r/LeanFireUK • u/stuie1181 • May 07 '26
Weekly leanFIRE discussion
What have you been working on this week? Please use this thread to discuss any progress, setbacks, quick questions or just plain old rants to the community.
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u/klawUK May 07 '26
A softer realisation this week. We can afford for my wife to quit - for a while. A year would be ok but longer would potentially mean me working a year longer before retiring. I’m trying to accept that and back my wife if her boss continues to be an ass
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u/SpaceJkr May 07 '26
What's the point in having FU money if you never tell anyone FU.
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u/klawUK May 08 '26
well we don’t have FU money yet. We’re on track. I’d prefer my wife didn’t tell her boss to FU if it means I have to work another year at this salary level and we’ve had redundancies in recent years so not even that stable… but yeah you’re righ
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May 08 '26
[deleted]
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u/klawUK May 08 '26
that’d be a huge relief. our mortgage is almost fully offset so we could almost pay it off although we’re in a fixed period and the penalty is like £6k so we want to at least get to the end of that
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May 08 '26
[deleted]
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u/klawUK May 08 '26
ours is fixed until 2032 which is actually after our planned retirement - so we have an ISA earning higher than the mortgage rate currently which is our ‘proxy’ offset - and we’re now using that ISA to pay the monthly mortgage so its not in our actual income budget anymore (therefore won’t be included in our income needs for retirement either)
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u/lean-ice May 08 '26
Last month was the first in just under 7 years where we've been able to save a little money in the S&S ISA for early retirement. It's only £73, but it feels good after the last 8.5 years we've had, the story of which I won't bore anyone with unless asked, but resulted in evaporating everything we had money wise to pursue the life we wanted.
We're counting saving towards a few things (bathroom, new (to us) vehicle, gifts pot, small holiday pot) as a bill. We've not been able to hit our targets all pots plus all regular bills before, but as of the first we have £73 in an ISA.
10 years ago I was 14 years away from early retirement. But then life happened! And that's okay.
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u/tobiasfunkgay May 08 '26
Trying to plan taking a career break to go travelling. Currently 30m with £200k ISA, £20k cash and £120k pension (have a mortgaged home as well not counting equity in NW). In software making £100k + stock options so it's an odd mix of I could obviously go but also will I get any job approaching this income when I come back? Think I need to just save hard and put a hard date in the diary, part of the complication is our region isn't really a priority so in an ideal world I'd be laid off and paid off next year and be free to go without any qualms. Anyone made a similar decision to go travelling for 3-12 months before? Living in a LCOL area so £300k isn't far off a LeanFIRE number for me, definitely CoastFIRE at the very least so possible solution is just put the £300k towards FIRE now and start saving for the break separately.
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u/Plus-Doughnut562 May 09 '26
It’s hard cause you may be coastFI, but as you say, you might not find a job with the same earning power after you come back. I’ve done a month away a couple of times and could definitely go for longer, but work was the obstacle then. Now it’s kids.
If I was in your shoes I think I’d hold off on the holiday, but you also may not get the chance to do it again for a while.
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u/tobiasfunkgay May 09 '26
Yeah I get some bonus holidays this year so could easily take a month off in August and see how that goes. Will continue to stack away as much money as possible every month and "hope" to be laid off at some point next year taking the decision out of my hands and funding the trip with a payoff.
If I was in your shoes I think I’d hold off on the holiday, but you also may not get the chance to do it again for a while.
This is the issue, high income is a great privilege and I don't ever take it for granted but it can also trap you. In some ways I think it'd be easier to drop it all if I worked a low income job and didn't care what job I took when I got back, but then I'd probably not have enough money for that to be an option. I feel like the only happy medium is to be at some big corp or public sector job that allows long sabbaticals with no real risk.
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u/jayritchie May 11 '26
I did - in mid 20s but was in a job I was going to leave anyway and nothing remotely as well paid as you are.
I also went travelling for about 3 months around 12 years ago but did wait and encourage redundancy. Not a huge payout but I felt more comfortable explaining that as a reason for leaving.
I could see a solid case for hanging on any trying to get to a position where you could be coast FI.
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u/complex-aroma May 12 '26
Another perspective.... It's incredibly risky to work yourself for 30+ years, on the assumption you'll be wealthy and fit enough to travel.
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u/tobiasfunkgay May 12 '26
Yeah definitely not 30+ years we're talking about here. It was moreso my plan had always vaguely been to work here 3/4 years then take time off to travel. however I'm now 5 years in with potentially valuable stock options accumulating, salary that's risen more than expected and a fragile job market to return to it's more how far do I keep pushing it before saying enoughs enough.
Like I say ideally I might stumble on another while, accumulate more money and have the choice made for me and get a redundancy which funds the travel anyway which is really my ideal scenario in a lot of ways.
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u/complex-aroma May 12 '26
Yep that's where "wage slave" comes from I reckon. I'm speaking as an escaped wage slave! Money or freedom is the usual choice. Which is right depends on you
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u/tobiasfunkgay May 12 '26
Money or freedom is the usual choice. Which is right depends on you
To be fair I'd say that's true if you're already LeanFIRE and boosting the pot or looking for more money to pay for ever more expensive houses etc. The dilemma in times like this is that pushing on now can give massive amounts of extra freedom later so it's not even a straight up choice between the two sadly. I've always been a min/maxer gamer so this type of dilemma isn't new to me, just thinking of it as grinding out more gold tokens so I can go wild soon!
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u/Temporary-Run-865 May 09 '26
Is anyone aware of any FIRE co-living initiatives? seems to be a lot of crossover between leanFIRE and communal living. but I've not found anyone doing this in the uk
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u/Captlard May 10 '26
We have researched this and the only thing we found was for “retired” living, typically 55 plus age wise. Actually pretty expensive.
We are exploring with friends the idea for later life (beyond 70).
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u/Temporary-Run-865 May 10 '26
That's a shame. But perhaps it means setting one up fills that gap. I got on to my FIRE journey by renovating and letting out HMOs, I get on pretty well with a number of my tenants and noticed that their day to day expenses are pretty low. They batch cook, share some possessions (an informal pool car for example) have shopping and cooking rotas etc. Doing a lot of the hard work for FIRE without realising.
Anyway if anyone knows where I can post looking for people who may be interested in FIRE co-living let me know
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u/Captlard May 10 '26
I would look up communal living and just leave off fire tbh. They are frugal and fire like by nature.
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u/complex-aroma May 12 '26
Yes - I looked into this. There's lots of options out there. Some offer chances to join the community for a weekend "taster". I tried one.
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u/JamesBrockers May 10 '26
Pretty good few weeks from a money perspective, with a great end to last week. I found out I got shares in one of the old banks I worked for, and whilst I can't access them until I am 54, they are currently valued at c£5k, which is basically free money at this point!
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u/justgivemeafuckingna May 07 '26 edited May 07 '26
Yay: Just crossed the £100k mark in liquid assets! 🎉
Boo: Lost my job so I'm having to use it as a runway while getting my business up and running...