what do you do when you have cleared all debts?

Kantankrus_Mare

Catbells wrote: »

Sorry but I'm a newbie and embarking on investing some of the proceeds from the sale of the family home in a pension. Several here have talked about BTLs. What are BTLs please?

Buy to lets.

shirlgirl2004

We have a max of 2 years until our mortgage is paid off. When we are eventually MF then what would have been spent on the mortgage will be spent on school fees of around £14k a year. Our mortgage was less than this before we started payin g it off! I will be 40 by then and DP will be 44 he already has a very good pension but I'm sure we'll find something else to spend our money on

donstermonster

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

Are you sure you want to put all of your retirement planning into something as ill-liquid as property?

How do you see the second property providing an income? I looked into BTL a while back while I was trying to create a balanced retirement portfolio of traditional pension (invested in funds), ISAs (funds and individual shares) and one or two BTL properties.

The trouble was that I just couldn't get the sums to work for me. Once I'd factored in the cost of buying the property (deposit, stamp duty, legal costs, estate agent costs, mortgage arrangement fees), the cost of renting out the property (Buildings Insurance, more mortgage arrangement fees as each deal lapses, property maintenance, gas & electicity checks, management costs - typically 15% for full managed property, mortgage interest) and the cost of selling the property eventually (legal costs, estate agent costs, capital gains tax, mortgage redemption fees) against the income from renting (which should also account for periods when the property is empty, and also possible legal costs due to bad tenants).

The returns just didn't add up and I would have been better off putting my initial BTL deposit into a good cash ISA and have zero hassles.

Surely the most iliquid retirement fund is a pension?

You can do nothing with it until you are 55 , so if you are unlucky enough to get terminally ill at 54 or earlier and fancy doing something with YOUR money, well tough really you cannot, pretty iliquid i would say whereas if you had a property , well you can sell it whenever you like

Just my thoughts

want2bmortgage3

exactly donster... i'm really not interested in pension plans, i dont like the whole idea of them. i'd much rather have an investment property paid off and live off the income from renting it out.

Up_the_Creek_4

Hi,

I posted a similar question, it's on page 5 now, feel free to read through. However I am still no further forward. I am not a fan of pensions and do not know what else to do except sit back and wait to buy up a reposession, I feel we need to look at something we have a thread of control over.

count_rostov

I don't usually come over to this board (see signature for priorities) but occasionally browse all you MFBs to see what I can one day become. I find this thread amazing - I can't imagine ever retiring! What would you do all day? After you've read the paper cover to cover, planned your lunch and dinner and shaved your lawn, surely you're just killing time until you can have your first drink?

Nala

We have 2 buy to lets on interest only....am saving leftover funds from rent and tax so we can swap them to repayment at the end of the fixed rate periods - we took these out as interest only as we had a mortgage on our house. Funnily enough I look on these as a business as opposed to OUR debt so as far as my little head is concerned we are MF!

So personally, and not sure whether we have done rightly or wrongly but it works for us.......when we became MF the first time we saved so that when we found a house we to upgrade to we would have a bigger deposit and extra funds for fees.

The 2nd time....we did the same.

The 3rd time...4 years ago...we started investing in cash ISAs. We now make sure that we always top these up first. I have also joined a pension scheme at work, for better or worse!...work pay a 6% contribution and I decided to pay 15% (we have to pay a minimum of 8% but I panicked and decided to pay more!) Also make sure we have a good holiday every year...with a couple of mini breaks thrown in.

So what are we saving for? I always thought it would be so that we could retire early. Now that my children are 12 & 15 I'm thinking more along the lines saving for university fees! I save the child benefit for them and they are really good at saving some of their birthday and Xmas monies.

Catbells

count_rostov wrote: »

I don't usually come over to this board (see signature for priorities) but occasionally browse all you MFBs to see what I can one day become. I find this thread amazing - I can't imagine ever retiring! What would you do all day? After you've read the paper cover to cover, planned your lunch and dinner and shaved your lawn, surely you're just killing time until you can have your first drink?

Writing the novel. Growing vegetables. Travelling the world. Studying philosophy (or whatever you missed earlier in life). Charity work here/abroad. Forget thinking about lunch and dinner and the b.... lawn and drink - use your imagination and creativity and talents. They don't die when you retire.

want2bmortgage3

catbells.. totally agree.. life is short, there are plently of things you can do without doing something just because you have a mortgage to pay. a lot of people seem to think it would be boring not working but i think they have no imagination. i'd like to travel, not necessarily abroad, plenty of places in the uk i havent been to. would be cool to travel around the coast. i'd like to learn the guitar and write songs, i love music, altho very fussy. i love the mk1 and mk2 vw golf gti so would like to maybe restore one of those. i enjoy food and would like to learn more about cooking and be more confident with it. been veggie for a while and would like to make the most of it, if i had the cash maybe open a veggie cafe/restaurant. if i found somewhere i fell in love with (probably by the coast) maybe run a b+b. the possibilities are endless.. all i can say is think about what you're passionate about and try new things

count_rostov

want2bmortgage3 wrote: »

catbells.. totally agree.. life is short, there are plently of things you can do without doing something just because you have a mortgage to pay. a lot of people seem to think it would be boring not working but i think they have no imagination. i'd like to travel, not necessarily abroad, plenty of places in the uk i havent been to. would be cool to travel around the coast. i'd like to learn the guitar and write songs, i love music, altho very fussy. i love the mk1 and mk2 vw golf gti so would like to maybe restore one of those. i enjoy food and would like to learn more about cooking and be more confident with it. been veggie for a while and would like to make the most of it, if i had the cash maybe open a veggie cafe/restaurant. if i found somewhere i fell in love with (probably by the coast) maybe run a b+b. the possibilities are endless.. all i can say is think about what you're passionate about and try new things

Yes, but what's stopping you doing these things now? I'm 27 and I live between the mountains and the coast in Scotland (ok, I'm from here and only moved away for university). We grow our vegetables, rear our own animals, am planning to extend the house to B&B and start a campsite in one of our fields, I have a contract for my second knitting book and I also have a full time job in publishing which I do remotely! My fiance runs his own landscaping business. I'm not bragging and we don't have children yet so I realise we will have less time on our hands in the next few years. But my point is that work should be enjoyable and if you're just working to pay off a mortgage then retire to somewhere else you'd rather be, why not establish that lifestyle straight away?
More and more people retire to my village, usually early retirement, and they all look so bored! The papers arrive at 10.20 and at 10.30 I see them all trotting down to the shop (my office is in the front room). It's the highlight of their day. The most exciting point of their week is when the mobile bank comes on a Friday. They all line up to use it, why I have no idea, as the Scottish Government put in subsidised broadband for everyone so they can bank online, and they don't run businesses where they would need to bank cash. I mean, these people are in their 50s - perfectly able to still work! They don't really know anyone, they have no relations here, their children didn't grow up here and never visit. And they never last more than 10 years here. At the end of the ten years they look so much older than they really are, I can only imagine from a combination of not doing that much and drinking a little more than they should.
That's why I can't imagine retiring - I really like the various work I do and I hope I'll be more creative and enterprising in my 80s. My grandfather is a GP in his 80s and still has some private patients who are even more antiquated than him!