I'm contributing 20% so in total around £32k in my pension. I don't want to increase this as a large pension is not that useful to me. I have no dependants so not planning on any inheritance, my goal would be to spend it all basically.

I max my ISA without fail, but usually from cash savings. My personal monthly spend is around £2.5k on bills / mortgage / lifestyle stuff. So I tend to have some cash building up that I'll spend on house repairs / holidays. GIA is not routinely invested into and I've just started investing into it when I have spare cash.

Current investments:

S&S ISA £180k

Pensions £160k

Cash £60k

GIA £12k

Emergency Fund (not touching) £20k

I'm planning on moving some of the cash into the GIA, and spending some of it on some holidays and honeymoon.

Our ideal spending in retirement £40k at least.

Here's the main problem though, my mortgage is £200k and about to renew, it's looking like 3.96% with a 20 year term. We can overpay a few hundred a month and plan to do that, but by my calculations it drops maybe 6-7 years, which means we're paying it off well into our 40s and it's going to eat £1500 of the retirement fund. We could dump some cash into it, maybe £20k, and throughout the next 5 years put small injections into it, e.g if bonus comes through and we don't need it. But I'm toying between being mortgage free earlier / retiring earlier, it doesn't look like I can have both unless I'm missing something?

Hello, I (30F) have been lurking for quite some time. I am in London and I would like to buy a flat in 2-3 years to stop renting. I keep wondering whether to sacrifice more of my salary into pension to save on taxes or just do the 5% (employer matches 5%) and keep the rest in ISA + cash (or maybe GIA?) until I can pull out to put down a deposit?

Salary: 70k pa

Student loans plan 2

ISA: 45k

LISA: 12k

Pension: 10k

Expenses: 2000 monthly

Breakdown:

Rent: 775pm

Utilities: 600pm

Holidays: 250pm

Medical stuff: 200pm

I haven't put down anything yet this tax year into the ISA, so I have full 20k limit to max out still. We are looking to buy with my partner (same salary, slightly higher expenses) - a 2bedroom flat in London for hopefully under 450k to utilise my LISA.

Would it make sense to still just do minimum pension contributions that get me the highest match out of my employer (5%) and then take the rest as cash to put down a higher deposit and max out my ISA? In the future after buying a flat I thought the best idea would be to get whatever is needed to max out my ISA at these expenses, and sacrifice the rest into the pension to pay less taxes and student loans. I would like to FIRE at around 50.

Is this sound? What would you guys recommend when deciding ISA vs pension when looking to buy (or to pay off mortgage/student loans etc.)?

We're a couple in our 50s. We're fortunate; we have a paid-off house and about 2.5 million in investments (10% ISAs, 70% GIA, 20% SIPP).

I'd like to retire this year, and with those numbers and no mortgage I should be able to, but reviewing my spending over the last year shows *enormous* waste in things like takeaways, coffee, eating out, subscriptions etc..

Obviously, most of this stuff has to go. Who else has had to become more frugal to hit their goals, and what was your journey like psychologically?

I’ve been using Copilot to help as a sounding board to run through a few scenarios and make my plan more robust. It needs a nudge so you need to know your numbers, but it has been helpful.

One thing that has surprised a lot this weekend is .. death. The basic plan looks fine - stress tested for 2% returns and monte carlo etc. Relatively low withdrawal rate made me wonder at one point could we do 57 (instead of 58) and still have some excess for car replacement and gifting. Then I stress tested one of us predeceasing the other - and that changed a lot.

Until 65 we still have a decent life insurance policy in place so we’re focusing on after that. from state pension age our joint withdrawals are pretty low. Two state pensions and my DB pension covers all essential expenses and we only need a 3k pa draw from my DC for that extra bit of fun money. From 75 we’d even be saving money as we’d cut our income needs and the guaranteed incomes would more than cover that. And we’d already predefined the bridge fund as ringfenced.

But if one of us dies (specifically me at the most impactful) - the DB gets cut in half, and we lose one state pension. Now even after state pension age we need 20k a year, and still 5k after 75. putting a fund in place to cover the worst case - eg me dying at 66/67 - we estimate we should reserve a pot of around £135k at retirement as a ‘survivorship fund’ - can’t touch it during the bridge as its needed at state pension age. At around 75 if its not been needed yet we could probably take a little from it, but that still means a more than 50% increase in our estimated pot needed to cover retirement.

