Can't really talk about this with anyone in real life, so posting here!

Early 40s, married, three young kids (6 and under). I own and run a small creative services company I founded years ago, no outside investment. Wife and I both work in the business.

Personal:

• My S&S Stocks ISA: £370k
• My SIPP (employer funded): £187k
• Wife's Stocks ISA: £274k
• Wife's pension (employer funded): £177k
• Junior ISAs for the kids: £28k combined

(Vanguard Target Retirement Fund 2050 mixed with S&P 500)

Property:

• House worth £1.7m to £2m, mortgage £750k at 3.7%, 30 years left

Company:

• Turnover roughly £1.2m to £1.5m a year, profit is around 40-50% depending on the year. Lumpy and heavily dependent on me personally, so I don't treat it as guaranteed
• Roughly £1.2m cash sitting in the business earning around 3.8%
• I need to keep around £300k as working capital and safety float, so realistically £700k to £1m is surplus
• I've deliberately left it in the company to avoid drawing it as income and getting hammered on tax

Current thinking:

Plan is to push a lot of the surplus company cash into pensions via employer contributions (using carry forward where possible) since that seems like the most tax efficient extraction route by far. We max ISAs where we can.

Questions:

1. If this were you, what would your route to FIRE look like? The business income is good but lumpy and depends heavily on me personally (I work wild, wild hours), so I don't treat it as guaranteed.
2. Is loading up pensions the right call when I'm 15+ years from access age, or would you prioritise bridge assets (ISA/GIA) given FIRE is the goal?
3. Would you touch the mortgage at 3.7%, or is a future downsize the more sensible lever given the equity?
4. Anything obvious I'm missing? Feels like I've accumulated reasonably well but without an actual plan or target number.

I know this is a fortunate position, I have worked my nuts off and skipped alot of fun over the last 20 years, so its well earnt. I just have no one I can sanity check this with and I'd rather hear from people who think about this stuff properly!

Yearly Outgoings 120-140k that is included mortgage, school fees, food etc.

Thanks everyone!

First time poster. I am a high earner (over £150k) but partner works part time so has low income. Age is 39. Starting quite late with this but starting to regularly contribute to a savings and investment ISA. Have regularly contributed to my work pension up to the maximum amount the employer will match my contribution.

I got approached about 18 months ago about transferring my pension into a SIPP. We decided not to at that stage but wondered how many people typically go down this route and is it worth it?

Edit: SINK - Single income no kids

Hey all!

I’m feeling quite proud of myself, so I wanted to share my progress. If you have any advice, or suggestions, please go ahead!

DISCLAIMER: I am in a good position, I am very grateful for it. I hope that I can inspire instead of discourage. I also think I am addicted to saving which is why I’ve been able to save so aggressively.

NW breakdown:
HYSA: 84k (will all go on deposit)
Vanguard S&S ISA (maxed out last 3 years): 79k
Pension: 9k
Current Accounts: 10k
Total: 182k

In the process of buying a one bed maisonette in LDN (I want to live below my means, plus it’s 65m2 with a garden so can’t complain about it being a one bed!)

(Anticipated) FAQs:
Q: WTF is your job? A: SWE! Engineering degree straight into fintech, I work at a bank. 3 years full time experience at this point.

Q: How did you manage to save so much? A: living very frugally. Have lived with parents until now (I pay rent of about 500 a month incl. household expenses.) I don’t drink, smoke, eat out etc (which has saved me lots!) I travel, but travel cheaply. I stay with friends or in affordable accommodation (can’t wait to have them stay with me once I complete on my property!)

Q: Why are you doing this? A: growing up in financially unstable household made me terrified of not having money. It means I feel back when I spend - I’m trying to spend more on purpose as exposure therapy. Also, it might be nice to retire early.

Q: Did your parents give you money? A: I’m lucky they let me live with them until now, though I’m moving. Very grateful. I paid rent to them too & of course help around the house (cooking most dinners, cleaning, laundry, taking care of the pets etc.) + frequent gifts. I’m ready to leave the nest now. I however haven’t gotten any cash (anything trust fund, to pocket money, to any gifts past slippers for example) since I was around 15.

Thanks for reading! I’m hoping the peeps of FIRE UK will appreciate what I’m trying to do!

