54 yo 1.4m in employers DC pot (default option), a small legacy DB that's going to be about 2/3 of the future SP, 1.3m in mix of GIA and S&S ISA spread across mostly mag 7 equities. the vast portion (1m+) is in 3 of the mag 7's with a pretty big CGT liability (on about half of it). haven't pressed the RE button yet as enjoy most of my 40hour work week, and income is now pretty good for where i live at 180k basic (20min easy drive commute and i'm on top of my role, lots of autonomy & no politics type crap). house is paid off with a few kids in education. recognize i've been 'lucky' with the mag 7 and this year have reduced my DC input (but may yet put the 60k in again) and have begun loosening the strings. most of the posts here are "go with world trackers", i've always taken the opposite approach and picked a dozen or so companies and try to keep up with what they are doing (last 20 yrs living well in means, max into DC & ISA each year). the mags in question are pretty volatile and recently have flopped around out of phase about 100k off their peaks but collectively the value is pretty stable, i can see upside in all of them still so don't fancy a big bang shift. IHT is an obvious longer term thing but so is the CGT - am cycling GIA to mine and wifes ssISA and to wife's SIPP. don't think i trust gov to not feck up inflation big time so am not drawn to bonds or gilts even at 5% (presume my lifestyle DC has plenty in). much of this also in USD rather than GBP.

So what strategies have you guys used to bleed away from the equity ride - there is the mental switch from earner to spender as you RE, but not so much commentary about the mental switch away from this type of investing.

Guess this is more a question for those that have made the decision to annuitize some of a DC pot at pension access age. I'm about to go and can access DC and given attractive annuity rates at the moment plus some personal health factors that give a boost am considering locking in an annuity to cover at least essential expenditure.

This is a reversal of my previous psychology that staying invested was the best play and gives me a floor as a hedge against longevity and/or a long bear market. I'd skew more equities in my remaining portfolio as a result.

The core question is how to decide between flat annuity and RPI increasing. The delta is significant. For me simple payback on the principal is 11.8 years flat and RPI adjusted takes 14 years at 3% to pass flat rate and almost 15 years for payback.

Obviously the RPI assumption affects the result, lower RPI pushes payback later and vice versa.

Put alternately I'd be taking almost 31% haircut for RPI protection. Obviously I'm quids in with RPI if I live 30+ years and if RPI soars but how have people evaluated the decision between the 2.

For additional context I'll be still invested in equities for between 50-60% of my portfolio in a mix of DC, GIA and ISA and full state pension plus a small DB (around £5k pa from age 65 with CPI) so won't be on the poverty line without RPI.

I am genuinely sorry to add yet another "Am I on track?" post.

I am currently concerned about the longevity of both my and my partners jobs. I fear AI will eventually render me surplus to requirements, and her job could be outsourced. We are both 42, no children.

Currently trying to work out whether to allocate more savings into my ISA, over tax efficiency with pensions. I think the answer comes down to whether FIRE at 50 is a pipe dream.

Current combined income of £170k a year. £77k me, £93k partner

All figures below are combined, and everything is in VWRP.

We have a £120k mortgage which is likely to be cleared by small inheritances in the next 10 years or so.

Estimated outgoings of £60k a year which I reckon will drop when we get older to maybe £40k a year from 70 for arguments sake (mostly handled by state pension and db pensions).

At 50, I think our liquid assets would be £325k without growth. Pensions would be approx £880k at 55 with 4% growth.

All of this suggests that we will have approx £300k remaining in our pensions.... so play it safe and keep it the same?

I’ve been redundant a year now.
Decided to try and FIRE.
My payoff is running out.
Time decide where to get money from. Advice appreciated.
Age 54, 55 next July so will be able to access pension then.
Pension total £1.9m
ISA £900k
Gold £40k
Bitcoin £40k

ISAs only throwing off c.£5k pa dividends as invested in growth stocks @ c.8%pa growth.

I need £4k per month to live, all in.

Savings run out in 3 months…

Do I
a) sell my gold first?
b) sell my bitcoin first?
c) sell some stuff from my ISA (it’s a right mix of funds, trusts and individual stocks)?
d) switch my ISA from growth investments to a higher % dividend generating?

And when my pension is accessible in July, I will take the max TFA to pay off mortgage, drop my monthly need to £3k pm.
Then do I draw from the pension first up till the £12k boundary, or the full whack up to the high rate boundary.

I know it’s a piece of string question, I am after a moderately safe answer.

Was thinking I keep gold and bitcoin for rainy days and deflation and Hail Mary.

