How close am I to my early retirement?

MaxiRobriguez

IamWood said:

Thank you!

I'll respond with a clearer decision on my part if it is not at all clear with a formal resignation letter.  My commitment to honouring my acceptance of my new job offer would be enough for them to accept my resignation?

I think you're over-thinking it. You don't need your employer to "accept" your resignation as you've given your notice via a formal resignation letter (it doesn't get any more clear than that!). It doesn't matter what the reason is for - you have resigned. Now it's up to your employer to give you an exit date based on either the terms of your contract or a different date that you negotiate together. 

You can be polite whilst being firm about this.

Scrudgy

IamWood said:

Thank you!

I'll respond with a clearer decision on my part if it is not at all clear with a formal resignation letter.  My commitment to honouring my acceptance of my new job offer would be enough for them to accept my resignation?

I always thought that every employee is replaceable. They may not want me to set a bad example right now.

You have not withdrawn your resignation, therefore you are still leaving on the date you set out in your resignation letter based on the terms on your contract. As far as you are concerned you are walking away on the day you committed to.

That’s it, don’t worry about anything else unless you want to change something, they don’t have to accept your resignation, they just have to process it, whether they like it or not. Although you may want to make sure HR are aware in the event your boss has not forwarded the resignation to them.

IamWood

Finally, I have the blessings from my boss and now I am preparing for my new adventure .

Obviously, the work pension (with L&G) with my current employer will be frozen. I have 3 pots:

1) Aegon (flexible lifestyle) from previous employment:    Total Charge 0.45% (270K)

2) Legal and General from my current employment:         Platform Charge 0.37% + Fund Charge (100K)

3) SIPP with Vanguard:                                                      Platform Charge 0.15% + Fund Charge (90K)
4) All my ISA are with Vanguard too

Is it a good idea to consolidate them into one or two pots? I'm not sure which would be better: to transfer the L&G pension to Aegon or Vanguard. Aegon's dynamic lifestyle seems to have done well so far.

Any advice/comment on this too?

Thank you!

P. S.
(I am using this post to document my journey to my early retirement, hopefully, it will help me achieve this goal ASAP. It is my pleasure if it would help others as well).

atush

What is the pension/charges with the new employer?

cfw1994

IamWood said:

Finally, I have the blessings from my boss and now I am preparing for my new adventure .

Obviously, the work pension (with L&G) with my current employer will be frozen. I have 3 pots:

1) Aegon (flexible lifestyle) from previous employment:    Total Charge 0.45% (270K)

2) Legal and General from my current employment:         Platform Charge 0.37% + Fund Charge (100K)

3) SIPP with Vanguard:                                                      Platform Charge 0.15% + Fund Charge (90K)
4) All my ISA are with Vanguard too

Is it a good idea to consolidate them into one or two pots? I'm not sure which would be better: to transfer the L&G pension to Aegon or Vanguard. Aegon's dynamic lifestyle seems to have done well so far.

Any advice/comment on this too?

Thank you!

P. S.
(I am using this post to document my journey to my early retirement, hopefully, it will help me achieve this goal ASAP. It is my pleasure if it would help others as well).

Firstly: you do not get ANY advice here: that is a regulated activity, & we could all be internets bots who are totally unregulated!!

In your shoes, I would do some digging into how those first three have performed during your ownership.  
Not an easy task, but check the fact sheets for the funds you are invested in, check how they have grown (whilst remembering you will have been adding to them at various points - like I said, not easy!).

If it is clear to you, for example, that the Vanguard has done much better than the others, AND there are no guarantees with 1 & 2, then I would move those into 3.  A simple admin task you can perform.
If it is tricky to tell, then there is no harm in doing nothing with them for a year, & check next year how they have done.

Do dive into the detail of where the pension new with the new job invests.  
Default schemes are often not the best: likely to be low risk, which may be okay.  
Compare how that does over the next 12 months too, and you may find you want to move the pensions to that by then.

No easy answers, sadly: a case for DYOR over the coming year, in my view.

MallyGirl

Watch out for ones with 'lifestyle' in the name as that might mean it de-risks as you approach retirement age and that might not be what you want.

IamWood

cfw1994 said:

IamWood said:

Finally, I have the blessings from my boss and now I am preparing for my new adventure .

Obviously, the work pension (with L&G) with my current employer will be frozen. I have 3 pots:

1) Aegon (flexible lifestyle) from previous employment:    Total Charge 0.45% (270K)

2) Legal and General from my current employment:         Platform Charge 0.37% + Fund Charge (100K)

3) SIPP with Vanguard:                                                      Platform Charge 0.15% + Fund Charge (90K)
4) All my ISA are with Vanguard too

Is it a good idea to consolidate them into one or two pots? I'm not sure which would be better: to transfer the L&G pension to Aegon or Vanguard. Aegon's dynamic lifestyle seems to have done well so far.

Any advice/comment on this too?

Thank you!

P. S.
(I am using this post to document my journey to my early retirement, hopefully, it will help me achieve this goal ASAP. It is my pleasure if it would help others as well).

Firstly: you do not get ANY advice here: that is a regulated activity, & we could all be internets bots who are totally unregulated!!

Thank you @cfw1994.

I understand and appreciate it. I come to seek collective wisdom as I have found many wise and friendly bots here. It is simply a family-like chat so that I can cross-verify my own thoughts.

Thanks for your comments, I'll take a look.

With best wishes for 2022!

IamWood

MallyGirl said:

Watch out for ones with 'lifestyle' in the name as that might mean it de-risks as you approach retirement age and that might not be what you want.

Very good point! Thanks.

cfw1994

IamWood said:

MallyGirl said:

Watch out for ones with 'lifestyle' in the name as that might mean it de-risks as you approach retirement age and that might not be what you want.

Very good point! Thanks.

That is a very good point: our work scheme (& I bet many) have that kind of profiling, lowering the risk (& likely reward) 10 years from retirement date onwards.

That made reasonably sense in the says when most people bought annuities at the point they retired, but for people entering drawdown (in my opinion 😉), less so.
I want to maintain an element of the higher risk to help continue the growth beyond an 'early' retiring age.  Turning off that default and paying more attention to choosing funds seems a better decision.

Clive_Woody

cfw1994 said:

IamWood said:

MallyGirl said:

Watch out for ones with 'lifestyle' in the name as that might mean it de-risks as you approach retirement age and that might not be what you want.

Very good point! Thanks.

That is a very good point: our work scheme (& I bet many) have that kind of profiling, lowering the risk (& likely reward) 10 years from retirement date onwards.

That made reasonably sense in the says when most people bought annuities at the point they retired, but for people entering drawdown (in my opinion 😉), less so.
I want to maintain an element of the higher risk to help continue the growth beyond an 'early' retiring age.  Turning off that default and paying more attention to choosing funds seems a better decision.

I think various providers now offer annuity or drawdown focused lifestyle approaches with different “tactics” to subsequent investments. I’m far from an expert but I’ve seen this as a choice in several of my DC pots. 

The drawdown approach seems to keep a larger chunk of money in equities longer term.