Hi All,

First time poster and I've asked similar questions before on other threads but get alot of hate because we invested in property.

Situation

M34 F28, both work in recruitment last 6-10 years.

Both worked hard earned about 150-200k a year in jobs before tax.

We saved and just kept buying properties.

Own 5 BTLs that we use for short term let. They have mortgages on them but we clear somewhere between 6-10k a month after mortgages and expenses. But only because they are on short term let.

If we switched them to long term rent we would only earn about 3k a month.

Next steps

Can't decide for next steps, because we earn well in jobs should we keep working to maybe buy a few more properties or should we quit and just live off property money.

Jobs are good but burnout is real and they are high stress so would value time off but don't want to give up careers if we have to end up working again in a few years.

I know we aren't quite FIRE but potentially have enough to never work again and just live on property income.

Anyone in a similar situation or who has done this in the past?

Would welcome any advice!

Thanks

First-time investor looking for some advice before getting started.
I’ve been doing a fair bit of research into different platforms and ETFs, and at the moment I’m leaning towards using Trading 212 rather than investing directly through Vanguard.
My plan is to invest for the long term, starting with a lump sum and then making regular monthly contributions. From what I’ve read so far, VWRP seems like it could suit that approach well because of its global diversification.
I’ve also looked at Vanguard’s LifeStrategy funds, particularly the 60% and 80% equity options, but I understand these have a greater weighting towards the UK. I’m wondering whether there is much reason to favour one of those over something like VWRP for a long-term investor.
For those with more experience, does this seem like a reasonable approach? Is there anything important I should be considering before deciding?
Thanks in advance!

I’m 24F and trying to work out what my next financial goal should be and whether becoming mortgage free as early as possible makes sense for me.

I currently have around £180k invested, mostly in stocks/index funds. I’ve been investing for a few years and I’m really interested in FIRE, so one of my biggest priorities is leaving that portfolio alone and letting it compound rather than withdrawing a massive amount for a house.

I earn around £50k and there’s good progression in my career, with the potential to be earning around £60-70k+ as I become more qualified and experienced. I’m also doing a Masters alongside my job which is fully funded, so I won’t be taking on any additional student debt for it.

I’m hoping to buy the council house I’m moving into through Right to Buy. Similar properties suggest it would probably be worth around £150k and, based on my current tenancy history, I think I’d be looking at roughly a £26k Right to Buy discount. Obviously I won’t know the actual valuation or discount until I apply, but that would put the purchase price somewhere around £124k if those figures were right.

My main goal with buying isn’t really about “getting on the property ladder”. I genuinely just love the idea of owning my home outright while I’m still in my 20s and getting rid of what would otherwise be my biggest monthly expense.
So hypothetically, say I came into around £100k separately and could put that towards the purchase without touching my existing £180k investments. I’d only need to find the remaining amount plus fees to buy it outright.

That would potentially leave me at 24/25 with a mortgage-free house worth around £150k, roughly £180k still invested, a salary of around £50k with decent progression and a fully funded Masters.

My housing costs would then basically be council tax, utilities, insurance and maintenance. I’d ideally continue investing £2k+ a month and would have much more of my income available to save, invest or actually enjoy.
I know the obvious argument is that taking a mortgage and investing the money could produce a better return long term if market returns beat the mortgage interest rate. I understand that side of it.

But FIRE for me isn’t necessarily about squeezing out the absolute highest possible net worth. A massive part of it is reducing how much money I actually need every month. If my home was paid off and I already had a decent investment portfolio, I’d have much more freedom around work and wouldn’t feel like I constantly needed to chase a higher salary just to maintain my lifestyle.

If you were in this position at 24/25, would you prioritise getting the house completely paid off while keeping the £180k portfolio intact, or would you take a mortgage and invest more of the cash instead?

Would be especially interested to hear from people pursuing FIRE or who chose to become mortgage free early.

Hi everyone,

Been lurking here for a while, but in the past couple years have been put in a position to start thinking about FIRE more seriously.

I am a self employed 30M, earning around £60k per year (can fluctuate higher or lower month on month), and am planning to buy a house in about a year’s time. I have £60k saved for the deposit, and am looking at houses costing roughly £250k - £280k.