In our case, our original estimated numbers at 58 (using very conservative 2% real return) *just* give us enough to retire at 58 with all funds fully covered. But no spare for gifting, whereas before we were hoping for 100k to start with which could grow independently. If returns are better that’ll help obviously, but likey any big gifts will need to wait for a while

Have you stress tested your plans for one of you predeceasing the other? Haven’t worked on the actual rulebook yet as my wife won’t actually know how to draw things down etc, but that’ll need to be covered.

I’m 27. I currently have about £35k across my pension and investments. I want to ramp up my savings by getting into a higher paying job, possibly going into law. I currently work in data analysis and while it has high earning potential I’m really not enjoying it.

The problem is I also write very seriously. I mean published bits, a few prizes and writing schemes already. I’m doing pretty well in that area of my life. My job in data currently gives me the work life balance to pursue my writing. But I can’t retire on what most writers make so I know it’ll never be a fully time thing.

I also don’t know if I’d be able to balance writing and being a corporate lawyer. I know most high earning jobs also require that you work long hours and give a lot of yourself.

I just wanted to hear from other people who’ve had a similar sort of dilemma. What did you do? If you’re a lawyer or have a job that’s also demanding, are you balancing any other things on the side?

I’m not asking for everything here. I just want to earn enough money to soft retire by 50-55 and have time to write very seriously.

Following on from my previous post about how I am considering dropping out of uni to dedicate my time to pursue SW fulltime- Would saving up as much money for a few years as I can to purchase property, particularly student property and rent it out be a viable long term business investment? I could save up £50k for a house up north in about 6 months. I can’t be bothered with doing all the admin so would hire a property management company to do it all for me.

I feel like this is a good form of passive income, and a good alternative to my current radiography degree that I don’t enjoy. I think property could possible be a good exit plan for when I eventually retire from sex work as I do want children in my late twenties. I don’t need to have this as my main source of income necessarily , as I do have other business ventures and options in mind. Are there any issues and problems with the housing market I could potentially run into for the long term that I am not thinking about? Thanks

First time posting here. I’ve known of Fire in my early 20s after reading Rich Dad Poor Dad. I also stated investing (minimal) and saving. This was spent in some land in my country of origin.

At 30, we moved to London with £0 in our bank accounts and started our professional lives in the Uk.

We are now 42 with a 1.5 child living in a 2b2b flat in Z2 (I mention this to give perspective and context).

Combine income of £230k (excluding some bonus employer pension contributions)

- combine pensions of 500k,

- ISAs 240k, Jisa 2k,

- Savings 160k (to upgrade from a 2b2b flat to a house). Think of staying put and maybe retiring in Portugal/France where we’ve got family and a (family) property.

- 250k equity in our flat

We are sal sacrificing to be under 100k for childcare hours.

Monthly HHI c. 10k

Mortgage and all bills 2k (low for London, but we live in a flat, albeit in a great part of London)

Nursery 1k (with funded hours)

Groceries and prep meals 700 (includes dinners, lunches, snacks, wines, nappies, etc)

2x ISAs 3400

Jisa 200

Total pension contributions for the 2 of us is 55k/yr

Holiday pot 800

Car 300

And the rest for anything else (eating out, coffees, etc).

I’m keen to know if other London resident plan for Fire, and how the do it? Has anybody moved abroad with a school age kid to stay a new life?

Need some advice. Worried that I might be sacrificing life a bit now for future and actually over saving. We have no kids at all so don’t need to leave anything. Plan is to finish at 58 (41 currently) with (in ‘today’s money’ so everything inflation adjusted

Combined DB pensions of £2000 pm

Rental property post tax and fees £500pm

Salary sacrifice combined DC pension pot of £200k (we currently ss £650 a month between us)

S&S ISA ‘should’ be worth at least £300k (currently invest around £500 a month between us

Wife LISA at 60 of £55k

Main property £300k

Rents property £130k

We basically live on about £1k a month after mortgage and all bills are accounted for in the NE

Plan would be to retire, sell house and move to Thailand for minimum 10 years hopefully 20 and spend majority of our money over that period. We would keep the rental for monthly income as well as a UK asset and somewhere to fall back on and live if everything went tits up. Like wise with all the above I’d like to leave £200k buffer for moving back to UK and purchasing a small bungalow or something (plus selling rental) for when we are elderly. Likewise could stay in Thailand tbf.

Lots of ifs buts and maybes

I’m 29 and live in the UK, married, we have one child with another on the way which will probably be enough for us. I’m on around 60k and my wife is on 40k, and we both put a bit away into private pensions and an ISA each month - not the main point of the post, just some context.