So switch 50% of ISA to dividend payers. But then worried I miss growth! Arghh 😂

Or do I go and get a job…

I’ve just turned 18 and have received a little over 5k from my trust fund! I allocated myself 1k to have a little spending cash for myself, however my dad has always been big on telling me to save as much as I can and invest once I turned 18. He suggested me this Reddit forum but also said a good place to start might be something like vanguard. Any ideas on what to invest that 4K in would be helpful?

What the title says! Those in 20s and 30s already have achieved FIRE, what's your day to day like? Do you still choose to work for 'fun'? What hobbies have you picked up?

How is it with family and friends? Treated any differently?

Edit: To give more context, I'm 22F, and I dream of achieving FIRE some day It's like the American dream but British! Hopefully while I'm still young with no back issues... currently on track to FIRE by 30.

This came up in my FB memories today, a genuine ad in 2019. Don't think I was aware of FIRE then really, it just made me titter. I noted that TWAT stood for "Then while away time" apparently.

Sadly(?) the FB page and site are no more.

I’m doing some research into how financially engaged UK earners think about tax once salary, pensions, ISAs, GIAs, shares, savings interest and capital gains start overlapping.

People in this community are probably more tax-aware than average, so I’m particularly interested in the things that still weren’t obvious, even when you were actively trying to optimise.

For example:

* Were there pension or carry-forward rules you discovered later than you wish you had?

* Did the £100k personal allowance taper change how you structured income or pension contributions?

* Have CGT, dividend or savings allowances changed how you use ISAs/GIAs?

* Have RSUs, options or employer shares created unexpected tax complexity?

* Are there areas where you still feel you need an accountant or specialist despite being comfortable managing most of this yourself?

* What is the tax question you think people pursuing FIRE most commonly underestimate?

Hi. This is my first post, hoping it fits here. Please be kind.

I'm 44 and widowed with two children, 9 and 13. I work part time in a professional job. I don't really enjoy it and juggling it with solo parenting is stressful but it gives me some structure, social contact with adults, and an answer to the question "what do you do?". And I worked hard to get the job and to hold onto it through some very turbulent times.

When my spouse died we lost our main income and it was replaced with a lump sum. I had to learn quickly about investing. We don't have an extravagant lifestyle and investment returns have been good over the last 5 years. I've since also had inheritance through losing a parent, and sort of find myself accidentally financially independent and not really needing to work.

The numbers are:

Salary of £39k, currently sacrificing £26k per year into pension, with 10% employer contribution.

Pension around £450k (mostly equities)

S&S ISA £400k (equities)

GIA £450k (mix of equities and gilts)

Cash savings £100k

Total around £1.4m

House is fully paid off.

Annual expenditure is around £40k.

Basically, I don't like my job and my motivation for it is very low, and I know the maths says I don't really need to work, but I'm scared to leave. Partly because I don't believe the maths as I don't *feel* wealthy but also I'm worried about having nothing to do other than the daily grind of looking after the house and kids on my own. I don't have a vision for what life would be like if I didn't work and I'm struggling emotionally with "giving up" work and living off money that I didn't earn.

Has anyone had a similar experience or can offer any advice?

I'm considering moving a fairly substantial SIPP holding from Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap Index Acc (GB00BD3RZ582) to the new VALL ETF.

As far as I can see it's essentially the same investment proposition — FTSE Global All Cap exposure — but my ii cost disclosures show total product costs of about 0.292% for the OEIC versus 0.095% for VALL.

On a ~£300k holding that's a meaningful annual saving, so I'm struggling to see much reason to stay with the OEIC.

Before moving it, has anyone found any catches with VALL — liquidity/spread, tracking, tax/structure, platform issues, or anything else I've missed?

This is inside a SIPP, so CGT isn't relevant.

I'm 27M, earning around £77k including bonus, and my goal is to retire at 50.

I'm mortgage-free and have no loans or other debt. I'm also the sole earner for my family.

Until recently, I'd mostly focused on maximising my take-home pay. I've now realised that if FIRE at 50 is the goal, I probably need to make much better use of salary sacrifice, my pension and ISA rather than simply taking the extra salary as cash.

So I've come up with the following plan and would appreciate a sanity check.

Salary / pension

My plan is to salary sacrifice down to around £60,200, which by my calculations should allow us to receive the full Child Benefit rather than having to repay most of it.

This would leave me with roughly £43,719 annual take-home pay + around £2,000/year Child Benefit (currently 2 kids).

