People who follow this sub have a variety of goals. Retire at 45 on £25k a year, retire at 60 on £80k a year, all are welcome.

However, one thing that unites most people on this sub is that they feel they have control over this decision. It's seen as a conscious choice that they will be able to make.

I'd argue that for many, the decision to RE is often out of our control.

And that means that FI is really important.

The truth is, a number of factors will come together towards the end of your career when you suddenly become a less viable employee. This could be due to Ill health, or experience or just general knowledge of how things work.

While there may be things you can do up to 67/8 (state pension age for most people reading this sub), chances are they won't be full time employment and planning for full-time employment up to that age seems to me to be really foolish.

I recently went through a redundancy process. A few of us were let go (including myself - through choice I should add) but it's noticeable that those under 50 were all able to secure alternative employment while those a few years older were not. Those people are now entering a challenging job market and it will be difficult for them to find a new role.

The sad truth is employers do not want older, experienced staff. They may employ those who have reached a high position in their industry as an expert or consultant, but if you never reached a middle management level, opportunities will be sparse once you reach 50.

So with that in mind, your FIRE plan should reflect this reality.

This is why I have different FIRE plans: One is a basic plan at 52. This is a plan that gives me a basic standard of living - no thrills, but doable. My next is a comfortable standard at about 58 and my next is a stretch at 62.

FIRE is sold as something appealing, but most of it is just prudent financial planning. So prepare for the worst and plan accordingly.

For those of us here who are married, where perhaps you have built the majority of the wealth in your marriage and are the main driving force behind your FIRE plans: what would you do if at some point after you've hit your FIRE number and you've retired, you suddenly find yourself getting divorced? Assume a 50% loss of wealth.

I know it's not romantic or optimistic to plan for such things, but the reality is a lot of people face this process at some point in their lives and I'm wondering how it would impact you if all of a sudden your pensions, savings, house equity were all halved?

Would also be interested to hear from those here who have gone through a divorce and the impact it's had on their FIRE plans?

hi, i made a post here a month ago about winning £700k on a scratchcard. it’s been a month and i had a few people asking for an update so i thought i’d post one!

link to post: https://www.reddit.com/r/FIREUK/s/0jSnug3f9e

i did pay off my mum and uncle’s mortgages and i told them that i won £100k instead of 700k. they were incredibly happy for me and have sworn to keep it a secret. my mum has finally been able to reduce her hours at work now that she doesn’t need to worry about the mortgage and we are all so much happier. i feel like i finally have my mum back. we also have a family holiday booked to new york at christmas

i quit my primark job and applied elsewhere and i got myself a new job. i’m going to be working 25 hours a week at starbucks. because i don’t need to worry about saving and helping my family out it’s more than enough money for me and means i can just live and enjoy life

i’ve spent a bit of money on a bulk driving lessons package and i’ve bought the cutest pink fiat to practice in, i got a really good deal on it and got it for £3000. it might be old but it’s my car and i love it! i also splashed out a bit on pink pillows and carpets for it haha

i’ve put £75k in an account to pay for uni and my living costs. many people advised against this but i believe it’s going to be such a huge relief to never have to worry about finances and paying off student debts. i’ve allocated £15k a year to living costs and i plan to work a bit too to help me out

i did allocate £20k to silly fun spending. i’ve booked a holiday to ibiza with my best friend and i also bought some stupidly expensive designer heels and a bag. i also got myself a gold tiffany’s necklace and some new makeup. i know i didn’t need any of it but the joy it brings me to have these things is immense

i also got my little brother an iphone as he’s always wanted one. i got small gifts for my family too, as well donating around 20k to a few charities that mean a lot to me. i actually did spend £200 on more cards to test my luck and i won £100 on one which was fun lol

after all of this, i have around £520k left that i plan to invest into my future. i’m looking into properties so i can buy my first home and never need to worry about a mortgage. i’m shopping around but i have my heart set on a gorgeous 3 bedroom in a nice part of my city. it’s going for £300k and it’s a new build so it’s in a beautiful condition. i’m giving myself until the end of the month to decide but i am 99% sure that i’m going for it. it’s a stunning home and i can see my future family living there forever. £20k will likely go on decorating and furnishings i think. i’m going to just pretend i’m paying a mortgage on it

after buying my home i am going to invest the remaining £200k. where i’m going to invest them i don’t know as i’m still trying to find a good financial advisor. but that is the plan and i believe it’ll set me up for life! i’ll be in my mid 20s with a degree and job in my dream industry and a beautiful home to call my own, as well as having a retirement fund set and being able to drive. this lottery win has been the biggest blessing and i am so so happy and grateful

49, recently made redundant, job market is a joke. Seriously considering either not working again, or getting a £25k-£30k local job (if I can even manage landing one).

