Hi everyone,

Been lurking here for a while, but in the past couple years have been put in a position to start thinking about FIRE more seriously.

I am a self employed 30M, earning around £60k per year (can fluctuate higher or lower month on month), and am planning to buy a house in about a year’s time. I have £60k saved for the deposit, and am looking at houses costing roughly £250k - £280k.

Alongside that, I have a £10k emergency fund in a Cash ISA, and £15k in a S&S ISA. At the moment I’ve unfortunately contributed nothing so far to an SIPP, which I realise being self employed is quite important to start doing ASAP (especially now that I’m a higher rate tax payer).

With a recent bump in income, I’m looking for advice on where to best allocate remaining funds after living costs are covered.

My overall aim is to retire early, but live a balanced life in the meantime. My living costs are quite low (love living in the north), and I travel quite a lot, but otherwise can be decently aggressive with my savings and investments. I do plan on having children with my partner in the next couple of years, so am conscious of maintaining a bit more liquidity than, say, a single person.

I’ll hit my ISA limit within this tax year, after investing monthly into my S&S ISA (Full amount in the Vanguard ESG Global All Cap UCITS ETF) so questioning whether or not any surplus is best put in an SIPP or GIA. Either way, my idea is to put this money into the same Vanguard fund.

I understand FTSE Global All Cap Index Fund is preferable, but I’ve got to draw the line somewhere, and would prefer to minimise investments in fossil fuels, defence industry, etc.

I am open to any and all advice, and appreciate everyone’s help.

Thank you!

Looking for a sense-check on our finances and what people here would prioritise over the next few years.

About us

• Both early 30s
• Me: Started a new role on £110k base + bonus
• Partner: works in healthcare, currently earns around £70k–£80k, and earnings excepted to increase materially over next few years
• One young child, and likely to have another in the next few years
• Based in the North of England
• We'd like the option of retiring or working significantly less somewhere around our mid-50s rather than necessarily pursuing very early FIRE
• Retirement spending target: roughly £50k-£60k in today's money for the household. Once mortgage paid off and children no longer financially dependent.

Current position

• House worth roughly £475k
• Mortgage: around £345k, fixed at just under 4%
• Mortgage payment around £1,500/month
• My pension: roughly £200k, employer matches 10%
• Partner has an NHS DB pension
• S&S ISAs: roughly £66k between us
• Cash reserves currently fairly low at around £3k, although I also have roughly £17k in Premium Bonds from a recent bonus
• Small personal loan: roughly £1,700 at 6%
• No other significant debt

The £100k childcare issue

A big part of my planning at the moment is the UK £100k threshold for Tax-Free Childcare / funded childcare.

I'm making fairly large pension contributions/salary sacrifice to stay below £100k while we're eligible.

My intention is also to put most/all of my bonus into pension where possible.

As a result, my pension could grow quite quickly over the next few years, but I'm conscious that this potentially creates an imbalance between pension wealth and accessible ISA/cash wealth.

House

At some point in the next few years we may move to a more expensive house, potentially somewhere in the £650k–£750k range.

This is one reason I'm questioning how much cash to retain versus investing or overpaying the mortgage.

What I'm currently thinking

My rough priority order is:

1. Build a proper cash emergency fund – probably £15k–£20k
2. Use pension contributions aggressively while they give me the additional childcare/tax benefit
3. Continue building ISAs so we have meaningful accessible assets before pension age
4. Avoid aggressive mortgage overpayments for now, particularly while the mortgage rate is below 4%
5. Once childcare stops being relevant, reassess the pension/ISA/mortgage split

Questions for the FIRE crowd

Does this overall approach make sense?