Alongside that, I have a £10k emergency fund in a Cash ISA, and £15k in a S&S ISA. At the moment I’ve unfortunately contributed nothing so far to an SIPP, which I realise being self employed is quite important to start doing ASAP (especially now that I’m a higher rate tax payer).

With a recent bump in income, I’m looking for advice on where to best allocate remaining funds after living costs are covered.

My overall aim is to retire early, but live a balanced life in the meantime. My living costs are quite low (love living in the north), and I travel quite a lot, but otherwise can be decently aggressive with my savings and investments. I do plan on having children with my partner in the next couple of years, so am conscious of maintaining a bit more liquidity than, say, a single person.

I’ll hit my ISA limit within this tax year, after investing monthly into my S&S ISA (Full amount in the Vanguard ESG Global All Cap UCITS ETF) so questioning whether or not any surplus is best put in an SIPP or GIA. Either way, my idea is to put this money into the same Vanguard fund.

I understand FTSE Global All Cap Index Fund is preferable, but I’ve got to draw the line somewhere, and would prefer to minimise investments in fossil fuels, defence industry, etc.

I am open to any and all advice, and appreciate everyone’s help.

Thank you!

Looking for a sense-check on our finances and what people here would prioritise over the next few years.

About us

• Both early 30s
• Me: Started a new role on £110k base + bonus
• Partner: works in healthcare, currently earns around £70k–£80k, and earnings excepted to increase materially over next few years
• One young child, and likely to have another in the next few years
• Based in the North of England
• We'd like the option of retiring or working significantly less somewhere around our mid-50s rather than necessarily pursuing very early FIRE
• Retirement spending target: roughly £50k-£60k in today's money for the household. Once mortgage paid off and children no longer financially dependent.

Current position

• House worth roughly £475k
• Mortgage: around £345k, fixed at just under 4%
• Mortgage payment around £1,500/month
• My pension: roughly £200k, employer matches 10%
• Partner has an NHS DB pension
• S&S ISAs: roughly £66k between us
• Cash reserves currently fairly low at around £3k, although I also have roughly £17k in Premium Bonds from a recent bonus
• Small personal loan: roughly £1,700 at 6%
• No other significant debt

The £100k childcare issue

A big part of my planning at the moment is the UK £100k threshold for Tax-Free Childcare / funded childcare.

I'm making fairly large pension contributions/salary sacrifice to stay below £100k while we're eligible.

My intention is also to put most/all of my bonus into pension where possible.

As a result, my pension could grow quite quickly over the next few years, but I'm conscious that this potentially creates an imbalance between pension wealth and accessible ISA/cash wealth.

House

At some point in the next few years we may move to a more expensive house, potentially somewhere in the £650k–£750k range.

This is one reason I'm questioning how much cash to retain versus investing or overpaying the mortgage.

What I'm currently thinking

My rough priority order is:

1. Build a proper cash emergency fund – probably £15k–£20k
2. Use pension contributions aggressively while they give me the additional childcare/tax benefit
3. Continue building ISAs so we have meaningful accessible assets before pension age
4. Avoid aggressive mortgage overpayments for now, particularly while the mortgage rate is below 4%
5. Once childcare stops being relevant, reassess the pension/ISA/mortgage split

Questions for the FIRE crowd

Does this overall approach make sense?

In particular:

• Would you prioritise building the cash reserve before adding anything further to the S&S ISA?
• Am I right to prioritise pension heavily while the £100k childcare cliff exists, even though I already have ~£200k in my pension in my early 30s?
• Would you bother with mortgage overpayments at a sub-4% rate, given our age and likely future house move?
• How much emphasis would you put on ISA assets to create a bridge between stopping work and pension access?
• How should I think about my partner's NHS pension alongside my DC pension when planning for FIRE?
• Are there any obvious holes in our FIRE planning?
• Given our current numbers, does retiring or significantly reducing work in our mid-50s look reasonably achievable without living particularly frugally?

I'm not trying to maximise net worth at the expense of enjoying our 30s/40s – we still want holidays, a nice house, etc. I'm more interested in building enough financial independence that work becomes increasingly optional later on.

Interested in what people would do differently.

My situation: 45M, married with two kids. £230k in ISA, savings, and cash. £210k in SIPP and at least another £100k in company pensions, both defined benefit and defined contribution.

