Only freedom will do

NorthernMonkey1

Have you used the aviva pension calculator? It's quite easy to use and gives lots of sliders to move things around.

At 36, I'm on track to retire at 63, but I need to increase what I pay in quite a lot if I want to bring that down to 60.

edinburgher

Thank you for your advice - you have gave me a lot to think about and investigate.

You're welcome, but think of it as ideas, I'm not qualified to give advice

Have you used the aviva pension calculator? It's quite easy to use and gives lots of sliders to move things around.

Not personally, but I've had a fiddle with the HL one and the calculator offered by my own pension provider.

It's important to keep in mind the fact that reducing expenditure is just as (if not more) powerful than saving more. Each belt tightening exercise that doesn't have a significant impact on your quality of life is money that you will never have to find again.

NorthernMonkey1

I've been thinking quite a bit about my pension recently. I've upped my payments to £788/mo by putting all of my last pay rise (had a nice 3% increase last year) in but my pot so far isn't huge, and at 36, it frightens me a little.

NorthernMonkey1

Your £40 a day NetWorth increase thread from a few months ago had a significant impact on this decision It might be a couple of years before I can up things to the £1200 mark, but I've got something to aim for now

edinburgher

Well, if you're frightened I should be terrified, but I'm not

You are paying a fantastic amount, I think we invest maybe £100/mth more *between us* than you do.

What have I got to be optimistic about? A preserved pension of £2,000/year, £36,000 or so of funds and a plan...

Still, bad months on the markets still unnerve me, as they make a material difference to our plans. For example, we were 17.xx years from FI in April, but this had risen to 20.xx by the end of May. Hopefully this will fade in time as our home equity increases and our pension pots grow.

Your £40 a day NetWorth increase thread from a few months ago had a significant impact on this decision

Just remember to revisit the numbers as your expectations or reality change. I suspect that my number needs a bit tacked on now, but it's too early to know how much. Have started investing £1/week/year of age for DD to avoid the need to make too many significant one time gifts to her in future

NorthernMonkey1

I've been thinking a lot about what you've said.

I think of my house the other way to you. I think of it as a liability not an asset.

It's not something I can get rid of and sell, as I'd be living in a hedge, and if I can't sell it, but have to pay for it, then it becomes a liability.

To minimise this liability, I need to get rid of the debt associated with it (my mortgage) so I'm trying to pay it all off by 2025.

I think I'll be a lot less worried about stuff once this is done. Everything becomes a lot easier once you don't owe people money.

AlexLK

I'm 34 with no pension at all if that makes anyone feel any better.

Equity in your own home is an interesting one. I see it as largely irrelevant unless you're moving somewhere else and can release the equity. At the moment mortgage rates are so low that I'm personally quite put off making over payments as money can be used in other ways to "beat" the interest. However, I am planning to start investing (when I've read the books and have £10,000 to start), so should rates rise rapidly the money that would have been used for over payments can be released easily to pay a portion of the mortgage.

...And that, I reckon, is my most sensible post on here yet.

edinburgher

Equity in your own home is an interesting one. I see it as largely irrelevant unless you're moving somewhere else and can release the equity.

At a gut level, we can all agree with that. On the other hand, why not include it? If you need to spend £200k to buy a nice family home suitable for your brood and have paid off the mortgage, you no longer need your £800 (example) a month for the mortgage. So your net worth has definitely gone up and the amount of income you need has definitely gone down.

...And that, I reckon, is my most sensible post on here yet.

Yay, we've got to him! :T :rotfl:

turtlemoose

29 here (the big 3-0 shortly!) and my pension contribution plus employer match is only £250 a month! I have been paying in to it since I was 23, always at 5% matched. I thought I was doing all right but now I'm wondering, eek!

OH is 39 and has only this year started paying in to a pension, I've nagged him to set it at 5% (if he doesn't he just pays proportionately more CSA. Either way he can't have the money now, so why not have the money later rather than not at all!?). But if he had his own way he wouldn't put a penny aside.

Karmacat

turtlemoose, £250 a month is heaps better than doing nothing at all - worse case scenario, there's a gap you'll have to fill later on, by accelerating your saving - think how big the gap would be without that £250 per?

One of the biggest chunks of my pension provision (which has a huge gap, and I'm, erm, twice your age :o:o is from quite a short lived pension I set up when the mortgage interest rate came down from 15% to 10% in one go. I set up a pension with a monthly contribution of the difference in my mortgage payment, which went from c£500 to c£350, so it was £150. It only lasted about 3 years, but its now worth about £25,000. Such is the power of compound interest