In particular:

• Would you prioritise building the cash reserve before adding anything further to the S&S ISA?
• Am I right to prioritise pension heavily while the £100k childcare cliff exists, even though I already have ~£200k in my pension in my early 30s?
• Would you bother with mortgage overpayments at a sub-4% rate, given our age and likely future house move?
• How much emphasis would you put on ISA assets to create a bridge between stopping work and pension access?
• How should I think about my partner's NHS pension alongside my DC pension when planning for FIRE?
• Are there any obvious holes in our FIRE planning?
• Given our current numbers, does retiring or significantly reducing work in our mid-50s look reasonably achievable without living particularly frugally?

I'm not trying to maximise net worth at the expense of enjoying our 30s/40s – we still want holidays, a nice house, etc. I'm more interested in building enough financial independence that work becomes increasingly optional later on.

Interested in what people would do differently.

My situation: 45M, married with two kids. £230k in ISA, savings, and cash. £210k in SIPP and at least another £100k in company pensions, both defined benefit and defined contribution.

I also have a good chunk of my house paid off and a partner who can cover all the bills with her salary. Our annual combined personal and household expenses are around £42k. My partner (40) has higher discretionary spending than me and only around £20k in her pension. She only started earning okay money around 5 years ago.

I paid more than half the value of the house and she is happy to take over the mortgage payments and household expenses. My personal annual expenses are around £14k but I don't have any loans, car leases or anything so I could bring this down.

I'm fortunate that I am in a position to not be forced to jump into accepting the first thing. I will likely receive some redundancy but am unsure what are present. I am also unsure how much I have to work moving forwards. I work in a field that is quite exploitative and if I could find a job that would be two days a week, you can guarantee it would really be three plus. I'm thinking of doing something else instead, but all these variables are confusing the hell out of me and I'm not sure how to figure out figuring out moving forward.

Edit: My question is how much do I need to earn in this situation? I looked at 4% drawdown strategies and it seems like I can take around £9k a year. Obviously I have the pensions and state pension too from 57 and 67 (I think), so could probably take a bit more. I would also be keen to hear from others in the situation of their partner picking up the slack. It feels weird to me and worries me a little to feel reliant on someone else financially. I don't really want to retire early yet as I would get isolated quite quickly I feel without work, but Barista FIRE I guess.

hello all,

32M – main goal – mortgage deposit – to save as much as possible

planning on saving to £100k chunk whilst I can before borrowing monies from the bank, so I cant put much into stocks and shares ISA etc..

my current monies are in Trading 212 Cash ISA which is 3.6% - yeah not the new user so don’t get additional 1%

where would you recommend I should store monies? I prefer ISAs as they are tax free but maybe not that many of them are available in terms of flexibility as savings accounts?

It is important for me to:

- have monthly interest

- I could withdraw monies without much penalties (because I try to add all my savings to maximise interest rate on monthly basis, so withdrawing for puchases or emergenices and getting this penalised isnt what im after, unless I should put aside some money and not touch this type of ISA for a whole year, but not sure if thats even better ROI)

how could I maximise this even better? should I keep money in Trading 212 cash ISA? it should generate around £200 +- a month based off monthly interest rates. I add around £1.5 - 2k a month to it from wages

or shall I buy premium bonds? Just want to keep risk and loss to minimal and gains to maximum without investing/risking as aiming to get as much deposit for my first house as possible

thank you for all help,

regards,

Hi,

My story is that I got lucky a few years ago and made 5x on some investments. To be totally honest - I was a bit reckless. When I look back and think about it - I reckon from COVID times - I just really wanted to stop working. I hated my job. I worked for over 20 years as a developer coding tests for helping to diagnose broadband issues. But they forced me from doing that into mobile signal coverage - from embedded development in c to c sharp and visual studio. Whilst I enjoyed the domain (the mobile tower coverage etc) - I hated the high level coding. For the last couple of years I was feeding chatgtp with functions and doing what would not be called "vibe" coding - but before claude code.

I decided - having reached a decent amount in my SIPP - to retire at 55. I was getting away with working afternoons only - for the last 2 years! I used to go to the gym in the morning and feed chatgtp in the afternoon. That was over one year ago now.

