25 and financially responsible...

DairyQueen

Jump on the property ladder asap. Doesn't matter if it's a shoebox (best decision I ever made).

Forego a few nights out each month in favour of adding more to a pension (second best decision I ever made).

Don't be tempted to buy a second home overseas until/unless you have every other savings base covered and are debt-free (i.e. you are either wealthy, or retired, or both).

Your 50-year-old self will thank you).

Alexland

capital0ne wrote: »

There is a rule (to be broken of course) that you should use half your age as %ge of your salary to put into a pension. Once you start you stick with that %ge till retitement - no need to increase it if you keep on contributing.

Another little rule (to be broken of course) is that you'll need a pot of money twenty five time the pension you think you'll need.

I am not convinced either of these 'rules' are viable with such sluggish investment returns. I have increased my pension contributions with age and plan to build pots worth 35x the size I would want to drawdown. Still it depends when you want to retire - I definitely don't want to be working to SP age!

Alex

sixpence.

capital0ne wrote: »

There is a rule (to be broken of course) that you should use half your age as %ge of your salary to put into a pension. Once you start you stick with that %ge till retitement - no need to increase it if you keep on contributing.

So if you start at age 20 you just contribute 10% of your salary.

If you start at age 40 you contribute 20% and so on,
Another little rule (to be broken of course) is that you'll need a pot of money twenty five time the pension you think you'll need.

So if you want a pension of say £30k, you'll need £30k x 25 in your pot i.e.£750k

Hope that helps.

This sort of made my head hurt.

System

Alexland wrote: »

Although the compounding advantages of investing early are clear at 25 there are other competing objectives such as getting on and working your way up the property ladder (the ultimate leveraged investment?) and while it's important to start contributing to a pension (and getting employer matched contributions) it's probably not worth making more than circa 15% total contributions towards retirement for now with a view to increasing the % over time.

For a basic rate young taxpayer the Lifetime ISA can be very useful.

Yep, I have the LIFETIME ISA

infj

My biggest regret as a 50 year old is that I didn't start investing in index trackers until I was in my 30s. I've done alright but I think I'd have enough FU to your organisational stupidity money now if I had started in my 20s.
Instead I really need another 4-5 years to safely be there.

Anonymous101

infj wrote: »

My biggest regret as a 50 year old is that I didn't start investing in index trackers until I was in my 30s. I've done alright but I think I'd have enough FU to your organisational stupidity money now if I had started in my 20s.
Instead I really need another 4-5 years to safely be there.

I'd say exactly the same.

If I could speak to my 25 year old self I'd insist on me reading as much of the Financial Independance and investment type material as possible:

Mr Money Mustache, Monevator, ChooseFI, Jim Collins, Tim Hale, MadFIentist. Lap it up and act on it all. I was in my mid 30's until I even realised any of that was possible. Not too late but if I'd have know this at 25 I'd be done with working 8-6 for someone else by now!

Riff_Raff

I'm 29 and although I've always been decent at saving and avoiding debt, I wish I'd learnt about investing a little earlier. My father lost a lot of money gambling on shares during my childhood and the stock market became a bad word that I never properly looked into until just a couple of years ago. It's now too late because I'm planning to buy a house in the next 1-2 years so am sticking to cash, although I'm dabbling with a very small SIPP (on top of my DB pension) and a small amount in an S&S ISA that I might thank myself for in 5+ years time.

Investing in passive funds wouldn't have made a huge difference based on the savings I've had sitting in cash savings over the last decade, but understanding the potential of relatively low risk investments probably would have encouraged me to save more.

MallyGirl

infj wrote: »

My biggest regret as a 50 year old is that I didn't start investing in index trackers until I was in my 30s. I've done alright but I think I'd have enough FU to your organisational stupidity money now if I had started in my 20s.
Instead I really need another 4-5 years to safely be there.

My biggest regret as a 50 year old is that I didn't start taking an interest in investing until I was in my late 40s!
I have very little mortgage left and I have always paid into pensions to get the max employer contribution (without any great thought to what it was invested in) but am in catchup now and probably won't retire till I am 60. To be fair my 'number' is quite high - if I was prepared to rein it in a bit in retirement then I could probably go earlier but that isn't what I want to do. Plus DH is still coming to terms with the idea of 60 so I can't see him wanting to stop earlier.

Thrugelmir

Sweetcake wrote: »

what advice (for those who are 25+) would you give to a 25 year -old ?

Start earlier.

sixpence.

Anonymous101 wrote: »

Mr Money Mustache, Monevator, ChooseFI, Jim Collins, Tim Hale, MadFIentist. Lap it up and act on it all. I was in my mid 30's until I even realised any of that was possible. Not too late but if I'd have know this at 25 I'd be done with working 8-6 for someone else by now!

What specifically would you go back and look at?

Sometimes I find it tough to know what I am looking for re financial independence.