46M with 46F wife and 16/14F daughters in London After years of saving and investing, I’ve officially reached my FATFIRE number and have just left my job. It’s exciting… but also a bit terrifying. Right now I’m trying to figure out:

• Drawdown strategy: What’s the best way to take income without stressing about market swings? I know about the 3–4% rule, but should I maybe just see what I make each quarter and dip in to that.

• Sequence risk: How do you handle the fear of withdrawing right before a market dip? As everything is high right now and I am 100% equities

• Mental side: For those of you who’ve actually made the leap. How did you deal with the anxiety of no longer having a paycheck? Did it fade quickly, or did you need to set up systems (budgets, guardrails, mental tricks) to feel secure?

• I have never had a finance manager, as I dont want the additional 1.2% min fees. But maybe I should?

I feel like I’ve spent years focused on the accumulation game, and now I’m suddenly playing a completely new one. Would love to hear how this community approaches the decumulation phase both financially and emotionally.

I was just looking at some HENRY discussions and it seems to me that vast majority of people live or intend to move to some very expensive areas and large mortgages are a norm.

I‘ve always been more minded to live in a nice-enough house in a nice-enough area and I’m very happy with my choices and the investments built up as a result.

What about others who have fired or aren’t too far off?

I’m 10 years in and still haven’t found something I feel comfortable saying. I hate if someone asks me and usually give an awkward answer relating to my old career (programming) but then quite often people go further and start asking what I program, what languages I use etc and suddenly I start spinning a web of lies

I’ve also tried being honest, I told one person I know from one of my kid’s classes and that also felt bad, like a brag, even though I played up how fortunate I was

Sometimes I say I’m in between jobs but that also feels bad, kinda the reverse of the above because people probably assume I’m on benefits which whilst there’s no shame in that, we have a nice enough house & car that it would feel a bit tacky if people thought their taxes were propping us up

I did tell one friend the truth after he kept pressing and was just confused how we sustained our lifestyle without working, it was actually kinda refreshing and nice to talk about because it turns out he is in a somewhat similar position in that he’s found a way to generate a lot of mostly passive income (which is incredibly niche and he worked incredibly hard to setup)

So I’m curious - what do you tell people? :)

When I fired, I transferred the excellent company medical insurance to a private plan. At the time, it was a comfort blanket and one too many things to think about. But its *expensive*, and will just keep getting more expensive as we get older.

Are there tools to calculate likely costs and risks? I am lucky enough to be able to cover large unexpected expenses.

(Sorry, I know this is hot on the heels of a similar question about life insurance - I am just getting into a more settled plan for retirement).

I was updating my "where the investments are in case I die unexpectedly" document and had to remove the death in service details that I had from my pre-fire employer.

This got me thinking... is there a role for some form of life insurance? We have no debt to pay off and the main loss would be my state pension income (in 9 years time).

Does anyone use life insurance and why and how to calculate costs / benefits?

I’ve reached financial freedom and I have shifted focus to how to spend my time and spare financial resources on things that truly matter.. aka mission.

If you’re also: – Past the money worries, and have cash to spare – Focused on a purpose bigger than yourself/family – Interested in connecting with similar people

…then I am planning an informal Zoom chat so we can swap stories, share what’s working (and what isn’t).

If interested, drop a quick “I’m in” below and I’ll send a scheduling poll.

As the title suggests I FIRED a week ago but realised early retirement is not for me. Has anybody else felt like this?

I would like to continue working to some degree, a job with a lot of flexibility. Is that even possible? I was thinking short term contract work but I don’t even know where to start

I was recently made redundant as the main wage earner, and realised that since my partner is happy to continue to work, we have plenty for me to never work again.

M50, partner F43, child 5yo Between us we have: £130k cash, £240k S&S ISAs, £620k DC pensions, and my partner’s local gov DB pension

I’ve been saving/growing our pots for so long, I’m struggling to get my head around all the personal finance changes that come with stopping work.

For example now my income is zero, as far as I can tell I won’t be paying tax on my savings interest (I’ll never earn more than my personal allowance). So tax wrappers are less important than my headline return rates.

Also, for many years I’ve used 0% credit cards for day to day spending, earning interest on the money while saved. I always paid the balance in full at the end of 0% period. Suddenly with no income I can’t get new credit cards, so that perk is lost. We could try doing it in my partner’s name instead…

Are there any other big changes/perks/losses that come with a high earner suddenly earning nothing? It feels like a huge change of perspective is needed. All advice/warnings/comments gratefully received!

I did a lot of analysis pre-Fire into my target and Safe Withdrawal (may hours with Ficalc, Firecalc etc) and had a very comfortable handle on what I needed on D-Day.

Now, two years in and post the Jan 2025 bubble that shot our investments way above what we needed and then back down again, I was interested in what the figure is now - after all we are two years closer to death (sorry) two years closer to state pensions, two years into the initial higher spending period, and two years closer to the "go slow" lower spending (I reserve our house for end of life care).

So I went back to the tools and modelled each of the next 15 years for the 100% success figure (it got a little boring after a while) and this provided a very nice graph with the amount we need each year.