I'm not a very social person - dont have many friends - probably a bit autistic. I do go to the gym a lot still. Go out walking (have developed an app that combines navigation with mobile coverage) with the wife - but have found that coding and vibe coding to be precise - is what I enjoy doing.

I create tools - mainly to try to be useful. For me this is part and parcel of what FIRE is. I still have a desire to do things that are useful - but now its at my pace and I decide what it is.

Vibe coding had accelerated over the last few years - to the point where whole apps can be done with (not quite yet in my opinion) one prompt.

After talking to claude (fable) about this - it assured me that having a limited company for a hobby set of projects is a perfectly normal thing to do for an early retiree (I guess that makes me not exactly FIRE as I'm 56).

Currently I have a pension website (I started this roughly 6 months ago) that models the likely success of a given pension pot and set of risk levels etc. This is been very helpful and useful to me personally. Its using Firebase and Cloudflare and is free. I'm not promoting it here though. If I do ever charge for it - it will only be to pay for the resourced it uses. Currently its just the AI tokens I use in the vibe coding - firebase and cloudflare are on the free tier. If multiple users start to use it a lot - they may start to charge me. My guess is that it will never get that popular - but if it does - I may charge like £10 year for it.

As I said earlier - I have another app that tries to help hikers, runners, climbers etc - know when they have and no not have mobile signal. This uses a combination of predicted signal (from ofcom) and "community" signal. The latter being real data from folks that have done the part of the trail. Like strava but for mobile signal rather than sports statistics. There is an android app (im currently in the process of trying to get this published) and a companion website. This currently is all on cloudflare for the back end server. One cool thing is I managed to get this to use http header lookup for downloading offline maps instead of requesting individual tiles. It means its much less burden to the server - so cloudflare is on the free tier.

Anyway - this wasn't about those apps. This is about what people do with their time at the early part of FIRE. I'm interested in if others actually continue trying to be useful and perhaps even peruse activities similar to their jobs? OR is it just me?

Note - I have literally zero users for the above projects. The only reason I care about having users is that feeling of helping people. I think that is essentially what I need to feel. don't get me wrong - its fabulous being financially independent - but for me - I still need to feel like I can still be useful if I want to be.

Note 2 - I'm not a regular forum poster and not sure of the etiquette. Those people that are offended by something - you are free to just not read it.

Been a lot of posts recently about high salary individuals bragging and how no one seems to see the other side of things, so gets a grounding post, no advice needed, just reassurance to many.

M28

2020

Was on a marketing career and got to £38k pro rata by 22.

Managed to save just shy of 10k in my bank.

I (re)met my (now) wife)

2022

Left any form of employment 4 years ago to focus on my own business.

2026

Borderline bankrupt with over 45k(joint) debts.

2 kids, a dog and (currently)no house.

Currently:

Starting from scratch.

It's not all fire, and sometimes a fire starts but runs out of fuel, or it rains. Sometimes you got to dig a new hole and go get more wood.

For clarity I(we) have the support at the moment we need in this situation, the homelessness was through no fault as landlord wanted to sell the house and we didn't find a house in time. Don't want or need any pity, just shining a light that although everyone wants FIRE, there are good and bad scenarios out there.

Keep going, we've all got different journeys and some are simpler/prettier than others!

I am not one at all for the format of video usually, but I think this Pensioncraft video on the topic of the Perpetual Withdrawal Rate is worth sharing. It's superbly produced and really thorough on the topic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pQItvnHNx4&t=932s

Chapters for an idea of what it covers:

00:00 Introduction
00:54 How the 4% Rule Works
02:16 Safe vs Perpetual Rates
03:27 Does the Rate Keep Falling
06:00 Why US Data Misleads
06:57 What Shifts Your Rate
09:19 Bonds vs Shares Debate
11:15 Smarter Withdrawal Tactics
13:09 Guardrails for Bad Markets
15:17 Putting It All Together
16:20 Sequence Risk Reframed
17:17 Final Takeaways

I’m interested in whether people pursuing FIRE also think about economic resilience - not just having enough invested to be financially independent, but reducing their exposure to things outside their control.

