Early-retirement wannabe

atush

mgdavid wrote: »

er, would it be too cheeky to ask roughly where is 'here'?
I'm definitely up for cheaper lobster !

find yourself a fishmonger on the Irish sea somewhere. Cheaper lobster lol.

Still not dead cheap, but for this last time it was 12 quid for lobster for 2 (one largish one split) and that is a heck of a lot cheaper than lobster for one in a restaurant.

In Jersey earlier this year, I ate at a place in Gorey called The Bass and Lobster. They did a 3 course lunchtime menu for around 14 quid. And one of the mains you could choose was Lobster thermidor (small portion but still) stonking good value!

But generally places charge at least 25-35 quid for one portion.

atush

gadgetmind wrote: »

Leeds market late on a Saturday, particularly if the weather has been crappy.

It's a bit pot luck, but you can feed a family of six for a fiver if you're game for a bit of ready, steady cook!

Great tip Gadget, but still if the weather is crappy you won't find me in a city center market lol.

Weather is nice for a change today. amazing.

mildredalien

I've read this thread with great interest - early retirement attracts me greatly! I'm (only..?!) in my early 30s and haven't done much planning for retirement yet. Fortunately I have been paying into a civil service pension for a good few years so I at least have some headway into it. I'm not in the position of earning buckets of money however - for most of my working life I've been earning approx the median wage (£20k) or below - at times a LOT below - so my pension contributions haven't been large. I've also spent most of my life up until now in debt which has meant pretty much no ability to save outside of the pension.

I'm now on more (~£30k) and expect to maybe earn a max of £40-50k during my working life, in today's money. Not a pittance I know but doesn't put me in a position where I can easily save a huge percentage of my income to retire early. However I'm in a fairly intense line of work and would love to at least be able to go part time in my later life to save my sanity (what there is of it )

At the moment I'm spending around £1.1k a month, or 60%, of my salary on what I'd call essentials - bills, food, pets and small budgets for things like clothes, medical expenses, emergencies and the like. The rest is going towards a couple of epic holidays this year, paying off the last of a small credit card debt that ends it's 0% in May and a small amount a month into long term savings. I envisage the next few years I'll be spending my 'extra' income on saving for a house deposit. If I'm lucky, my partner and I will be able to buy somewhere in 3 years aiming for a 25% deposit. I should say that my partner is in a very similar position to me, except with only a couple of years of a private company pension behind him so will need to throw even more at retirement planning in the future.

So that'll put me in my mid 30s with a start on a pension pot and not much else! Maybe 6 months salary in savings for emergencies by then. I'm finding it hard to envisage being able to build up a substantial additional pension funds to be able to retire fully at 55 AND be able to enjoy lots of the things I want every year, such as holidays, house improvements, further moving costs etc. For someone with a more average wage, is 35 going to be too late to start seriously planning for an early retirement? Can I largely forget about it until I have a mortgage and house sorted and can really see what I'll be able to put away over and above my regular pension contributions? From paying my debts I have a pretty good grasp of budgeting and saving, so I at least have that going for me - I'm not going to be starting from zero!

shireknight

mgdavid wrote: »

no offence meant, but what on earth will you DO?? This sounds terribly limiting, more like existing than living.....

I know this sounds really, really sad (like I'm a loser sad) but yeah existing pretty much sums up my plans for retirement, I'll be quite happy just having loads of free time to play computer games, chat and potter around an old peoples complex garden. I have no dreams of travel I've done all that already I just want to relax and do nothing, so my existence will be incredibly cheap and undemanding financially speaking.

Both my (divorced) parents have self-contained flats in old peoples complexes and they are really nice places to live and they both love it -well they tell me they do lol.

atush

Mildred, with a civil service pension on the go you are doing OK so far.

But saving for and buying your own home is a key Early retirement thing to do. As then you will have a low cost place to live (ie no mtg or rent to pay) and possibly can be a source of additional equity (this used to be a given but is now a hope).

you need to save hard to get on the ladder, and then try to pay off your mtg as early as possible. A paid for home plus a FS pension will see you far more comfortable than most pensioners.

mildredalien

Thanks atush, I think you're right - focus on my home and mortgage to start off with!

Not sure how long I'll be in the civil service though, jobs are being cut left right and center and the environment is tricky at best. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it

atush

Just grab every year of pension while you can, and don't volunteer for redundancy as then they might have to enhance your pension to get you to leave ;-)

Reformed_Spender

I am aged 34 and as my name suggest I am a reformed spender.

I started work straight from leaving school and within a very short period I had various amounts of unsecured debt from credit cards and loans. Fortunately I lived at home and my earnings increased fairly significantly year on year so all my debts were manageable.

