I often dont see a lot of talk around taking Annuity. Its always SWR at 4% or less. Interested to know who has gone for it or considering it?
Annuity often measured per 100k and outputs vary based on escalating, joint life, minimum term etc.
Id assume escalating 2.5% or 3% would be a minimum for most looking to retire early.
When I first started, everything felt pretty straightforward. Open an account, buy a couple of things, hold. But after a while, it started getting messy without me really noticing. Now I’ve got investments spread across different places like ISAs and SIPP), I’m trying to keep track of performance separately, and even something simple like understanding my full portfolio takes more effort than it should.
I also realised that the more tools I add, the less clear things feel overall. Like I have more features but less clarity. Even with relatively simple assets like index funds, it somehow still ends up feeling more complicated than it should.
Not sure if this is just part of progressing or if I’ve made things more complicated than they need to be. Do people eventually simplify their setup again, or is this just how it is once you go deeper into investing?
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Can I get some help figuring out what exactly my target savings needs to be please.
I need to save a pot to provide my partner with an income of 20k per year, potentially for 40 years or more.
How much do I need saved to do that? How would you go about that starting from where I am?
My starting point is that we have 140k cash we can invest (80k in ISAs, 30k in a SIPP I have access to due to ill health, and 30k cash to be moved into ISAs), and approx £2000 per month we can add to investments.
What would you do and what do I need to know?
I’m hesitant to just yolo 110k into the market at historic high P/E ratios and will be trickling the money in. If I miss out some gains, so be it. The price for peace of mind.
Once the target is achieved, what do I do; leave it invested, concert to cash, etc? Anything else I need to know?
I am currently looking to build towards lean fire at around age 55. I am 38 and have the following built up,
£28k in VWRP (Stocks ISA) I add £250 per month.
£24,300 spread across high interest saving accounts
£58,500 in my workplace pension
I have around £10k next year from some options at work to put into VWRP. I then plan to sell my options in VWRP each year for around £4500 - £6500.
I earn a fairly average salary at around £42k and my income easily covers my expenses with mortgage payments. I have around 14 years left on the mortgage.
Is there anything I’ve missed that could help me grow a stronger foundation? Does this on paper look workable.
I mean this probably different from the norm as I’m just average person, not a high earner or a high net worth person.
Hi all,
52M, working in the UK Civil Service (last 8 years), earning a modest salary of £34k. Partner is in her 40s so likely working at least another 10-15 years.
I have around £275k in private pensions across a few platforms:
• £180k in cash (within SIPPs earning 3% interest)
• £50k in equity funds (NEST / Aviva)
• £35k in a Legal & General multi-asset fund
Only really started paying attention to this recently and looking into FIRE. Thinking I might want to slow down or possibly retire around 57 and no later than 60.
Mortgage is just over £50k and should be cleared by 57. House worth £200k+ (so £150k equity).
If I stop at 57, my Civil Service DB pension would be ~£9k/year from 67 (not planning to take it early). With State Pension that should be ~£21k/year from 67 in today’s money.
So the SIPPs would need to cover at least £18k/year from 57–67, then just top up after that.
I’m hoping to grow the SIPP to £400k+ over the next 5–8 years through contributions + investment growth.
Feels like I’m massively overweight cash at the moment, but not sure what the right move is given I’m 5-8 years from potentially stepping back.
If this was your setup, what would you do with the cash?
What have you been working on this week? Please use this thread to discuss any progress, setbacks, quick questions or just plain old rants to the community.
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.
Doing my numbers I’ve pulled my dates in from 60 to 58. Still looks ok if income continues
Further breaking things down our main high income need is the bridge to state pension. I’m currently pushing into my wife’s SIPP to try and leverage her personal allowance as tax free for that period. I estimate our total need is about £210k (plus DB pension plus 2x state pensions)
The vast majority of that - £195k - is to cover the bridge. Only 15k is needed by 58 to grow and cover top up after state pensions
If contributions continue that should be more than fine - we modelled 2% real growth and a 250k target so some buffer. With 4% we should have around 100k above the plan which should feel comfortable but aiming for 40k income a year that feels like it could disappear quickly with a bad run of inflation etc.
For now I’m ok with it and it’s a very conservative estimate. Main question for this group is : what contingency are you factoring in? Eg are you allowing your discretionary budget to be the contingency or you have some above that too?
Hi all, been on the FIRE path for 10 years and finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Married ( wife 57) works part time and two children (15 &14). House £265K (mortgage free), £85K savings, £55K other investments, SIPP £90K, 2 frozen work pensions £60K Total, current workplace pension £24K, salary £50-60K (depending on O/T).Outgoings per month £1300. Any tips on semi retirement in a couple of years or advice would be gratefully received.
What have you been working on this week? Please use this thread to discuss any progress, setbacks, quick questions or just plain old rants to the community.