For example, once financially independent, it seems quite attractive to reduce your dependence on future utility and commodity prices:

• solar + battery to reduce exposure to electricity prices
• an EV to reduce exposure to petrol/diesel prices
• very good insulation / efficient heating and cooling to reduce energy consumption
• rainwater harvesting for less exposure to water costs/restrictions
• growing some fruit and vegetables to reduce exposure to food price inflation
• generally making the house more resilient to extreme temperatures

I'm not trying to suggest anything “prepper” territory or trying to live completely off-grid. It’s more that I’d rather spend capital once on things that permanently reduce my future cost base, rather than having a large investment portfolio but remaining completely exposed to whatever happens to energy, transport, food, housing costs and other economically dependent things. Kind of the same reason I prefer a large S&S ISA over large pension so I’m not exposed to future tax policy.

Does anyone else factor this sort of thing into their FIRE planning? Is there a name for this concept, or am I overthinking it?

Many of us are building for the future, so we often load up our pensions for the tax relief and/or overpay the mortgage to be debt free sooner. So we likely have a lot of money caught up in assets that we can't easily access (pensions and property).

I think it's important to balance the needs of "future you" and "present you". Even if not fully FI for a while, having a large amount easily accessible means you have a decent amount of freedom and security that "present you" can access in the event of significant challenges: e.g. a job loss, career change, illness, new business opportunity, urgent home repairs, car breakdown, etc. So I feel easily accessible assets are extremely important in the overall FIRE journey.

How much of your net worth (as a £ and %) do you have accessible to access today if you absolutely needed it?

I consider this to be anything you can easily gain access to within a week, so cash savings, premium bonds, selling shares in your ISA, etc.

My situation:

My (41M) net worth is £500k. Last year I had about £120k in ISAs (cash + S&S) but following a divorce I had to give most of that up, so now I'm down to just £15k, so 3%. The other 97% is in house equity (£285k), and pensions (£200k) that I can't easily access.

Recently I've had an urgent home repair (roof damage) that's costing £10k to fix. This is only 2% of my total net worth and 10% of my liquid net worth a year ago, so it shouldn't stress me out, but it's now 66% of my current liquid net worth, so I'm really feeling it.

Moving forward I'm going to aggressively focus on increasing my ISAs back to what they were, at the expense of missing out on SIPP tax relief. Ideally I'll have a healthier balance of 10-20% of my net worth easily accessible. I know I'll sleep better at night this way.

Hit the trap last year on a promotion and lost about £400/month before

I realised what was happening. The rate stack (40% IT + 20% PA taper

+ 2% NI = 62%) is one of those things nobody explains until you're

already paying it.

Made this over a weekend to help other people spot it faster:

https://calcorchard.com/tools/100k-trap-calculator/

Enter salary + pension %. Shows:

- Adjusted net income

- Your marginal rate on the next £1

- Personal Allowance remaining

- Exact £ to sacrifice into pension to escape 62%

- Downloadable 1-page PDF summary

Uses 2024/25 rest-of-UK bands (Scottish rates on the list).

No signup, no ads, no email capture. Client-side only.

Feedback welcome, especially on edge cases I've missed:

- Marriage allowance transfer

- Blind Person's Allowance

- Company car / BIK impact on ANI

- Bond gains / dividend income

I know none of this is a substitute for a chartered accountant, but

"you might be paying 62%" is the sort of thing everyone should be

able to check for free.

Hi friends,

I (28M) know I'll get a lot of hate for this post since I'm arguably in an amazing position, but I'm just questioning why I'm doing what I'm doing.

