Getting FIREd up 😀

beanielou

Offering sympathy.

edinburgher

We're all on our own journeys, sympathy duly extended for whatever the other thing is!

Jessy103

Sympathies, but whatever it is, you've got this! 💪

South_coast

Thanks everyone 🩷

South_coast

I have been doing some more retirement pondering and came across some figures I posted on page 1 (Boxing Day 2021) about where I would like to be aged 45, with a view to coasting the rest of the way - so I thought it would be fun to do a little comparison to see where I am now, with 2 years to go 😀

Pensions: £75k. Normal contributions and no crashes should get me there, so this isn't a particular focus. Current £60,206.14/£75,000 - Now £100,020.62

LISA: £40k. This will be achieved as long as I can put in the maximum £4k/year. Current £10,015.92/£40,000 - Now £32,973.58

S&S ISA: £90k. This is the biggie 😮! This is where all the savings will be going once the refurb is sorted.... Current £1,046.98/£90,000 😳 - Now £15,310.82

So, pensions have done well 😳! This would have annoyed me at the time, as I didn't want to have too much in pensions because I didn't want to pay tax in retirement, but the increases in the state pension so that it's now within a few pounds of the personal allowance means that's inevitable now (and also that I need to save more to allow for tax being deducted 🙄)

The S&S is what's really suffered, which is a combination of a few different factors (see below), and is still some way off having meaningful money going into it. I should be on the cusp of getting going on this by this time next year though 👍 The LISA has been shelved as a priority in favour of the S&S, so this will only be getting interest added from now on (though that's still doing OK, currently getting 4.25%)

Things I didn't foresee in 2021:

• The refurb costing 2.5x my guesstimate, thus losing a whole year to repaying the resulting debt (OK, I could have done something to at least estimate the costs, rather than pick a number that sounded feasible and go with it 😬)
• "The other thing"
• Changing job
• Having to change car at least 2 years earlier than planned, as the new job had different rules
• Donald Trump returning to the White House!

So taking that lot into account, I'm pretty pleased 😀!

I've also had a bit of a go at re-working my "number", as my hunch was correct that my previous figures were a bit more austere than I would like. I know what I want as income, but came up with three different sets of numbers for how to achieve that, so have shelved that again for the minute (partly because I didn't like what they did to my timeline 😳)! What it has shown me though is that I can probably afford to pay a bit more into my pension while still keeping my existing savings targets on track (ie just have a bit less to live on each month), so I'll look into that, but I'm keeping my target number the same for now until I can better work out what it actually is 🤣

South_coast

Gah, it's worse than I thought - have just spotted that "Age 60-67" is 8 years, not the 7 I had based the figures on 🤦‍♀️! Think I need to step away from the calculator!!!

edinburgher

I am now using the comfortable retirement living standard + mortgage for our estimations. Not planning on sitting in the cold eating cat food 😉

South_coast

I was looking at that earlier, some of them seem wild over-estimates (I could never spend the minimum standard £55/week on food, for example, and I think I'd struggle to achieve "minimum" £450/year on clothing), but the moderate allocation for holidays seems rather bleak!

South_coast

P.S. What will you be feeding the cats 🤔???

edinburgher

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81950358#Comment_81950358

I think the categories and specific amounts are a nonsense, but the overall amount seems about right. £43,900 is pretty much bang on 75% of our take-home wages, allowing for mortgage separately means that we'd be pretty comfortable (our terms, not theirs). We'd have about £200/month less in total than we do with jobs, seems ok to me 🙂

Ps. Hopefully the cats will be gone by then 🤭