It's time to start digging up those Squirrelled Nuts!!!!

Audaxer

Sea_Shell said:

zagfles said:

Secret2ndAccount said:

Sea_Shell said:

Zero winnings on the PB's again for the second month (on £40k) 

Shoving it all in Marcus would have guaranteed £20.   Ho Hum.

As each month passes, surely we get more and more likely to win something....eventually!!

Savings market is not as hopeless as it was. If you prefer the guaranteed return, you do now have options.
You can now get 0.7% for instant access, and 1.1% for 120 day notice. Put 15k in the instant access, and 25k in the 120 day, and you now have an interest rate over 0.9%, which beats the Premium Bonds as long as you don't pay tax on your savings income. 

With RPI at 6% and CPI at 4.2% that is pretty hopeless. 3-5% pa real terms loss on your cash savings.

Much more hopeless than it was a year ago when RPI/CPI were 1.3%/0.7%, when even zero interest would have been better than around 1% is now.

It seems like a lose, lose situation, trying to balance access to a cash pot v inflation v market volatility.

Cash is approx 8.5% of our total pot at the moment.

I was quite pleased getting 1.3% and 1.27% last month on a couple of 1 year Fixed Rate accounts, even although inflation is a lot higher.

DreZZ

Hi all, I am a new MSE forum member.  Been reading the forum for a while and decided to get more involved.
Thanks to Sea_Shell for sharing her FIRE journey and updating progress in the original post.
I retired in August 19 age 55 and my DW retired in Jan 18 aged 56.  Must say we are enjoying control of our own time and have no regrets about leaving the world of paid work.  I know a lot of folk have their own spreadsheets they use for retirement financial planning.  I used to use a spreadsheet however I got access to Voyant Go, a very sophisticated and usable cashflow analysis tool.  Been using it since Jan this year and it has really helped my retirement planning - particularly estimating portfolio longevity and tax planning.  Using the spreadsheet I was underestimating how much income could be taken from my SIPP in the early retirement years and I would have been unknowingly heading for a massive LTA tax bill at age 75. LTA tax has not completely gone away and has also been exacerbated by the LTA freeze.  Is anyone else using Voyant GO or any other cashflow analysis tool?

LV_426

DreZZ said:

Hi all, I am a new MSE forum member.  Been reading the forum for a while and decided to get more involved.
Thanks to Sea_Shell for sharing her FIRE journey and updating progress in the original post.
I retired in August 19 age 55 and my DW retired in Jan 18 aged 56.  Must say we are enjoying control of our own time and have no regrets about leaving the world of paid work.  I know a lot of folk have their own spreadsheets they use for retirement financial planning.  I used to use a spreadsheet however I got access to Voyant Go, a very sophisticated and usable cashflow analysis tool.  Been using it since Jan this year and it has really helped my retirement planning - particularly estimating portfolio longevity and tax planning.  Using the spreadsheet I was underestimating how much income could be taken from my SIPP in the early retirement years and I would have been unknowingly heading for a massive LTA tax bill at age 75. LTA tax has not completely gone away and has also been exacerbated by the LTA freeze.  Is anyone else using Voyant GO or any other cashflow analysis tool?

Yes! Another Voyant Go user here. I can't tell you how useful this has been in planning my retirement.
Welcome to the forum.

Dead_keen

ajfielden said:

Yes! Another Voyant Go user here. I can't tell you how useful this has been in planning my retirement.
Welcome to the forum.

I think I'm going to have to give it a go...

LV_426

Dead_keen said:

ajfielden said:

Yes! Another Voyant Go user here. I can't tell you how useful this has been in planning my retirement.
Welcome to the forum.

I think I'm going to have to give it a go...

It's actually surprisingly intuitive to use. Quite an achievement really, considering the complexities involved. I really take my hat off to the Voyant dev team (btw I don't work for them). It definitely answered my immediate question of 'when can I retire'.