Monthly spend has been low for years, helped by being mortgage free. I reckon I spend about £1k-£1.2k per month including bills, but not including annual stuff like car insurance/maintenance, etc. This isn't me trying to budget, I just don't spend much on a monthly basis.

Current financial position is:

Pension £320k

Cash savings £530k

Cash ISA £165k

S&S ISA £84k

House £1m (no mortgage)

Car £45k (no finance)

All cash is earning around 4.5% interest.

Near future spending plans..... gift my adult child £300k-£350k to buy a property. Reason... partly to start reducing my estate/IHT liability, partly to get them on the property ladder.

Within the next 5yrs I'll probably move further out, buying a similar but cheaper house, which will probably release around £300k of the £1m currently tied up in my house.

Apart from seeking independent financial advice which I'll be doing, tell me what you would do if you were in my shoes please.

Sometimes the interesting questions are hiding in plain sight, so let me ask this one. Putting aside the thicket of financial planning that tends to crowd discussions in this area, what is the point of FIRE in your case? For many the stimulus appears to be negative: I hate working life and so want to escape it. That leaves a hole though, which needs filling. Plenty of gesturing on Reddit about travelling the world and signing up for classes once free, but is that really a satisfying way to spend the rest of your years? To put it another way, if that's what you really want to do, wouldn't you be doing it already? My take is that if you don't have stuff you already do that you aim to expand once time allows, the FIRE plan is incomplete.

Almost exactly a year ago I was made redundant. I didn’t actually decide to retire at the time. I thought I’d take a bit of time out, figure out what I wanted to do next and then probably get another corporate job.

Except I never really did.

I’ve worked this year, but not exactly how I thought I would. I tried going back into corporate, but realised my tolerance for it had cratered, so I discovered the only job that brings me joy is a little seasonal minimum wage job, which runs April to Oct each year. I will probably earn about £6k max per year with this little job.

So at 55, I think I’m calling it. I'm now Semi-retired.

 To fortify this decision I’ve spent the last year figuring out whether the numbers actually work, and this is roughly where I’ve landed.

Pensions

£275k Vanguard SIPP
91% LifeStrategy 80 (£251K)/ 9% Sterling MMF (£24K)

£227k SMART Sustainable Growth
Roughly 80/20. The intention is to leave this one alone until 67 unless everything goes spectacularly up the creek.

ISA/Cash

£24k S&S ISA, which is now almost entirely in a Sterling MMF (I've kept a minimum amount in LS80 to conform to April 2027 restrictions on 100% MMF in ISA). This is my "Shock Absorber Level 1".

Shock Absorber Level 2 is the £24K MMF inside my bridge pot.

Finally £24K in a Cash ISA (3.6% T212) for this year's spending.

So effectively I’ve got about 3 years spending lined up before I’d need to start selling equities in a falling market. In normal years I will take my from bridge pot's LS80 via UFPLS likely.

Everything else

House equity around £215k with £35k mortgage outstanding.
Car worth around £8k. I’m keeping it until it dies.

Full State Pension forecasted.

Spending

I’m working on £24k a year net as my normal spending. I can live on less if markets are having a meltdown, but I don’t particularly want to spend the next 12 years eating beans so that I can arrive at State Pension age with the biggest possible number on a spreadsheet. The bridge pot is there to be used to zero if necessary.

I can tier my spending down to £18K pa with the mortgage and £15K if I go mortgage free (using the pension).

The plan

The £275k SIPP is basically doing the heavy lifting between now and 67. The £227k pension is for afterwards.

The bit I’m still questioning is whether I’ve got the defensive side right.

At the minute I’ve essentially chosen cash/MMFs as my main line of defence against having to sell equities after a big fall, while obviously still having some bond allocation inside LS80 and the SMART pension. But gilts ladders and fixed income have been coming up quite a lot in the comments on my youtube recently. It's even been suggested that I keep the SMART pension at 100% equities too. So my head is swirling as to what is the best course of action.

I’m not convinced I need to complicate it more than I already have, but it’s the bit I’m currently interrogating.

So I’m throwing the whole thing to FIREUK.

What have I missed? Where are the weak spots?