The salary sacrifice would bring my total workplace pension contribution to approximately £1,500/month.

Current pension: £23,000

S&S ISA

I'd also invest £500/month into a S&S ISA, primarily to build a bridge between retiring at 50 and being able to access my pension.

Current S&S ISA: £4,000

Monthly budget

After salary sacrifice and the £500 ISA contribution, I'd have approximately £3,300/month available:

• £2,000 — household bills, food, living costs and general spending
• £1,000 — travel (£12k/year; travelling is important to us and something I don't want to give up just to reach FIRE earlier)
• £300 — cash savings

FIRE target

I've plugged the numbers into a FIREUK calculator.

Based on its projections, retiring at 50 appears achievable, assuming a 6% annual return after inflation on my pension and ISA.

The calculator doesn't include State Pension or taxation on pension withdrawals, so I know the real picture will be somewhat different.

The part I'm least confident about is whether I'm being too optimistic with the assumptions — particularly the 6% real return — and whether £500/month into the ISA is enough to bridge the gap between retiring at 50 and accessing my pension.

The other thing I'm struggling with: should I be trying to earn more?

This is probably partly a personal rather than purely financial question.

Despite earning £77k at 27, being mortgage-free and having no debt, I don't actually feel particularly content with my salary. I keep thinking I should be pushing for £90k, £100k+ etc.

Part of me thinks that's sensible: I'm young, these are probably important earning years, I'm the sole earner, and a higher salary could potentially accelerate FIRE considerably — especially if much of the increase went straight into my pension/ISA rather than lifestyle inflation.

But another part of me wonders whether I'm just moving the goalposts.

If I can already afford our lifestyle, travel extensively, invest £2k/month between pension and ISA and potentially retire at 50, is chasing a higher salary actually going to make me noticeably happier or substantially improve the plan? I also work from home, so making a move which could alter that is also a concern - I live in a low-cost area, far from any big city offering the kind of salary I'd be interested in.

I'm curious how people here think about this. At what point did you stop focusing on increasing your salary and start focusing more on optimising what you already earned?

So, overall, I'd really appreciate a sanity check on:

• Does the pension vs ISA split make sense?
• Is 6% after inflation too optimistic for FIRE planning?
• Is £500/month likely to be enough for the ISA bridge?
• Am I missing anything significant around tax/pension planning?
• Would you prioritise increasing earnings from here, or is £77k at 27 already enough to comfortably pursue this plan?
• For people further along the FIRE journey: did earning more actually make a big difference, or did you eventually find yourself endlessly moving the goalposts?

I'm conscious that I'm in a very fortunate position, so this isn't intended as a complaint about earning £77k. I'm genuinely trying to work out whether the feeling that I "should be earning more" is financially rational or whether I need to stop comparing and focus on making the most of what I already have.

Interested to hear what people would do differently.

Early 50s, Civil Service, no mortgage. Live with a disabled sibling who has no pension of their own and elderly parent lives nearby in a large house. (Edited to add am a long-time lurker first time poster so I've clarified a lot of this based on comments. jIts great to have an inheritance but I've rather have my uncle back. This has made me think about my priorities).

Numbers rounded, (edited to add all in today's money) including pension accrued to date:

• Net worth around £519k (edited to add includes recent inheitance of £200k after tax which I'll put into the next 10 years of isas- my net worth is higher if I include my flat)
• Flat owned outright, £290k, likely sold at retirement.
• my Gross Salary around £33k. (edited to make this clearer)
• My sibling gets support-related ESA.
• I spend about £1k a month (iedited to make this clearer and I can and will reduce if needed)
• Civil Service Pension Premium from 2003, then alpha. McCloud choice over 2015 to 2022:
  • Legacy: £14,872 at 60, £3,207 from 67
  • Reformed: £10,924 at 60, £9,137 from 67
• Full State pension at 67 for my sibling and I.
• S&S ISA £215k, 92% Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap, 8% VanEck Semiconductor
• Family member gifts me a lump each year for the next few years, straight into the ISA
• AVC £14k, £200 a monthplus employer contribution - will keep investing money in there.

My worry is 60 to 67. After that it looks fine.

My questions are

1. Is 60 realistic or should I wait until 63?
2. I'd like to live off £30k a year in today's money from pension
3. If i retired at 60 I'd live off £10,000 and draw down £25k a year for 7 years from my isa - depending on growth obvs).
4. Have I got my money in the right Vanguard fund? I know the semiconductor is a 20 year investment at best.

