Am I well balanced?

System

Society would have to fall a long way before it'd decide to fail my clients and I would see that coming way off

bowlhead99

I'm sure we're all intrigued by what the job actually is, and you don't need to tell us because that's private.

But the job security and DB pension permanency angle was simply brought up because you don't have much in cash and you were treating the SIPP as something you didn't really need and therefore an excuse to go high risk single sector (now perhaps high risk dual sector with smallcaps and EM).

From what we know about your job:

The role is quite hard (to you) and the kind of thing that keeps you awake at night which is driving you to look for financial freedom.

But the employers do not value it enough to pay well for it.

Nobody in your company wanted an internal promotion to supervisor so you were the only person who applied for the job at what they would pay for it, as people get the same remuneration from other, easier, jobs.

Per your other thread, your employer - and by extension, society at large - values your efforts at less than £18k a year.

Your employer doesn't see fit to keep the department fully staffed or overstaffed so it's sometimes understaffed and managers have to roll up their sleeves to help. You are pretty much the only reliable hard working person left on the section.

It may be a "worthy" job and your clients might need or want the service, but not enough for the employees to be deemed worthy enough to be paid enough money to take your family out of tax credits. It does not sound like a job with a bright future. You will change career like the rest of your generation, once a microchip can cover half your weekly tasks without demanding £1.5k a month plus pension and holidays.

In a decade's time when a portion of the customer interaction is handled by AI, and computer-defined rules help everyone get a well-programmed answer to their problem - you will not be needed 40 hrs a week. You will retrain or move to a different employer, who by that point will no longer be offering DB pensions (whether public or private sector).

So personally I would see the SIPP as quite important, as nobody aspires to live on state pension and you can't possibly foresee the needs of your family in 30-40 years. You mention pension credits for example, yet these are already on the way out.

Expect the best but plan for the worst. Nobody is saying an investment in smallcap today will be worth less in 40 years than it is today. But it could easily be worth less than a periodically rebalanced multi asset fund that has some smaller percentage in that sort of asset.

IMHO.

System

I am quite an AI enthusiast and do anticipate as you say more jobs going to it. In fact if society decides not to support all the unemployed there will be then the only way to still have an income would be to own shares

My job is officially classed as one of those in the "easier to automate" category but I dont agree, the physical part is too dexterous at the moment and the interaction part - wouldn't work that way.
I think indexing is an example of the better jobs actually being more automatable - more data based, less physical, its what computers are good at, and computers have already hollowed out much of the middle class

Depending on the sipp is like expecting an apocalyptic future where saving that obsessively hard is completely necessary, lots of people who are far less prepared would basically starve before it got bad enough to endanger me, enough to cause revolution

If the realistic worse case scenario over the long term is break even and lost opportunity, how can that be worse than all the people with no savings?

SavvySparkle

I am not sure of your age, but have you considered a LISA (Lifetime ISA) which will be available to invest in from next April if you are aged 19-39, it sounds like it will be a good addition to savings when you have built up some easily accessible funds first. I am new to this and would like advise myself on how to set up a new 'thread'. I would like some opinions too, unfortunately I am just over 40 years old and so will not be able to take a LISA and would like to discuss this with some likeminded people... Many thanks.

System

I think pensions have the accessibility edge over lifetime isa (55 or 57 as against 60) and lifetime isa bonus is just an analogue to pension tax relief for low earners, the only real function of lifetime isa is for first house purchase

System

Savvysparlle - I don't think you're missing out on anything unless you're a first time buyer, pensions have less restricted tax relief

ColdIron

If I may summarise

1) OP asks if he is well balanced
2) Everybody, literally everybody, suggests that he is not
3) OP digs his heels in and defends his position(s) in 30 odd posts over 3 days

Would that about sum it up?

Gadfium

ColdIron wrote: »

If I may summarise

1) OP asks if he is well balanced
2) Everybody, literally everybody, suggests that he is not
3) OP digs his heels in and defends his position(s) in 30 odd posts over 3 days

Would that about sum it up?

The chip on his shoulder is causing the imbalance....

AndyT678

It's not a new phenomenon...

Dante about 700 years ago, "opinion—hasty—often can incline to the wrong side, and then affection for one's own opinion binds, confines the mind."

and Francis Bacon about 400 years ago, "The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion ... draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects or despises, or else by some distinction sets aside or rejects."

System

I didn't dig my heels in, I agreed I need to increase cash and my exposure to emerging markets of all cap sizes.

I just said that it's in different pots rather than the same pot, the isa, the sipp, the house, the mortgage, and cash