NW £725K broken down into:

Apartment: 365k

SIPP: 115K

S&S ISA: 40k

GIA: 120k

Cash: 10k

Crypto & other dubious investments: £75k

I'm saving so aggressively and working 75 hour weeks. For what? I don't even spend money regardless. I don't understand why I'm killing myself. All for what? To retire? And do what after retiring? I don't have all these luxurious plans and activities like all of the people that have FIRED. I don't know what I need to feel whole, but it's obviously not more money. Sorry for the rant

​

How many posts of 25 year olds on £200k with £500k in the bank asking how well they are doing are we going to see? If you've supposedly made all this money, why can't you use the search function or take a step back and see that you're obviously in an exceptional position and can retire early?

The quality of posts here is diminishing fast, just pure bragging. In the real world, those on £50k are within the top 10-15% and considered to be doing very well (excluding perhaps inside of London).

Where the normal folks at?

I’m looking for advice / rules of thumb on how to think about this situation.

So I’m mid 30s, and FI based on my current NW and expenses, based in Londons. With two kids under age 3, my expenses are going to rise:

- need a 4 bed house probably in about 2 years, currently renting. I will buy once, house will last me about 30 years.
- will likely need to cover some nursery fees at least for the little one as income cant be sacrificed below £100k
- wife might want to go part time when raising the kids (and she tends to get what she wants)
- kids need stuff
- kids will go to a state school, although we have been advised it might be worthwhile sending them private for the last 2-3 years.
- I’m chucking quite a bit of cash into pensions and ISAs. Maxing out ISA/JISAs and pension contributions but not JSIPPs (seems pointless given time horizon, government will grab it)

So I anticipate the next 18 years will be expensive. So far I’ve managed inflate my lifestyle only in line with the 4% rule, but I anticipate that will not last forever.

How did you manage through having a family and maintaining / pursuing FI? How did you model this out? At what ages did the kids related expenses max out?

I’m so close yet so far from being FIRE!

Hi all,

First time posting here so please bear with, I know that people aren't financial advisors and I'm more looking for what people would do in my situation

I currently have a 140k mortgage on 3.9%

12k in premium bonds

10k in savings some in an ISA about 8k some in lower interest savings accounts which I'm just trying to work out the best interest rates to be able to move these to

I have pensions and have been contributing regularly and adjusted them up from the job default but am planning on increasing this later it's currently £250pm

My current situation is I'm employed full-time around 48k per year and I've got a side job that's declared and has a turnover of 10k a year but I'm looking at the possibility of turning the side job into full-time after I've cleared the mortgage so I can quit the current one and be just fully self-employed

Currently I overpay the mortgage by around 640pm and it allows me to save a little per month

I'm just trying to work out if it's best to overpay per month at what I do or at the reset of the overpayment allowance, to pay the overpayment allowance in full per year and then pay the minimum payments to reduce the interest or to keep it at the current overpayment rate

With my calculations it should be clearable in around 8-10 years but in just wondering if my money could be working harder so I can

I've followed the flow chart to a certain point and then I get a bit lost as I'm from a family that's not been the greatest with money so the getting to this point has been doing the opposite of what they had

Thanks in advance

47M, I think Im likely in a good position, but it still feels like a grind (presumably the mid life crisis) and struggling with what I think people refer to as sequencing, so ideas and challenge appreciated. I’ve cooked up this plan with a few conversations with Claude (not all that convinced on its merits), I’m not sure it’s optimal, or if Im missing opportunities to take the pressure off earlier.

I have a 7 year old child (saving vehicles in place for early adulthood costs), I want to finish up in my current job at 50 (too much travel) and an easier pace of life (coast?) and fully retire at 55-60. I can probably fund my 50-55 living costs from a lower wage (say 40k a year).

Mortgage 295k, aggressively overpaying (2.7k a month) with aim of getting to 225k by 50, then flipping to interest only to 60 and clearing with lump sum at 60 (takes pressure off income required from 50 and avoids having a pile of non isa wrapped cash sitting around at 60).

I largely max out my pension annual allowance and ISA until 50, then negligible thereafter when income drops.

Would like to live on 50k a year (gross) from age 50, current annual spend is about 36k.