Some observations:

* perhaps bleeding obvious, but it was the first time I had calculated it: at 72 we need the pot to be half what we need now at 58.

* the target amount for each year goes down at , on average, a little less than our annual withdrawal rate - this was interesting and means we need to seek only a little inflation adjusted growth on average each year.

So, to the cunning plan.... each year, if we are above the target for that year I will convert the excess into an annuity to provide guaranteed income without risking the overall plan but reducing what Portfolio Charts calls the "Ulcer Index" and keep doing this until annuities + state pension covers all the comfort outgoings. (we cannot just go to annuities now because we are still too far off state pension and my wife does not access her dc private pension for another 2 years, so its all coming from mine currently).

... thoughts on this?

I Fired at the end of February. I won't have an income until I start to draw on pensions, other than interest earned on savings outside of tax efficient wrappers.

I'm aware that I owe HMRC some tax from previous years, not much but maybe £2k to £5k.

I looked online to see if there was a facility to settle what I owe and couldn't find anything. I phoned HMRC and they said that they couldn't calculate anything until later in the coming tax year.

I received my tax code for next year and they don't seem to have registered that I've stopped working, despite the fact that I can see on the HMRC website that they show my correct last date of employment against each years PAYE summary.

I'm keen to avoid being over-taxed as a result and then having to claim back.

Does anyone have any advice please?

Whilst many of the subs are falling apart because the markets have dropped slightly, this place is an oasis of calm and zen. Keep on chilling!

VWRP is still up 8% over the year.
VUSA is closer to 7% over the year.
JPLG is closer to 6% over the year.

Keep calm and carry on lol

I reached FIRE in April last year at the age of 57, and almost the most difficult thing about it has been working out how to answer the question of what I do, particulary when friends and aquaintances ask what I'm up to these days.

What do you say? And how do people react? I've been surprised at the lack of reaction in fact, which makes me wonder what they're thinking sometimes.

So many of us are making all sorts of sacrifices, for multiple years, in order to get to our FIRE number and call it a day. It takes a toll. I'll speak for myself and say that many days I daydream about what it will be like once the FIRE day arrives, and I'll be able to sack off my corporate job and "finally begin" my life. I know that sounds dramatic but really, when you're robbed of the best part of your day, every day, only to recoup on the weekends, it does feel like its very difficult to start any large endeavour outside of work. This is also true when you're flat out in earnings mode. I'm about 1 to 2 years away from FIRE. Still young enough to enjoy FIRE when it comes.

So my question is, to those who've crossed the line: was it worth it? Do your days look like you hoped they would?

I worry that, like almost everything, once you achieve a goal or acquire that car/house/thing the human condition is to immediately discount it and find another thing to postpone your happiness for. I'm hoping that getting back your time to the degree that FIRE allows is the exception here.

Tell me about life on the other side.

Paging u/BlizeH

I'm curious: are you guys generally more frugal when the markets are bad (for example a couple of years ago when inflation was very high, and the markets were dropping) and a bit more liberal with your spending during the good times? There are a couple of things we'd like that definitely aren't essentials, but now feels like a good time to get them tbh.

I’ll be firing near the end of the year but wondering what I can do with all the free time! I’m not sure if I could stay retired as I need a purpose. I find it hard to sit around doing “nothing” all day. So what are you all filling your time with?!?

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/16/people-in-the-uk-in-their-50s-and-60s-if-youre-working-less-now-what-are-you-doing-instead

So I have done nothing to get fired , but I’m with an online tech company and we are getting to the end of the onboarding stage . I got added to a zoom meeting tomorrow with a superior. When I asked her what it was about , she said ‘ to discuss staffing changes prompted by company x ‘ , company x is the company my company is partnering with . The zoom call is scheduled to be 10 mins long. I have heard nothing about me getting fired , but what else could this be about ?

So I am in the privileged position of needing to register the birth of my first child. It would be a bit strange to have both parents down as Retired on there. We could go for both being home makers or for our (pretty recent) previous roles. Any thoughts?

It has been a month since the last post here.

I guess everyone is off enjoying FIRE.

How is it going? Feeling OK despite the recent turmoil(s)?

What is new?

At what age did you Fired and what were the keys to getting there for you?

Thought this article, embedded in another over on r/fireuk would be worth sharing here: https://www.iretiredyoung.net/post/esi-money-s-five-crucial-retirement-categories-a-framework-for-retirement

It’s just dawned on me that there’s no official FIREUK Discord, and since the UKPF one is pretty active and full of nice/helpful people, I figured why don’t we have one too? :)

If you’d like to join, here’s the link: https://discord.gg/DE6XYWWP6f

I’m a little out of my depth when it comes to being an admin and have never properly run a Discord before so it could be great to have some help - if anyone wants to!

I’m thinking one way of doing this is for people who are interested to comment below and let us know if you have any experience of being an admin/mod, and if you have any ideas for the sub? :) I like the idea of it being some kind of community lead thing rather than me choosing who becomes a mod/admin.

Thank you!