Early-retirement wannabe

JoeEngland

thriftytracey wrote: »

I tell you what my retirement shock is. My planned retirement next May not going ahead if we crash out of Brexit. Since August my Pensions have has negligible growth thanks to this uncaring, callous and incompetent shower of politicians.

The stock market has done quite well since the referendum, partly because of the result pushing the pound down.

DairyQueen

Marine_life wrote: »

Here's a little retirement spending shock for you.

I had to have a tooth out last week - totally beyond repair. No chance of anything under the NHS (as it's deemed a cosmetic issue) so the likely course of action is a (private) tooth implant (one tooth). Looking around it seems like all in cost is somewhere between £2,000 and £3,000!

That certainly is not in the retirement budget.

What's your retirement shock?

Welcome to the reality of 'cosmetic' dentistry. I have spent £20k in order to avoid the only tooth-loss treatment available on the NHS (delightfully described as 'a plate'). I have several implants. I also needed a bone implant. Treatment took 18 months but was worth every penny. The implants look and feel exactly like the natural teeth they replaced.

You pays your money and you takes your choice: either accept the limited options subsidised by the taxpayer or pay through the nose and have the best treatment available.

Not fair on those that don't have the means to pay the extortionate cost so at least you can be thankful that you can afford options denied others.

Three years on and my implants are still perfect.

My retirement shock has been much more costly. Being forced to challenge our local planning authority in the high court was not exactly in our (pre) retirement plans. They have recently conceded before the hearing. We are not able to claim anything close to what we have spent in the order for costs but having the contested planning decision quashed has been priceless.

That emergency fund is essential as you never know when you will be a victim - be that of unfortunate tooth loss or of an unlawful grant of planning permission.

michaels

thriftytracey wrote: »

I tell you what my retirement shock is. My planned retirement next May not going ahead if we crash out of Brexit. Since August my Pensions have has negligible growth thanks to this uncaring, callous and incompetent shower of politicians.

Mine are down by at least 50k. C'est la vie and it is all swings and roundabouts - I like to think of it as the units I am buying each month are now much cheaper and thus must be better value

AnotherJoe

thriftytracey wrote: »

I tell you what my retirement shock is. My planned retirement next May not going ahead if we crash out of Brexit. Since August my Pensions have has negligible growth thanks to this uncaring, callous and incompetent shower of politicians.

I find that very hard to believe unless you are referring to a certain US politician, or you have invested in an utterly horrendous mix of UK only companies, perhaps you've piled into teh FTSE250 or soemthing like that? Because the activities of these uncaring, callous and incompetent shower of UK politicians have had the effect of lowering the Pound and thus raising the value of anyone's investments who has any sensible global mix of investments. And a crashing out Brexit would add to that in spades.

Of course the aforementioned US politician has indeed had a deleterious effect upon global markets, but from your words you only seem to be referring to UK politicos.

Terron

DairyQueen wrote: »

Welcome to the reality of 'cosmetic' dentistry.

I had been using NHS dentists for years and keptbeing told that I had a funny bite. When I moved in 1996 and could only find a private dentist I found that that "funny bite" had caused so much wear that it was why I was having so many problems. It took about 3 years and £18k to fix them. It would have been a lot cheaper to treat them decades earlier.


Last Boxing day I fell and broke two of the crowns and my glasses. That cost me nearly £2k

greatkingrat

AnotherJoe wrote: »

I find that very hard to believe unless you are referring to a certain US politician, or you have invested in an utterly horrendous mix of UK only companies, perhaps you've piled into teh FTSE250 or soemthing like that? Because the activities of these uncaring, callous and incompetent shower of UK politicians have had the effect of lowering the Pound and thus raising the value of anyone's investments who has any sensible global mix of investments. And a crashing out Brexit would add to that in spades.

Of course the aforementioned US politician has indeed had a deleterious effect upon global markets, but from your words you only seem to be referring to UK politicos.

Global stock markets have actually done very well since Trump was elected, despite the recent drops.

thriftytracey

JoeEngland wrote: »

The stock market has done quite well since the referendum, partly because of the result pushing the pound down.

As I stated "since August" when it was 7776, since then there has been a steady fall to 6704 due to business uncertainty over Brexit and we are still in the EU!

shinytop

a steady fall to 6704 due to business uncertainty over Brexit

entirely due to Brexit?

AnotherJoe

thriftytracey wrote: »

As I stated "since August" when it was 7776, since then there has been a steady fall to 6704 due to business uncertainty over Brexit and we are still in the EU!

Ah, so the issue is your very poor investment choice of the FTSE100 only ? Shockingly bad choice if that's your only investment , just very bad if its one of your investments.

cfw1994

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Ah, so the issue is your very poor investment choice of the FTSE100 only ? Shockingly bad choice if that's your only investment , just very bad if its one of your investments.

This is the point about having a spread of investments.
At any one time, one or some of them will be down.
Heck, in a global downturn, perhaps all of them may be down: this past 12 months will not be looked back on as a great time to invest anywhere, I suspect....
.....but over a period of years, things ebb & flow, with a broadly upwards motion.
FTSE 100 over 2 years is still down some 3%....in contrast with the Nikkei (up over 30%), Dow Jones 24%, S&P 18%, NASDAQ 31%......
Spread your bets beyond just our shores!

Pick a world strategy (like Vanguard Lifestrategy or similar), & things went up broadly 15% over that 2 year period.

Don't focus overly on a 3 month view.....or even 12 month.