Early-retirement wannabe

MallyGirl

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81895109#Comment_81895109

usually the complaints we see on here are how many hoops people have to jump through to do what they want. It sounds like you would have preferred more hoops which would be bucking the trend. Ultimately it is up to the individual to understand the rules or do some research before doing something financially significant. You are are lucky that they are letting you rollback the tax relief with just a bit of form filling

Top_of_the_Stocks

Again thank you all.

I'm not here to make a million. Just a bit of a flutter and get a better return than the building society.

Lose a few, gain more, that is the goal. Yes i could do better here or there.

I am gambling on a 100 horse race. If you can't afford to lose don't do it. If the horse falls at the first fence, cut and run.

I don't care if Beazley have not been taken over, or the MD has been put on bail. Recent past performance might indicate future gain!!!

Just remember, be happy, as the Tax woman will reap your rewards in IHT.

cockerWalker

My first post on this thread.

I'm 50 with wife of the same age and first started thinking about retirement options in my mid 40s. I think the financial independence part of FIRE had always appealed, but up until that point focus had been on paying off mortgage. I'd been paying into a pension only since early 30s so was a bit behind. We'd also prioritised ISAs over extra pension contributions for their extra flexibility. My wife had a smaller teaching pension, but had left teaching to train as a counsellor and now is starting her own business. This means that my income has had to pay 90+% of household expenses for some years.

We're now saving pretty aggressively, mainly though salary sacrifice into my workplace pension, with periodic transfers over to sipp to reduce fees, alongside a much smaller amount going in to s&s ISA still.

The ideal position that we'd hope to be in would be for an after tax income between us of £5000/month in retirement, partly to help pay for additional projects we've got vaguely in mind. This should be easily attainable on current savings levels if they were to continue to state pension age, but more challenging to achieve by (say) 60. Currently we're living in £4k per month, so there is some flexibility in the figures.

Given current DC pension pots totalling 320k, s&s ISAs of £200k and other bank savings of £80k (emergency fund and reserved for home improvements) and wife's £9k db pension at 60, we're placing a lot of reliance on saving aggressively now, about £45-50k per year.

Concerns are about my job, clearly we're very dependent on that income for living and spending. Currently my model works at 4% real return over next decade, but high current valuations do bother me. It's also a bit unclear at the moment how we'd best bridge the gap between early retirement and state pension, as state pension would still be part of the plan. Uncertainty about tax bands and inflation can also influence ideal balance between ISAs and sipp.

Once we're in a better position to have options then we can decide whether we want to make use of them!