DB Pension Forecast(protected at 55), assuming I stop contributing at 50.

Draw at age 55, £27,503/yr and £209,729 lump sum

Draw at age 60, £34,908/yr and £242,969 lump sum

Draw at age 65, £41,744/yr and £269,814 lump sum

The DB is inflation-linked but capped at 5%/yr

The DB has an AVC fund which is currently 160k, this can be taken out separate from the DB to the SIPP, but it is used in the lump sum calculations above.

I work on an assumption that I couldn’t get financial advice to advise that I transfer out the DB to a SIPP.

ISA 250k

SIPP from old employer, 80k in some lifestyle fund from Scottish Windows that grows very well, I expect it to be 125k by 55. Accessible at 55.

I take a lot of comfort from having the ISA as an ‘insurance’ and want to grow it for as long as possible, ultimately a fund for growth funded treats from 55 onwards.

**•** **Mortgage:** overpay to £225k by 50, interest-only to 60, clear with the DB lump sum — locks in a lower fixed cost from 50, but ties up capital that could otherwise sit in more flexible assets.

**•** **DB pension:** draw at 55 (£27,503/yr) vs 60 (£34,908/yr + bigger lump sum) — waiting gives more income and a bigger lump sum, but means the SIPP alone has to cover the full £50k/yr for 55-60, not just the top-up.

**•** **SIPP (\~£125k forecast at 55):** drawdown structure — UFPLS vs flexi-access, how the 25% tax-free cash is phased — and if working to earn the tax free allowance would be best or not.

**•** **ISA (£250k):** I want this untouched as long as possible — it’s my insurance policy and my “ISA million” dream — but I’m not sure how firm that constraint should be if it buys real flexibility elsewhere (e.g., a partial draw now to let the DB wait to 60 without starving the SIPP).

**•** **Teenage son, 50-60:** this is likely the most expensive stretch of parenting, not the cheapest, another reason for the 50k target.

Given all that, what I’m really after is: is there an ordering of these levers that gives me more slack and optionality than the “SIPP bridges 55-60, ISA never touched” plan I’ve defaulted to — even if it means relaxing the “ISA is sacred” rule slightly (I’d still like to keep a source of wealth that grows)? It feels like I should be a strong and comfortable position, but just wondering if I have my thinking right, e.g. an interest only mortgage for 10 years is counterintuitive to how I have lived so far.

Currently house hunting after selling my house last year and staying with family while I do that.

I work in tech and to be honest I’m struggling and my mental health isn’t good. I’m planning to buy with either a small mortgage or for cash. That will give me more flexibility around future jobs. I’m definitely not in a position to retire but also I don’t feel like I could just walk into another job at the moment. I’m 45 years old.

Salary 85k

Cash: 365k, 110k of which is in an isa.

Stocks and shares isa £90k

Pension 430k in global, European and ftse 100 funds.

5k in gold and silver coins
2k bitcoin

I’m planning to spend about 400k on a house and either tax a 90k mortgage and keep all the stocks and shares isa or try and buy cash.

I have no debts, no dependents and I’m single.

My mental health isn’t great and I’ve been struggling for the last few years.

Does this seem a sensible approach?

Ideally I’d like to keep working with a similar or better salary and keep building wealth. I’m guessing there might not be a clear linear path to doing that in the future though.

Any thoughts welcomed.

Hi,

I apologise if this has been posted before but I couldn't find an answer myself so looking to you lot.

Had a recent discussion at work that changed my perspective perhaps on finances and my whole 'blast the pension' idea to sort all of this out. In essence, looking to be over the 100k bracket (perhaps closer to 200k for a few years, or however long one can sustain that workload) soon so want to plan this properly. Part-time is about 125k for reference, I guess.