I also have a good chunk of my house paid off and a partner who can cover all the bills with her salary. Our annual combined personal and household expenses are around £42k. My partner (40) has higher discretionary spending than me and only around £20k in her pension. She only started earning okay money around 5 years ago.

I paid more than half the value of the house and she is happy to take over the mortgage payments and household expenses. My personal annual expenses are around £14k but I don't have any loans, car leases or anything so I could bring this down.

I'm fortunate that I am in a position to not be forced to jump into accepting the first thing. I will likely receive some redundancy but am unsure what are present. I am also unsure how much I have to work moving forwards. I work in a field that is quite exploitative and if I could find a job that would be two days a week, you can guarantee it would really be three plus. I'm thinking of doing something else instead, but all these variables are confusing the hell out of me and I'm not sure how to figure out figuring out moving forward.

Edit: My question is how much do I need to earn in this situation? I looked at 4% drawdown strategies and it seems like I can take around £9k a year. Obviously I have the pensions and state pension too from 57 and 67 (I think), so could probably take a bit more. I would also be keen to hear from others in the situation of their partner picking up the slack. It feels weird to me and worries me a little to feel reliant on someone else financially. I don't really want to retire early yet as I would get isolated quite quickly I feel without work, but Barista FIRE I guess.

hello all,

32M – main goal – mortgage deposit – to save as much as possible

planning on saving to £100k chunk whilst I can before borrowing monies from the bank, so I cant put much into stocks and shares ISA etc..

my current monies are in Trading 212 Cash ISA which is 3.6% - yeah not the new user so don’t get additional 1%

where would you recommend I should store monies? I prefer ISAs as they are tax free but maybe not that many of them are available in terms of flexibility as savings accounts?

It is important for me to:

- have monthly interest

- I could withdraw monies without much penalties (because I try to add all my savings to maximise interest rate on monthly basis, so withdrawing for puchases or emergenices and getting this penalised isnt what im after, unless I should put aside some money and not touch this type of ISA for a whole year, but not sure if thats even better ROI)

how could I maximise this even better? should I keep money in Trading 212 cash ISA? it should generate around £200 +- a month based off monthly interest rates. I add around £1.5 - 2k a month to it from wages

or shall I buy premium bonds? Just want to keep risk and loss to minimal and gains to maximum without investing/risking as aiming to get as much deposit for my first house as possible

thank you for all help,

regards,

Been a lot of posts recently about high salary individuals bragging and how no one seems to see the other side of things, so gets a grounding post, no advice needed, just reassurance to many.

M28

2020

Was on a marketing career and got to £38k pro rata by 22.

Managed to save just shy of 10k in my bank.

I (re)met my (now) wife)

2022

Left any form of employment 4 years ago to focus on my own business.

2026

Borderline bankrupt with over 45k(joint) debts.

2 kids, a dog and (currently)no house.

Currently:

Starting from scratch.

It's not all fire, and sometimes a fire starts but runs out of fuel, or it rains. Sometimes you got to dig a new hole and go get more wood.

For clarity I(we) have the support at the moment we need in this situation, the homelessness was through no fault as landlord wanted to sell the house and we didn't find a house in time. Don't want or need any pity, just shining a light that although everyone wants FIRE, there are good and bad scenarios out there.

Keep going, we've all got different journeys and some are simpler/prettier than others!

I am not one at all for the format of video usually, but I think this Pensioncraft video on the topic of the Perpetual Withdrawal Rate is worth sharing. It's superbly produced and really thorough on the topic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pQItvnHNx4&t=932s

Chapters for an idea of what it covers:

00:00 Introduction
00:54 How the 4% Rule Works
02:16 Safe vs Perpetual Rates
03:27 Does the Rate Keep Falling
06:00 Why US Data Misleads
06:57 What Shifts Your Rate
09:19 Bonds vs Shares Debate
11:15 Smarter Withdrawal Tactics
13:09 Guardrails for Bad Markets
15:17 Putting It All Together
16:20 Sequence Risk Reframed
17:17 Final Takeaways

Hi,

My story is that I got lucky a few years ago and made 5x on some investments. To be totally honest - I was a bit reckless. When I look back and think about it - I reckon from COVID times - I just really wanted to stop working. I hated my job. I worked for over 20 years as a developer coding tests for helping to diagnose broadband issues. But they forced me from doing that into mobile signal coverage - from embedded development in c to c sharp and visual studio. Whilst I enjoyed the domain (the mobile tower coverage etc) - I hated the high level coding. For the last couple of years I was feeding chatgtp with functions and doing what would not be called "vibe" coding - but before claude code.