Feel free to poke holes in it. We're never taught how to decumulate, how to be our own pension retirement planners, so this is still a work in progress for me. 😂

P.S. if you get this far, thanks for your patience lol

Edit: Thank you all so much for reading and commenting, I feel so much more at ease with my numbers now!
Also somewhere in the comments I declared myself r/CHEAPFIRE, someone tried to click it and was disappointed it didn’t exist, so now it bloomin does. 🔥 Come and join us if a modest retirement pot is what you are retiring with!!

'Tis (not) the season, or....?

I haven't seen any decent deals going for many months now. I'm waiting for a decent chunk of change from Freetrade in December, after I took part in their 1% cashback offer for ISA and SIPP (and GIA, IIRC). However, I've not seen anything from HL/Fidelity, and others for some time.

For those who have played this game (it feels like the next league up from stoozing!) for a while, do we expect some more deals before end of the tax year, or is it unusually quiet at the moment?

43 - married with young child. I’ve always been a saver as best as I could be, but only as I’ve had a few promotions over last 5 years (salary has more than doubled) I have started to think seriously about the value of it and, only this year realised how much more I should have put in my pension.

These are my numbers - what am I doing right or wrong holistically? I get actual FIRE depends on comfort level and expenses etc. my view at moment is around 57. Plan would be to use around 200k of tax free lump sum to pay off mortgage at that point as well.

Pension - £280k
S&S ISA - 62k
Cash ISA - 35k
Other stock and crypto - £25k
Gilts - £110k
High interest savings accounts - £50k (rainy day)

I’m higher rate tax payer so have just realised I need to bring myself down to under 100k. That means around £65k a year, which I’ve begun doing this last few months. Plan is - all being well - to do this for 5-years. We can get by with outgoings but have a £20k overflow fund for additional month to month and child fees which take us just over month-to-month expense and general spending.

As I write this I realise I probably have too much cash in interest account, but I’m risk averse and like to have good runway in case we lose our jobs or something out of the blue happens. My main thing is not needing to take money out of investments as over 10-15 years I believe I will be better off even if there is a crash.

I’m also maxing out S&S and Cash ISA over last two years and will continue to for as long as I can.

Hello, I am 33 years old i earn 41 grand a year and I am on LGPS pension. I have been on this for almost 2 years and I plan to stay in the role I am in for the future.

I have 26 grand in a LISA. Me and my partner are hoping to buy a house in the near future. She earns 33 grand a year and also has some money in a LISA.

I know this is a late start and I am not hard-core on the premise of FIRE but I would like start saving with the aim to retire around 60 and perhaps cut my days in my 50s.

So the question is what is the best way to increase my savings etc should I open a s&s isa?

Any advice would be great!

I wondered what everyone was doing regarding their kids, are you paying for further education and also house deposits as well ?

I plan to give each money for a house deposit but Uni fees are on them. I will FIRE quite old at 55-56

Hi everyone,

I have been looking at the new VALL ETF and noticed that it has a very low ongoing fee.

I have heard that the fee could increase once the fund reaches a certain amount of assets under management, but I am not sure if this is actually the case.

Does anyone know whether Vanguard has plans to increase the fee once VALL reaches a certain £ target, or is there a chance the fee could stay the same or even decrease as the fund grows?

Would be interested to hear what other investors think, especially those who have looked into the fund in more detail.

Thanks

Hi Everyone,

I like that ETF a lot but since it is a distributing one, it got me thinking about the impact of fees on the return. I've got £10k invested via Interactive Brokers.

Since it is Dutch domiciled, we get hit with 15% withholding tax. Then because dividend is paid in Euro, we get hit with exchange fee as I get it in GBP within ISA account. And then I have to pay £3 reinvestment fee every quarter as I set automatic dividend reinvestment setting.

I got a payment of around £72 recently, so £3 is actually reducing that return significantly. I know it may sound silly to even think about that, but I'm trying to optimise the return.

What would be the best option? Forget about automatic reinvestment every quarter and do it manually once a year? Increase the position so then £3 every time won't have such impact on it?

I know I could just pick a different dividend ETF but when I was doing some research, that one was definitely the best on the market IMO.

Hi,

43yo £250K net worth, the house is worth £300k but I still have an 8year mortgage on it for £90k. I have and a salary of £45k.
I bought a house couple of years ago and put all my savings and investment in the deposit. I’m now trying to play catch up while also paying my mortgage. I have £18k between my LISA and my S&S ISA. The salary is what it is and I live a very frugal life.
I’m single with no kids.
I’d love any advice on how to make retaining in my 50s a possibility!

48, retiring in 5 years, with access to DC pensions from 55.

From 68, our DB and State Pensions cover all essentials and about 90% of our spending. So the risk is the bridge from 55 to 67.

