Help planning for financial independence

justme111

Yes my eyebrows got slightly raised at the mention of children's ages and both of them presumably working full time - I did not say anything as who knows - may be they have top quality time with when they are off or may be they work part time. Besides one does what wants to do ; until they want to be with the child there is no point telling them they should and I myself have been known to prioritise other areas of life at the expense of time with my daughter..

Fire45

I have written 2 long responses to everyone and managed to lose them both through silly browser issues.. so struggling to do this a third time. Thank you everyone for the input, it has been very helpful.

Long and short of it is...

JISA, VCTs, IFA are good advice thank you, I will look into these more.

Agree, that my best option is probably some Premium bonds and drip feed into S&S non tax-advantaged account.

I don't think an LISA is a good alternative to a company pension, but I will check that against the annual limit situation, I hadn't considered that since being concerned about that limit.

I'm not encouraged by the buy to let yields and government restrictions compared to S&S, but open to challenge on this.

Higher appetite to risk - Yes... I have been thinking about this a little too. I started with a bog standard 60/40 equity bonds portfolio which has been fine. But I think a lot of generic advice is out there for those closer to retirement... I'm considering further exposure to equity, but probably after Brexit hey..

'Enjoy live a little' - don't worry about us, we enjoy it a lot. It's just the outdoors, fitness and sports, and kids that enjoy boxes and wrapping paper as much as the thing that came in it, tend to be quite cheap... Travel is fun to a point with young kids. Thankfully took the time out to backpack the world extra before now.

Insurance/Critical Illness/Income protection - I may take some advice on these. We both have 4x death in service cover, 75% salary protection. Probably enough to see kids to 16 if something happened when you add in the pension payout. But definitely need to consider this if we are not working.

What am I doing it for? Why both work when you have kids?....

Well the wife has taken a year off as maternity leave with each of our 2 recently, and we are considering the benefits of her not going back to work. I think she will likely want to do some level of work part time for the variety, rather than be full time mum.

I enjoy my job but ultimately work to pay bills. I would like to be able to reduce my hours, days or dependence on work, but that's not an option in my current career. I would love to be in a position where we are secure enough to work part time, or coach, teach, or do charitable work which I am looking into at the moment. Some good opportunities to help Charities as a Trustee, but that one is a trade-off against family time, so I have not over committed on that.

The eldest seems to thrive at nursery, so wouldn't want to deprive her of that social interaction or development completely either, so we are doing 2 days a week in nursery so there is more 1-2-1 time with our newborn. Who knows in this regard... we are feeling our way though on this one...

Think that was all the suggestions.. Thanks for the input. All very thought provoking and appreciated.