Audaxer

DreZZ said:

Hi all, I am a new MSE forum member.  Been reading the forum for a while and decided to get more involved.
Thanks to Sea_Shell for sharing her FIRE journey and updating progress in the original post.
I retired in August 19 age 55 and my DW retired in Jan 18 aged 56.  Must say we are enjoying control of our own time and have no regrets about leaving the world of paid work.  I know a lot of folk have their own spreadsheets they use for retirement financial planning.  I used to use a spreadsheet however I got access to Voyant Go, a very sophisticated and usable cashflow analysis tool.  Been using it since Jan this year and it has really helped my retirement planning - particularly estimating portfolio longevity and tax planning.  Using the spreadsheet I was underestimating how much income could be taken from my SIPP in the early retirement years and I would have been unknowingly heading for a massive LTA tax bill at age 75. LTA tax has not completely gone away and has also been exacerbated by the LTA freeze.  Is anyone else using Voyant GO or any other cashflow analysis tool?

I haven't heard of Voyant GO. Just had a quick look at their website and probably more than I need as I don't have any complicated tax issues. Out of interest, how much do they charge?

LV_426

Audaxer said:

DreZZ said:

Hi all, I am a new MSE forum member.  Been reading the forum for a while and decided to get more involved.
Thanks to Sea_Shell for sharing her FIRE journey and updating progress in the original post.
I retired in August 19 age 55 and my DW retired in Jan 18 aged 56.  Must say we are enjoying control of our own time and have no regrets about leaving the world of paid work.  I know a lot of folk have their own spreadsheets they use for retirement financial planning.  I used to use a spreadsheet however I got access to Voyant Go, a very sophisticated and usable cashflow analysis tool.  Been using it since Jan this year and it has really helped my retirement planning - particularly estimating portfolio longevity and tax planning.  Using the spreadsheet I was underestimating how much income could be taken from my SIPP in the early retirement years and I would have been unknowingly heading for a massive LTA tax bill at age 75. LTA tax has not completely gone away and has also been exacerbated by the LTA freeze.  Is anyone else using Voyant GO or any other cashflow analysis tool?

I haven't heard of Voyant GO. Just had a quick look at their website and probably more than I need as I don't have any complicated tax issues. Out of interest, how much do they charge?

Nothing, if you sign up for the 30 day free trial. All the features are there to produce a detailed financial plan. They even let you download the generated PDF of the comprehensive report.

Dead_keen

I've spent 45 minutes with it and it's impressively easy to use once you get to grips with how you put data in.

I haven't played with the scenario planning or the growth rate on my pensions / timing of crystallisation.  The "events" things is also not as intuitive but I'm sure it will be when I spend more time with it.  Other than tax on death, it doesn't do anything different with the numbers that my various spreadsheet doesn't do, it does produce very pretty graphs which mine don't.  The report I generated was 60 pages long.  All that in 45 mins compared with the very many hours I've thought about and played with my spreadsheets!  Definitely worthwhile.

I think I'll play with it more over the next few weeks as I have it free for 30 days.  As I have a spreadsheet that suits me and does this stuff, I wouldn't pay for it.  However, I will use it to see where there might be any differences with what I have.

I showed it to my partner and it reinforced one of the decisions that we'd pretty much taken so all good.

DreZZ

I signed up to Pete Matthew's Meaningful Academy - Retirement Planning online course and access to Voyant Go is included for a year.  It will be £120 to renew the Voyant subscription for another year.  Because the application it is web based the software is constantly updated as soon as tax rates or allowances change.  When I registered for the course my postcode set up Voyant to calculate Scottish tax rates.   I will be renewing the subscription when it is due.

LV_426

Dead_keen said:

I've spent 45 minutes with it and it's impressively easy to use once you get to grips with how you put data in.

I haven't played with the scenario planning or the growth rate on my pensions / timing of crystallisation.  The "events" things is also not as intuitive but I'm sure it will be when I spend more time with it.  Other than tax on death, it doesn't do anything different with the numbers that my various spreadsheet doesn't do, it does produce very pretty graphs which mine don't.  The report I generated was 60 pages long.  All that in 45 mins compared with the very many hours I've thought about and played with my spreadsheets!  Definitely worthwhile.

I think I'll play with it more over the next few weeks as I have it free for 30 days.  As I have a spreadsheet that suits me and does this stuff, I wouldn't pay for it.  However, I will use it to see where there might be any differences with what I have.

I showed it to my partner and it reinforced one of the decisions that we'd pretty much taken so all good.

I agree, the events feature is a little quirky, and probably the most difficult thing to get to grips with. But overall, they've thought of pretty much every possible feature you could want in a planning tool. 
Yes, tick every box on the report generator, and you'll be looking at a 60 page report, with all the graphs and timelines.