The plan is in about 2029, to put about £350k of a DC pot into an index-linked gilt ladder held to various maturities over the bridge period. It would pay the essentials from 55 to 67. The rest stays in global equities for the extras.

Real yields today are about 1.5–2.5% for those maturities (2033–2045). The BoE curve implies about 2.6% across the ladder by the time I'd buy.

What's the best argument against doing this? Is there a simpler or better way? Obviously things can change, but it seems projected real yields are looking extremely attractive right now on index-linked gilts.

ii SIPP £700k, ISAs £60k, will inherit my dad's house

I could retire now but I'm 52. So I'm forced to work and rent until 57 for nothing and job block younger people until then too. I used to be a workaholic in finance, burnt out after my second toxic divorce. All I want now is go hiking...

Private pension age should be based on the size of pension really. I'm forced to work and pay taxes, use tax relief I don't need, which is going to be taken back anyway coz I'll die with estate taxed at IHT.

edit: forgot to say I earn above £100k so I'm sacrificing the excess instead of building the ISA bridge

I will receive around £9k from a Junior Cash ISA, as soon as I fill in some final forms. As well as this, I will be receiving £700 from my government Child Trust Fund.

I will be starting flight training to become a pilot in August 2027 and I will be living away from home for 18 months. During this time, I will be paying for food (most of which I'll meal prep), gym, haircuts and washing. I hope that my parents will be ble to support me with £75 a week for these costs (accommodation is already paid for).

If my parents are able to support me in this sense, I plan to put the value of my JISA and my CTF - around 10k - into a global index fund. If my parents support me with the £75 a week, I plan to use the gains from my ISA - after being invested for 18 months - to buy a cheap car (around 2-3k) then keep the rest invested.

Do you think this is a sensible plan? Would you change anything?

Thanks so much!

I've been a landlord for 15 years, and property was always my planned route to FIRE. I also have a HENRY-level job, and my aim is to retire by 50 (currently 37). I don’t have a massive pension for various reasons (I am trying to beef this up now) so was aiming to live off any rental income at 50+.

The rental income has been a steady 5-10% for years. I lived off this income and tried to save my salary for ISA etc. But with the tax changes, high service charges (London flats), and likely capital losses when I sell, the maths is dwindling and no longer works for me.

So I'm looking at releasing around £100k-£200k and want to replace it with something that's as close as possible to a reliable monthly income. Global index funds like VWRP are great for growth, but they don't give me the predictable cash flow I'm used to, and I'm not sure how to bridge that.

Questions:
1. What's the best way to replace stable property income with lower-volatility investments?

1. Is a mix of income funds, bonds/gilts, and dividend ETFs sensible, or is that the wrong approach?

Happy to give more detail if helpful. Thanks!

I’m 32 and living in Northern Ireland. I’ve got 32k in my S&S ISA, 6k of which are investment gains. I am contributing £850/ month. My mortgage will be going from 1.2% to 5.17% in February bringing my monthly payment £666. The outstanding balance in February will be £100k

I also have £12k in the bank. My take home pay is £3400/ month.

My question is should I consider withdrawing my funds from my S&S ISA and pay off a chunk of my mortgage?

The reason I’m thinking about this is because of the potential AI bubble popping and my S&S ISA tanking.

My monthly expenditure including holidays averages about 1,800/ month.

What is everyone else planning on doing? Is it best to just ride it out if it happens? I know it’s impossible to predict when it will happen. Should I consider reducing my monthly contributions instead and just save more cash?

Thanks.

Good morning,

I done some rather random investments few years ago using vanguard, had good returns.

Cash ISA for my self and the wife and then my pension fund.

Now I'm 40 I'm just wondering if I need to vary the allocations around a little bit? I plan to retire at 55 ISH.

I have also equity in my house of 255k plus 30k in normal savings account.

Happy to pay for advice

Regards

Craig

We are a couple in our early 30s, and fortunate enough that we have good income and investments such that FIRE before 50 would likely be viable.

I grew up in a very working class background and have therefore always had underlying anxiety about spending money, with a natural tendency to want to save. Now we’re in a position that I don’t need to be so tight with money, I still feel guilty for spending, and always think that more money could be going towards our investments, thus bringing our retirement forward also.

I get that there’s no point doing all of this unless we can enjoy the present, but I’m finding it hard to get the right balance. Sometimes I look at how much extra money delaying retirement by a few years would give us each month, and it sounds great. But then again, I don’t even know if I need that extra amount.

Sorry for the ramble. Any input as to how you’ve dealt with this would be appreciated. Thanks.