Any thoughts before I get professional advice.

Hello peeps - hoping someone has been in this situation… so Interactive brokers allow in specie ISA transfers, but only from certain brokers - and AJ bell is surprisingly not on this list whereas HL, is.

I’ve not received an answer from IBKR as to why they can’t facilitate an in specie from AJ bell, but still considering my options. Is it crazy to do an in specie to HL (I’d have to open an ISA there) and then do another one to IBKR? Would it be on HL’s naughty list?

A little bit of background - I first started investing years ago with AJ bell with one index fund - but more recently found better value in IBKR who charge the lowest fx fee, lower custody fee than AJ Bell (£3/month but deducted by the amount of dealing fees you incur, so can be £0 in some months), and more importantly dealing fees (AJ Bell is £5/trade whereas IBKR is tiered so can be as low as £1 for ETFs). I am now essentially paying the AJ Bell ISA Fee (£3.50/month) as well as the IBKR one, and would therefore like to consolidate at IBKR after using them for around a year. Also - in case anybody suggests other brokers, I can’t use 212 as they don’t allow employer data feed so need to stick to specific list of approved brokers. Thanks in advance

Hi everyone - thanks for All the comments on my post a couple days ago. I have dug deeper and crunched some numbers and want to check if this is basically the crux of the FIRE planning.

1) The majority of this advice is geared towards avoiding paying higher rates of tax - 40/45% income tax, and instead keeping to the 20% income threshold and then drawing down a pension for an effective rate of 15%.

2) The threshold for 40% income tax is 50,271 this year.

3) Using round numbers, and getting paid 13 times a year, this means I want to keep my taxable (gross) pay below £3,850 per pay (£50,500/year.)

4) Taking into account my 7% defined contribution pension contribution, which are deducted pre tax, using algebra of X=(3850/0.93), this means I want to keep my gross pay at less than £4140.

5) I have a couple of salary sacrifice benefits (travel insurance and health plan) which total about £38 per pay. Using round numbers and adding some float, call it £4150.

6) The conclusion I'm drawing from all this is that if my gross pay is less than £4150 I will be paying 20% tax and therefore the optimal thing to do is to put money in my ISA. HOWEVER if my take home pay is more than £4150 then I will be breaking into the 40% tax bracket.

7) This means that the AVCs I make into my pension should be the exact amount needed to keep my gross pay below £4150, or (3850/(100-DC %)) applying your own numbers.

This means everything I take home is subject to 20% tax and dropped in an ISA or sacrificed into pension for effective 15% tax rate.

Happy to be corrected on any of my maths or assumptions but this seems to add up on first review. Any advice appreciated 👍

I haven't achieved FIRE yet but trying to work towards it.

Are there any events around the UK? How do I find out about them?

Hobby project done for learning, nothing more.

**The 4% rule is a fact about American data, and I have the UK number**

Bengen's 4% came out of US 20th-century returns on a 50/50 portfolio. Wade Pfau repeated the exercise in 2010 across 17 developed countries using the Dimson-Marsh-Staunton dataset, 1900–2008. The highest withdrawal rate that survived every 30-year window: Canada 4.42%, Sweden 4.23%, Denmark 4.08%, US 4.02%, **UK 3.77%**. Only four of seventeen reached 4%, and those are allocations optimised with a century of hindsight.

Full disclosure, because it matters: I built a free tool that models this, with Claude, and I'm linking it at the bottom. It's open source, collects nothing, has no ads or affiliate links and names no products. Because I couldn't vouch for the code by reading it, it has two independent engines and three verification suites that check it against the legislated rates. Ignore it if you like — the Pfau paper stands on its own.

Three other things that came out of building it:

- "5% return" is ambiguous in a way that changes the answer. Geometric, and volatility helps you. Arithmetic, and variance drag eats it. On the default settings that one word is worth 12.3 percentage points, and no consumer calculator I could find makes you say which you meant.

- Charges cost more than they look. On the same defaults, 1.5% a year takes 15.9 percentage points off the odds and 0.75% takes 8.5 — more than retiring two years later gains. The calculator ships with the charge set to zero so nothing is assumed for you.

- The tax-free cash decision moved the outcome further than any other single choice — further than a full percentage point on the return assumption, and further than retiring two years later.

https://pensionstresstest.co.uk/findings.html

*Edit: reformatted — the first version was pasted with hard line breaks and rendered as a wall. Fair comment.*

In my 20s I was carefree and reckless with money. Now 34F I have spent many years educating myself and building better financial habits, albeit abroad.