At 21 I realised I wanted to buy a house with my girlfriend(now wife) when she left university so over a two year period I paid off my debt and saved up a 16K deposit and we got the keys on my 23rd birthday. From that day on our joint unsecured debts began to grow, spending on furniture, holidays , expensive cars, moving house, a big wedding and basically an extravagant lifestyle. I even invested in a buy to let property, although this was probably the only wise use of my money.

My earnings continued to grow year on year and everything seemed manageable to the point where I was earning around 80K per year and my wife was earning around 35K which by most people standards is a good living. Everything was fine right up until the point I lost my job! At that point we probably had about 40k of unsecured debt on credit cards and overdrafts and plenty more if you included car finance. The minimum payments on debt not including mortgage payments were something like 3k a month! However I soon found another well paid job though, no payments were missed and the high spending continued for the next 9 months until I was unfortunate enough to be put in the same position again. This was at the height of the financial crisis and this time I was out of work for 9 months . It was only through taking a manual laboring job in that period that I kept things afloat. Although I liked nice things in life I was not too proud to realise the position I was in, and again although maxed out I managed to keep my credit rating intact.

When I finally found a job that earned a good level of income I promised that I would never put myself in that position again. Over the past three years I have paid back over 50K of unsecured debt (throughlurking inspiration from this site), built up 25K of savings and in the last 6months invested in two more buy to let properties. I still have some car finance that finishes in 9 months and 6K of credit card debt but that will be paid off when the 0% runsout and I keep it as constant reminder of where we once were.

One of the great things to come from paying off my debts was I was then able to really start appreciating my income and strangely this also made me decrease my spending. To the point in the last 12 months where now I only spenda small percentage of my disposable income each month. This in turn allowed me to think about a retirement plan, I have never had any pension and my committed outgoings never allowed me to address it. My wife is fortunate enough to be 10 years paid in to a final salary scheme with a large multinational company but you never know what will happen with those and I would like her to be able retire earlier than 70 as it will be then.

My early retirement plan is fairly simple, probably not without some holes but seems ok to me. I have massively reduced my lifestyle and cravings for anything materialistic have basically all but gone. Now that we have very little unsecured debt to pay each month plus the fact that both our earnings have increased again (myself 110K, wife 50K) we now manage to save around 5k per month. This will increase to 6K per month next year once the final bits of debt are paid off.

I plan to use all this disposable income on increasing my buy to let property portfolio from 3 to 12.

On average it takes around 25K of cash and this secures me a property including renovation work to bring it up to a good rental standard. That secures a rent of £500 a month and the mortgage will be repaid in 14 years. Justas long my job continues I should be able get to 12 in about another 4 years, these would hopefully be paid off by the time I am 52 by which time on today’s rental values they would produce a gross income stream of 72k per year. Paying them off by the time I am 52 will also be subject to the fact my earnings will still allow me to cover the income tax liability from my own income so that all rent goes to repaying the mortgage as fast as possible

Once the buy to lets have been bought I can really push topay off my own mortgage too. Which if I can maintain the same saving rate itwould only take around 4 years. Then if that all goes well I could invest in more buy to lets. I am sure someone will point out that if the first part goes to plan in 4 years time I will technically be in an serious amount of debt than with all the mortgages but I think this is acceptible. Just as long as I always have instant access to 50% of the total monthly mortgage costs of the portfolio for 6 months I should be well covered for the up and downs of rental income. Also as I not looking for captial gains on the properties I am fairly prtotected against house price movements.

I have also been putting in £400 in a stocks and shares ISA every month, I realise for most this would be nowhere near enough diversification howvever it should mean I have a reasonable cash sum at the age of 52 and more importantly access to more saving should any emergency arise.

Apologies for the rather long post and maybe the first part should have gone in the DFW forum but the journey is key to my retirment focus now. The main point for me is that after my massive LBM I now feel in control of my retirement. I am sure it won’t all be plain sailing but with focus over the next 4 years the majority of the hard work will have been done. If I don’t want to retire at 52 then great but it will be nice to have the choice.

Seriously Reformed Spender

atush

Good on your reformation.

I guess you know how most of us fear the all your eggs in one basket approach you have adopted (ok, 95% of your eggs, at least you have a S&S isa lol)

Good luck with this, but you have seen how the house of cards tumbles when your rug gets pulled out from under your feet.

tell_it_how_it_is

I'm 42, an would really love to retire at 55, though unlike some on here, my earnings are more modest (£30k) - however, I wouldn't be expecting a lavish lifestyle from it anyway, just a comfortable enough one.

But with £50k in savings accounts (including cash ISAs), and £50k in pensions (contributing £500 per month), is my hope pie in the sky? Or could anyone offer any suggestions as to how to realign the £50k I have to hand?