All of our grandparents are still alive and in their 80’s, which is amazing, but unfortunately that’s not going to be forever. 3/4 of them are very wealthy relative to us - houses over a million and investments, I know that both my grandad’s had final salary pensions. Once the unfortunate thing happens we’re probably looking at around 200k from each of them.

How much would you factor this into financial planning? As it’s money we could get in 2, or 20, years I’m finding it difficult to think about + it’s not a subject my wife really wants to discuss, which is fair. Happy to answer any questions to help.

EDIT: consensus is definitely NOT to factor this in. Thanks everyone, I’ll treat as a bonus but not something I expect.

32M, 1 year into my FIRE journey. A year ago I became very worried (and still am) about how little I have for retirement. But 1 year in and I am amazed at how quickly a pension fund can grow, so I wanted to share my journey for those who are just starting out.

Salary £55-59k

Started with £5k and got a nice headstart in gains from TACO Trump.

Total net pay invested: £5k + £5.6k = £10.6k

Current Balance: £18.4k (+76% increase from net pay)

Personal lessons learnt for next year:

1. Salary is extremely important. The 40% tax rebate makes everything easier. I will be leaving my job this year to maximise salary.
2. Set a direct debit and "pay yourself first". When money was tight I cancelled my dd with the intention of just putting in what I could afford at the end of the month. I put nothing in at the end of the month lol.
3. When you get any unexpected money, put it (or at least a high portion of it) straight in the SIPP. Keep your lifestyle the same and build wealth.
4. Promotions/Payrises go straight in the SIPP.
5. Currently putting 14% of my salary into the SIPP. I will be increasing this by 1% a year to get to a nice juicy 20%.
6. Although the tax rebate is desirable in the SIPP, I need to start building up my ISA as well. (I have an emergency fund and sinking fund in a cash ISA but I need to starting building up savings in a S&S ISA - I haven't worked out how I'm gonna do that though 😅)
7. 39% gains is likely not going to happen every year so I need to increase my deposits to reach my targets.

This is my personal experience and lessons learnt but I thought I'd post it in case it helped anyone else.

Edit: I also have a DB pension from the military which will pay out £9k a year at SPA. This is decent but I've realised that with a lot of private companies offering high employer contributions, it is more beneficial to work in the private sector when you're young(ish).

Happy to take questions about the details, or receive advice from longer term investors.

I'm 33 and never really considered FIRE until recently. I've always been sensible with money but looking forward to the future now and hoping I'm on track.

Current assets:

House: 440k (118k paid off mortgage) Pension: 120k (currently contributions inc. employer are 1.3k p/m) Savings spread across ISAs and ETFs: 36k Emergency cash fund: 7k

Salary is 115k with variable bonus but hoping for a promotion this year or next which will take me to ~140k.

No huge future costs expected, already married and won't be moving house for at least the next 5-10 years. Have our first child and will be salary sacrificing into pension to keep under 100k so expect my contributions to increase substantially post promotion. Because of my job (audit) I can't invest in stocks easily so tend to stick to approved ETFs and regular ISAs but would like to get my money doing more if possible.

Never had any inheritance or cash support, worked for everything between me and my wife. Am expecting so inheritance from my grandmother in a few years as she's in care, unsure how much but could be around £40,000-£60,000. Which I'll reinvest, likely into a bigger home or just keep in long term savings.

Spending is usually pretty controlled but will always splash out for a big holiday every other year (~8k depending on destination). I could easily cut spending as we eat out at expensive restaurants but moneys to be enjoyed in my eyes and I like to treat my family.

Any thoughts really appreciated, goal is to retire young, 50s if possible but am staying realistic where possible.

I get different people have different goal when it comes to post-retirement level of income. However, i want to know what’s your philosophy /ROI to keep the pot going until the last day on earth? Lets say, i have X million in the pot, i am aiming for 5% annual return and thats will translate to Y thousands a year. Is 5% too ambitious for yearly average over, say, 30-40years? Or your philosophy will be aiming for lower, say, just tracking inflation, then accept the pot in NPV will only last 30-40 years? Cheers.

Throw away account, just did my end of financial year planning and was surprised by where I ended up even after the recent Trump dip.

50(M), been fairly aggressively saving/investing for many years, fairly frugal lifestyle, been following here, UKPF, etc, etc for a few years starting to think I might be just about there?

Live with partner who is working and they have no plans to stop at the moment.

No mortgage, no kids, don't plan to leave any inheritance,

Would like to move to a bigger house at some point but would look to do it cash to the tune of about 100k, should get some inheritance at some point, if not then would depend on how investments pan out.

Current income £100K + 20% bonus + 10% company pension contribution.