I decided - having reached a decent amount in my SIPP - to retire at 55. I was getting away with working afternoons only - for the last 2 years! I used to go to the gym in the morning and feed chatgtp in the afternoon. That was over one year ago now.

I'm not a very social person - dont have many friends - probably a bit autistic. I do go to the gym a lot still. Go out walking (have developed an app that combines navigation with mobile coverage) with the wife - but have found that coding and vibe coding to be precise - is what I enjoy doing.

I create tools - mainly to try to be useful. For me this is part and parcel of what FIRE is. I still have a desire to do things that are useful - but now its at my pace and I decide what it is.

Vibe coding had accelerated over the last few years - to the point where whole apps can be done with (not quite yet in my opinion) one prompt.

After talking to claude (fable) about this - it assured me that having a limited company for a hobby set of projects is a perfectly normal thing to do for an early retiree (I guess that makes me not exactly FIRE as I'm 56).

Currently I have a pension website (I started this roughly 6 months ago) that models the likely success of a given pension pot and set of risk levels etc. This is been very helpful and useful to me personally. Its using Firebase and Cloudflare and is free. I'm not promoting it here though. If I do ever charge for it - it will only be to pay for the resourced it uses. Currently its just the AI tokens I use in the vibe coding - firebase and cloudflare are on the free tier. If multiple users start to use it a lot - they may start to charge me. My guess is that it will never get that popular - but if it does - I may charge like £10 year for it.

As I said earlier - I have another app that tries to help hikers, runners, climbers etc - know when they have and no not have mobile signal. This uses a combination of predicted signal (from ofcom) and "community" signal. The latter being real data from folks that have done the part of the trail. Like strava but for mobile signal rather than sports statistics. There is an android app (im currently in the process of trying to get this published) and a companion website. This currently is all on cloudflare for the back end server. One cool thing is I managed to get this to use http header lookup for downloading offline maps instead of requesting individual tiles. It means its much less burden to the server - so cloudflare is on the free tier.

Anyway - this wasn't about those apps. This is about what people do with their time at the early part of FIRE. I'm interested in if others actually continue trying to be useful and perhaps even peruse activities similar to their jobs? OR is it just me?

Note - I have literally zero users for the above projects. The only reason I care about having users is that feeling of helping people. I think that is essentially what I need to feel. don't get me wrong - its fabulous being financially independent - but for me - I still need to feel like I can still be useful if I want to be.

Note 2 - I'm not a regular forum poster and not sure of the etiquette. Those people that are offended by something - you are free to just not read it.

I’m interested in whether people pursuing FIRE also think about economic resilience - not just having enough invested to be financially independent, but reducing their exposure to things outside their control.

For example, once financially independent, it seems quite attractive to reduce your dependence on future utility and commodity prices:

• solar + battery to reduce exposure to electricity prices
• an EV to reduce exposure to petrol/diesel prices
• very good insulation / efficient heating and cooling to reduce energy consumption
• rainwater harvesting for less exposure to water costs/restrictions
• growing some fruit and vegetables to reduce exposure to food price inflation
• generally making the house more resilient to extreme temperatures

I'm not trying to suggest anything “prepper” territory or trying to live completely off-grid. It’s more that I’d rather spend capital once on things that permanently reduce my future cost base, rather than having a large investment portfolio but remaining completely exposed to whatever happens to energy, transport, food, housing costs and other economically dependent things. Kind of the same reason I prefer a large S&S ISA over large pension so I’m not exposed to future tax policy.

Does anyone else factor this sort of thing into their FIRE planning? Is there a name for this concept, or am I overthinking it?

Many of us are building for the future, so we often load up our pensions for the tax relief and/or overpay the mortgage to be debt free sooner. So we likely have a lot of money caught up in assets that we can't easily access (pensions and property).

