Early-retirement wannabe

TheTracker · 3 February 2016 at 1:36PM

Most people I work with earn 6 figures and have no reports, usually earning more than the CEO. Their managers, if they have them, generally earn ¼-½ what they do.

People aren't very good at logic. Even though fat cats have high salaries it is far more likely that someone with a high salary is not a fat cat and is much like you or me.

edinburgher · 3 February 2016 at 1:44PM

I don't know a single person with a six figure salary, I doubt I'm alone

racing_blue · 3 February 2016 at 2:16PM

For balance, I know many people with six figure incomes (not necessarily salaried though). Mainly these fall in the range £100K-£150K & I sense the air gets thinner above that point

racing_blue · 3 February 2016 at 2:39PM

And, most of the time they just sit there pressing buttons on a computer and talking to people on the phone. "This job's easy" my old boss used to say. "Coal mining: now THAT'S a hard job."

kidmugsy · 3 February 2016 at 3:16PM

edinburgher wrote: »

Ermine can be a little blinkered based on his own experiences and a bit on the preachy side.

Someone suggested recently that he should have called himself "curmudgeon weasel".

But at least he's not as thin-skinned as one of the posters at Monevator, who's always complaining that people don't worship at his feet, and threatening to block them from comments. He must be a delight to work for.

The other posters there seem grown-up though.

edinburgher · 3 February 2016 at 3:41PM

I think you must be thinking of 'The Investor'. I think his heart is in the right place, I can imagine that it must be a PITA running a blog that's full of generally excellent advice, only to have running battles with one or two dedicated smartarses who try and pick fault with whatever point he's making.

slowlyfading · 3 February 2016 at 8:19PM

I write a blog and part of it is on early retirement; very early on in my journey though.

atush · 3 February 2016 at 11:49PM

greenglide wrote: »

Having been a techie in IT since 1972 (there were some computers around in those days but most of them were huge!) I have never understood why somebody who is a true techie / scientist /engineer / etc would want to "progress" into management.

It tends to be obvious (to me anyway) who is and, especially, is not going to be good a manager or not at a very early age in their career. There arent many who excel at both, those that genuinely do are like gold dust.

In 1972, calculators were huge.

In the early 80's computers were still the size of entire rooms. i know, because I was in science and used an IBM 370 mainframe.

Alan_Brown · 4 February 2016 at 9:49AM

scaredofdebt wrote: »

I am hoping/planning to retire at 55 once I have access to my company pension, assuming the rules don't change before then, about 8 years to go.

Any comments on my plans, are they feasible etc?

I will have around £160k in my pension pot by then assuming average stock market conditions, this may not be the case of course!

I intend taking the cash over 3 years or so maximising the tax free allowance and buying property with that money to then rent out. Where I live currently I can buy 4 modest rental properties for this kind of amount and would return around £1,600 monthly which is enough for me to sustain a relatively good standard of living, plus my other incomes, more on that later.

I realise the hassles of BTL as we currently rent out my wife's old house, I am also aware of the costs involve ie the rental income is gross and not net!

I realise property prices and rental amounts can change, so that is another caveat.

I aim to have paid off all debt and mortgage etc by then also, if not I cannot afford to retire!

Finally I have my own business that I work part-time on alongside the employed day job I have - this is building me a residual income and it is something I enjoy doing so happy to carry on into retirement/semi-retirement.

I currently earn about £300 a month from this doing 5-10 hours a week but it is getting busier and I would estimate having an income of about £800 a month by the time I am going to retire, this will help sustain my whilst I get the BTL properties up and running. I can live on around £1,000 a month so would need to top this up with a part-time job or some ad-hoc work to begin with.

Does this sound at all feasible?

Thanks for any comments etc.

Just doing some rough calculations, you mention a pension of £160k, from which you could withdraw £40k tax free. The remainder of your money can be removed at 20% tax if you are careful to withdraw over an extended period and make sure you stay below the 40% tax threshold.

Once all of your money is out of the pension, you'll have around £136,000 to spend on the four BTL properties. Ignoring fees, repairs or any improvements to the properties, you'll have £34k to spend on each property.

While I understand that not everyone lives in London, this seems a very low amount of money to be spending on a house that will return a rental income of £400 per property (you mentioned £1600pm total rental). Are you sure of your figures?

edinburgher · 4 February 2016 at 10:27AM

Could theoretically buy 4 properties for that price in Glasgow, but they would be in down at heel areas and would be far more likely to return in the value of £1200/m before fees/repairs etc.

Early-retirement wannabe

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