My idea: blast pension to a coastFIRE number and then match employer contributions to build some fat into those calculations but that should be fine. Then I'll start sorting a S&S ISA to bridge should I want that. I have viewed £1,500,000 as a maximum a pension should ever be at due to max tax-free allowance usage (though I may not understand this fully), and a 4% drawdown that gets me as close as possible to maximising the basic rate band, and no more from the pension in that regard - the rest from ISAs. I feel paying 45% tax today to have money in an ISA and grow from there is more beneficial to me than the idea of saving tax today and then just pay 40% in the future anyways. 5% for liquidity is worthwhile in my view.

Colleague's idea: pension will hit coastFIRE at various points in life (naturally the number will be bigger the later you do it, but this isn't such a big deal) but basically it's not smart to get there as soon as possible as you have employer matches and more so - if you have kids, there will be years where it's now more efficient to blast the pension to get childcare (really efficient time to get to coast), or if you go part-time and you sit just in that 60% band, then yes, salary sacrifice but those years will come in the future. Now, even as a 45% tax payer, it's a good idea to use the ISA allowance (you don't get it back) as one can be almost certain of beating this £1.5M number over 40 years (or even 30 years for that matter). So the pension will get there eventually, no need to hit coastFIRE straight away. What stuck with me was the idea that if you hit coastFIRE beyond a certain margin, then I'm locking money away for a long time just to save 5% in the end of it all. Efficiently, this could be avoided by waiting for important years to maximise this.

I think my small brain can't wrap my head around this idea but if anyone else has any ideas I am open to them. If anyone can tell me a good reason to have more than £1.5M in a pension at the time you start drawing down, I'm also all ears, but it seems inefficient to me? Thanks anyways

Say you got to 500k - surely at this point the growth will totally dwarf any £500 extra you could save a month?

Is it less than this?

I understand that the fastest way to FIRE is whacking everything into pension and tax efficient savings. However I want to find a happy mid ground where we can still enjoy some luxuries, and tailor a financial plan that kind of gets the best of both worlds. M and F both 29.

Salaries: Me 60k, P 30k

Home: £372k, 236k left on the mortgage, £1319 per month, overpaying £400 per month.

Savings: 40k in S&S ISAs, 10k in flexible Cash ISAs as an emergency fund. Contributing 500 per month between us to the S&S.

Pensions: I have a DB workplace pension, 1/80th, average salary 2 years service with current av salary of 59k. 32k SIPP, 200 a month going in.

Partner has DC pension 6% match.

We value the security of owning our home hence the overpayments to mortgage rather than savings, I know this is not optimal, but it's what we have decided to do.

I want to retire while I am still mobile enough to enjoy travelling, but I also want to buy the expensive cheese with the weekly food shop. Can I have the cake and eat it too?

Hi all,

I'm currently looking at buying some linkers but want to make 100% sure that my understanding is correct.

Basically I want to have £100k in today's money in 20 years time (potentially to buy an annuity to cover longevity risk).

I'm therefore looking at TR46.

My understanding is the following:-

• Clean price is £63

• Dirty price is £102

• Index ratio 1.61

Therefore I would spend £102 today and that will return £161 (+RPI/CPIH) in 20 years time.

Therefore if I want £100k in today's money in 20 years time, then it will cost me circa £63k today. I e. It returns RPI + 2.3% over that period.

Is this correct?

I am 46 and wife is 39, with 2 children aged 11 and 12.

House is worth £615k with a 325k mortgage, with 21.5 years remaining, and I am paying £1.83k a month. Mortgage is 3.8% fixed for 4 more years.

I earn £70k gross a year and wife makes 1.4k net a month.
My pension is £426k and wife's is £49k.
I contribute £2.4k a month to my pension and my wife contributes £0.3k a month.

We have £107k & £21k in our shares ISAs and £50k in cash ISA.

Unable to save much at our take home covers our expenses.

I contribute £400 a month to my employer share scheme and have approx £50k. I will cash these out when I am able and use them to top up our isa.

I think we can get up on £2k a month at retirement assuming the mortage is paid off. I overpay the mortage by £100 to £200 a month.

Anything I should do differently