£1250 - 'spare' pcm

atush

Geez Louise?????

Your company has a pension and you have not joined it?

Say your company matches your contribution. Say you put in 80. The govt gives you 20 in tax relief. Makes 100. Company puts in 80, does the same. That is 200 in your pension for cost to you of just 80. What else can you do with 80 that does the same (overnight)???

How much exactly have you been throwing awya each year????

Join it tomorrow.

Mattygroves2

tommer82 wrote: »

Company does have one, this is an area I should research, as I don't really want to be working after 50, so its whether to start a pension now or just put the extra money into other things

If you're in your 30s and not got any savings or investments now then you'll struggle to retire at 50 unless you're due a big windfall or expect spectacular payrises. As said above don't miss out on free cash from your employer via their pension scheme.

You need a lot of money to support 40 years of retirement at a reasonable living standard - have you worked out how you're going to do it and how much you'll need ?

kidmugsy

What's the LTV and interest rate on your mortgage?

tommer82

atush wrote: »

Geez Louise?????

Your company has a pension and you have not joined it?

Say your company matches your contribution. Say you put in 80. The govt gives you 20 in tax relief. Makes 100. Company puts in 80, does the same. That is 200 in your pension for cost to you of just 80. What else can you do with 80 that does the same (overnight)???

How much exactly have you been throwing awya each year????

Join it tomorrow.

Only really been working for a few years

Its something need to look into, I just don't want to be tied to it till a certain age. I need to see if there is some flexibility if I wanted to exit out early.

Mattygroves2 wrote: »

If you're in your 30s and not got any savings or investments now then you'll struggle to retire at 50 unless you're due a big windfall or expect spectacular payrises. As said above don't miss out on free cash from your employer via their pension scheme.

You need a lot of money to support 40 years of retirement at a reasonable living standard - have you worked out how you're going to do it and how much you'll need ?

move to a hot and cheap country

kidmugsy wrote: »

What's the LTV and interest rate on your mortgage?

The house was 150k, I put down a 40k deposit. Currently its fixed, I think at 3.9%, that ends next year.

The house was valued at 190k the other day, after spending around 18k.

tommer82

Update

A few alarm bells went off in this thread about Pension, of which I have none. So currently I am giving that a bit of reading, so depending on how much I contribute will take a dent of that £1250, at the moment i'm kinda rounding it off to around £1000. Still quite a bit to 'play' with.

atush

you have it wrong way round.

1K into pension, play with the 250 into a S&S isa.

kidmugsy

tommer82 wrote: »

Currently its fixed, I think at 3.9%, that ends next year.
….The house was 150k, I put down a 40k deposit ...
The house was valued at 190k the other day

In your shoes I might aim to retire at 55, which is the age you can crystallise your pension and get out a tax-free lump sum and draw income. So if I were contributing to a pension to let me harvest the employer's contribution, I might try to save any excess income beyond that with a view to keeping my owner-occupied LTV below, say, 60%. Currently it seems that your LTV is on course to be £110/£190 = 58%. I'd save some cash so that next year at re-mortgaging time you can put some more of your own cash in if the bank's valuation should happen to be lower than £190k. Once you've remortgaged for a decent time period on that favourable LTV you can re-think what to do with any capital left over. If your LTV is low enough to get you the most favourable interest rate there's no need to bust a gut to pay off the mortgage, since you can expect to use the tax-free lump sum from your mortgage to do that if that is what you want to do at age 55.

P.S. You really do want to save into a pension, up to the level where you are "harvesting" the maximum contribution your employer will pay. Beyond that level, you'd want to think carefully about your best strategy, but up to that level you are throwing away "free money" if you don't do it.

cashbackproblems

The lodger idea is a great source of income and only marginally increases bills.

I would definitely join the company pension as mentioned as its free money you are turning down.

I personally have an S+S ISA with HL where i invest £50 p/m into 7 funds, ranging from emerging markets to Blackrock Tracker funds (which have v low annual fees e.g. 0.15%). You don't have to be an expert to just pick a few trackers and they have a wealth 150 with suggestions, all have performed well over the years.

chucknorris

tommer82 wrote: »

Update

A few alarm bells went off in this thread about Pension, of which I have none. So currently I am giving that a bit of reading, so depending on how much I contribute will take a dent of that £1250, at the moment i'm kinda rounding it off to around £1000. Still quite a bit to 'play' with.

You should invest the largest amount that you can in your pension that would be matched by your employer. What are the pension scheme details about your and your employer's contributions? Others have said it already but you really should stop refusing the free money on offer every month (employer's contribution and pension tax relief).


EDIT: I'm investing £50k into my pension this tax year and will continue to pay up to the max annual allowance (£40k next year).

billchecker1

1) transfer the balance of the card when that comes to an end.
2) Stick the 1K into a stock and shares FTSE tracker ETF (Vanguard ETF).
3) If you have any spare over the ISA allowance pay off the mortgage.
4) Reinvest the dividends.
5) Wait for 30 years to pass.
6) Enjoy your retirement!