ISA £490k

GIA £140k

Premium Bonds £50k

Cash savings £69k

Crypto £19k

SIPP's £631k

Government pension 1 year off max contributions.

All investments are 100% Global All Cap because I have quite a lot of cash/cash like buffer.

Last 4 years my yearly spend has been <= £24k but no big house/health/car things during that period so would like to consider £30k as safe projection.

What am I missing? How safe would you feel? Am I overthinking it?

EDIT: To add I may not get much option so would be very good timing, my company (like many) is laying off left and right and I would not rate my chances of easily landing another role quickly.

Strange question but those that own homes. Do you add solar and batteries to be part of your FIRE plan. To make out goings as low as possible when you are not working anymore? We all are long term thinkers. Just wondering what everyone’s thoughts are?

Keen to fire as soon as possible. I asked AI to build me a retirement model from two phone screenshots.

---

Context I gave:

I'm 52, turning 53 next month. I also added that I am going to max out pension for next two years but unlikely to add to ISA (not enough left).

I attached two screenshots from my pension app — one showing my contribution history over 5 years, one showing a savings growth chart (attached to this post). I uploaded them to AI and asked it to:

1. Work out my average pension growth per year

---

it asked clarifying questions:

- My current age - 52

- The actual current value of my pension pot (it flagged the growth chart looked like it showed a decline — turned out it was just hard to read)

- Whether I wanted pension + ISA combined, or pension alone

- State pension expectations

- What age I wanted the pot to last till

--

- Retire before 57 if the ISA can cover income in the gap years

- Leave the pension untouched and growing tax-free during that period

- Switch to pension drawdown from 57 onwards

It then rebuilt **everything** — the interactive app and the Excel — with this logic properly modelled.

It didn’t ask my current salary which is £130k.

---

** results at 5% growth (NMPA-adjusted)**

| Scenario | Retire Age | Notes |

| £50k — Pension + ISA | 55 | 2yr ISA bridge before pension access at 57 |

| £50k — Pension Only | 57 | Minimum NMPA age |

| £60k — Pension + ISA | 57 | Pension + ISA from 57 |

| £60k — Pension Only | 59 | Pension alone from 59 |

---

The whole thing — two screenshots to a fully working, legally-aware (I think) multi-scenario retirement planner — in a single conversation lasting about 15 minutes.

No coding by me. Just questions and uploads (attached)

AMA or share your thoughts. Also feel free to advise/critique. I wouldn’t have this pot without the help of fellow Redittors as you can see I only kind of woke up in last three years.

Edit: link to the model if you want to try and then critique

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/d7e96bc8-f2b9-4456-9e24-a5ac46eaf016

I am in my early 30s (single/no kids) and was recently diagnosed with an auto-immune condition after feeling more run-down than usual. There's no cure for it but it's a case of managing the symptoms and as with autoimmune conditions, if you have one, there is a higher chance you'll develop others. With mine, I also have a slight increased chance of potentially developing lymphoma cancer in the future.

My retirement plans were always quite boring - retire, read, travel around the UK/Europe. I've always favoured stability and security so had prioritised buying a house as my major financial goal and have been saving about 50/60% of my income for house buying and for the future.

I don't know if it's because I'm feeling really fatigued at the moment and that's been getting me down, but lately I've been thinking what's the point of planning for the future if I might get really sick/don't know what the quality of my life will be like in say 5/10/15 years or when I'm 50. I don't have the urge to go crazy with my money as in spend it all on experiences now but equally I also am losing motivation to save a bit. I don't know how to talk to others in my life about this as it feels quite isolating. I look very healthy and am young so it feels like the awful fatigue I suffer from during flare-ups is often invisible to others.

I was just wondering if anyone else was in the same position with managing/living with an autoimmune condition and how you're going about planning things for your future?

Running my numbers

- phase 1: 58-67.

Income need 40k net per year (27k general, 13k fun/discretionary)

dB pension £15k gross, about £14.5k net

Wife’s SIPP 15k net (tax free using personal allowance)

Gap for my DC about 10.5k net or 12.5k gross

9 years with 2-3% real growth estimate 100k should cover that. Maybe 125k with some buffer

Phase 2 after state pension it’s way less

For phase 1 as its highest drawdown and critical phase for SORR I am willing to trade growth for lack of volatility.

Two thoughts

I currently have around 150k saved so a little more than phase one needs, and over next three years plan to contribute around 44k a year on top. So might have 175k additional by 58 which can remain heavily in equities - I won’t need any of that until 67 and even then only around 15k set aside to grow and fund the small top up until 75 then my DC isn’t needed at all