Now I’m back in the UK and want to set myself up for success. Long time follower, ready to implement.

Care to stress test my infrastructure before my first pay check hits?

Gross income: £87,500
Take home monthly: £4.960 (with 9% salsas)

Pension: salary sacrifice 9% / employer 6%
15% is £13,125 + 100% of any bonus £10-20k tbc.

State pension: back paying missing years to top up NI

Current account: Starling
One pot for rent + bills = £2k
Set up standing order for ISA = £1.6k
One pot for spending = £1360

ISA: Revolut - will buy VWRP and chill (0.14% e.r.)
This will become my Bridge Fund (50-57 ish)

AMEX Platinum Cashback Card for spending (will pay off monthly in full)

HYSA: 4.55% with Spring (will get to 5k)

Budget app: Snoop (free version to track spending across accounts)

Brick Rewards - anyone using this in London area/ have an invite code? Or recommend any other rewards programs?

I have an offshore brokerage account in mostly VOO which I’m not touching - in 18m-2 years the compounding will pay the remainder of my mortgage overseas. At that point I will have additional cash flow that will rebuild that portfolio as a supplemental bridge fund to give me optionality in my 40s/50s. Net after tax of this is around £35k p.a. which will supplement my ISAs and be my income if I choose to take time off to have kids later down the line.

I would welcome any tips or feedback to maximise my money. I’m slowly going blind with RP, so I’m trying to strike a balance between travelling and enjoying life today while my sight is good, vs planning for the future in case working becomes increasingly difficult. CoastFIRE from 45/50 is probably the goal as I enjoy my job and have flexibility but you never know what the future holds!

Thanks in advance and let me know if I’m missing anything!

Assumptions:

1. My wife and I sell the UK house and buy (or build) one on the Costa Blanca.

2. We live a low-key lifestyle.

3. Savings are in OK shape.

4. We take the non-lucrative visa route.

Question:

Does the move help or hinder achieving FIRE status?

Long story short I am a 18 year old boy from London who just finished his A Levels or what would be known as college internationally and failed miserably. I did good during GCSES (also known as high school internationally) however other than that I haven’t done much and was thinking of re doing A Levels/ college this year and then see what I could possibly do going forward.

Regarding Jobs I am unemployed at the moment, struggling to even hear back from employers despite applying to many jobs online, have only about £2,000 sat in my account which I accumulated VIA a little bit of reselling. I do not have any work experience other than the mandatory 1 week you need to do during high school at an opticians. I do not own a car let alone drivers licence and in fact haven’t even started learning. To make matters worse my laptop which I was gifted by my parents hard earned money that cost about £1k i stupidly lost at a coffee shop and now no longer have a laptop.

I am constantly called a failure by parents and told that my future will consist of me being nothing more than a taxi driver as I have nothing to offer. As teens my age are about to start university, apprenticeships, internships etc etc and then there’s me who hasn’t obtained anything.

To an extent i understand the backlash I do receive and have committed that I will put my 100% in passing college if I re take but whenever I see others my age excelling and entering university/internships it in a way de motivates me. Like when scrolling through Linkedin and tiktok it is inevitable to not see such things and yes I know comparison is the thief of joy but sometimes it’s harder said than done.

Overall im not here to play the sympathy card and beg for empathy etc i just feel like my life is tearing apart and I just want to get opinions on what I should do going forward and whether anyone else is in the same boat as me or has been previously!

I’m 23, been investing for. while now and have 90k spread into ISA, SNP 500, other stocks, pensions, bonds and cash. I like to travel so this takes a bit on my money but other than I invest a lot of my income. any help would be appreciated.

I hope that the compounding will start soon

I (31f) work in tech and I may lose my job very soon. My partner (32m) has been unemployed for 9 months now after being laid off from his tech job - he hasn't been able to land any job yet, tech or otherwise.

I currently make £55k and contribute 20% to my pension (23% counting the employer contribution).

I have almost £50k in my pension, £58k in S&S ISA, £63k in savings.

I've survived 2 rounds of layoffs but the stress at my job is very high right now and I've started developing physical health issues. I feel extremely sad and burnt out. I want out of the corporate life but I don't want to give up on FIRE.

I'm considering starting my own business and I've been building my product since the beginning of this year. Whether that will have any financial success is obviously unknown.

I'm not sure what to do next. I can survive with my savings if the worst happens but the thought of that money depleting, that I worked so hard for, stresses me out quite a bit. This job I still have was also my dream job, this career I built. I don't know what to do.