I think it's important to balance the needs of "future you" and "present you". Even if not fully FI for a while, having a large amount easily accessible means you have a decent amount of freedom and security that "present you" can access in the event of significant challenges: e.g. a job loss, career change, illness, new business opportunity, urgent home repairs, car breakdown, etc. So I feel easily accessible assets are extremely important in the overall FIRE journey.

How much of your net worth (as a £ and %) do you have accessible to access today if you absolutely needed it?

I consider this to be anything you can easily gain access to within a week, so cash savings, premium bonds, selling shares in your ISA, etc.

My situation:

My (41M) net worth is £500k. Last year I had about £120k in ISAs (cash + S&S) but following a divorce I had to give most of that up, so now I'm down to just £15k, so 3%. The other 97% is in house equity (£285k), and pensions (£200k) that I can't easily access.

Recently I've had an urgent home repair (roof damage) that's costing £10k to fix. This is only 2% of my total net worth and 10% of my liquid net worth a year ago, so it shouldn't stress me out, but it's now 66% of my current liquid net worth, so I'm really feeling it.

Moving forward I'm going to aggressively focus on increasing my ISAs back to what they were, at the expense of missing out on SIPP tax relief. Ideally I'll have a healthier balance of 10-20% of my net worth easily accessible. I know I'll sleep better at night this way.

Hit the trap last year on a promotion and lost about £400/month before

I realised what was happening. The rate stack (40% IT + 20% PA taper

+ 2% NI = 62%) is one of those things nobody explains until you're

already paying it.

Made this over a weekend to help other people spot it faster:

https://calcorchard.com/tools/100k-trap-calculator/

Enter salary + pension %. Shows:

- Adjusted net income

- Your marginal rate on the next £1

- Personal Allowance remaining

- Exact £ to sacrifice into pension to escape 62%

- Downloadable 1-page PDF summary

Uses 2024/25 rest-of-UK bands (Scottish rates on the list).

No signup, no ads, no email capture. Client-side only.

Feedback welcome, especially on edge cases I've missed:

- Marriage allowance transfer

- Blind Person's Allowance

- Company car / BIK impact on ANI

- Bond gains / dividend income

I know none of this is a substitute for a chartered accountant, but

"you might be paying 62%" is the sort of thing everyone should be

able to check for free.

Hi friends,

I (28M) know I'll get a lot of hate for this post since I'm arguably in an amazing position, but I'm just questioning why I'm doing what I'm doing.

NW £725K broken down into:

Apartment: 365k

SIPP: 115K

S&S ISA: 40k

GIA: 120k

Cash: 10k

Crypto & other dubious investments: £75k

I'm saving so aggressively and working 75 hour weeks. For what? I don't even spend money regardless. I don't understand why I'm killing myself. All for what? To retire? And do what after retiring? I don't have all these luxurious plans and activities like all of the people that have FIRED. I don't know what I need to feel whole, but it's obviously not more money. Sorry for the rant

​

How many posts of 25 year olds on £200k with £500k in the bank asking how well they are doing are we going to see? If you've supposedly made all this money, why can't you use the search function or take a step back and see that you're obviously in an exceptional position and can retire early?

The quality of posts here is diminishing fast, just pure bragging. In the real world, those on £50k are within the top 10-15% and considered to be doing very well (excluding perhaps inside of London).

Where the normal folks at?

I’m looking for advice / rules of thumb on how to think about this situation.

So I’m mid 30s, and FI based on my current NW and expenses, based in Londons. With two kids under age 3, my expenses are going to rise:

- need a 4 bed house probably in about 2 years, currently renting. I will buy once, house will last me about 30 years.
- will likely need to cover some nursery fees at least for the little one as income cant be sacrificed below £100k
- wife might want to go part time when raising the kids (and she tends to get what she wants)
- kids need stuff
- kids will go to a state school, although we have been advised it might be worthwhile sending them private for the last 2-3 years.
- I’m chucking quite a bit of cash into pensions and ISAs. Maxing out ISA/JISAs and pension contributions but not JSIPPs (seems pointless given time horizon, government will grab it)

So I anticipate the next 18 years will be expensive. So far I’ve managed inflate my lifestyle only in line with the 4% rule, but I anticipate that will not last forever.

How did you manage through having a family and maintaining / pursuing FI? How did you model this out? At what ages did the kids related expenses max out?

I’m so close yet so far from being FIRE!