FIRECalc

Surely it’s good to ask questions as opposed to being naive about the setup.

For me, it is purely about putting mild constraints on pleasures so they remain treats. Experiences are just as much consumerism as purchasing goods and I just found I enjoyed what I did have more that way and a bi-product was increased savings which lent its self to investing and will lead to a slightly earlier retirement then the state would otherwise have dictated. I didn't wake up one day and decide I am going to retire as soon as possible. It was a natural progression of having savings and asking 'and now what'. It's not that I dislike work, just that I don't want to be doing what I am now in my late 50s or 60s. I don't want to be the person which people question how far from retirement I am, or say that I'm just biding my time until I get my pension. I have ideas what that 'retirement' might entail and some of them are what many would consider as jobs.



I always thought it as odd that pensioners don't continue paying national insurance to be honest. Health and care requirements go up substantially in later years. From what I can work out, you don't pay NI on early access to your pension either.


I have contributions from the age of 16 and would only need to earn enough in my 50th year to cover the minimum contributions rather then work a full year. I am not expecting this to be a problem for my plans, but you can always buy more qualifying years, but probably better to do this closer to the time as their might not be a state pension then.

I will be about 8 years short on NICs. I plan to make VCs.

SP is not a critical part of my plan. I will be almost 70 when its due anyway and have (hopefully) been retired for over 25 years at that point so dont think its a big deal.

One thing I might mention is that when retired and even with expensive holidays its really quite easy to live inexpensively. Once the mortgage, the commuting costs, parking costs, the lunch sandwiches etc have gone apart from food, entertainment, holidays and utility bills there's little call on disposable income. We dont have grandkids yet. Obviously.

To be honest I'm surprised just how easy it is to live really well on what I had previously thought would be a "budget."

I retired early at 51, sorted the pension out, and decided to put something back into society, through teaching and mentoring, which lasted a couple of years until I realised that the scrotes I were trying to help were just that, scrotes.

My wife was still working, so I started a little lifestyle business which provides my car, some dividends, bit of pension top up, and the minimum salary to avoid tax and NI. It also gives me an interest and as it's not onerous I can run it from wherever I happen to be. Australia, USA or even China. We do like to travel.

My wife has now retired but an elderly MiL requiring care takes up quite a bit of her time so each of us having seperate interests ensures we don't get too bored with just each others company. She is however threatening to get a National Trust pass for us. Dire news.

When my wife retired, at 59, we took her pension income , deducted it from her salary and worked out what she would need to take from the cash lump sum annually to maintain her previous net monthly income, thus ensuring no drop of living standards. Four years in, she hasn't had to take anything out of her cash sum and in two years she gets the full State Pension.

I haven't even touched my private pension yet, there is no need, so it sits there growing slowly, and in four years I also get a full State Pension. So both state pensions will be coming in and we don't even spend our income now. When I'm 66 I may or may not continue with the business, or even sell it. I suppose it will depend how I feel at the time as it's still fun at the moment. Would you give up a hobby just because you hit 66.

As regards the 35 years NI contributions, I retired at 51 with fully paid up NI contributions because I started working in school holidays at 16 and paid NI on my wages. This continued throughout 6th form and University summer holidays. These summer jobs gave me NI entitlement for all those 5 years. At the time I didn't know anything about NI or realise its significance. At 16 I just wanted a car for when I was 17 and a pair of Black Wrangler Elephant Cord jeans. Both to impress the ladies. It worked. The practice wife and I divorced in 92.

Therefore its worthwhile checking your state pension forecast. Even if you have underpaid your NI ( eg after being contracted out of NI) you can make later lump sum payments to buy back contributions and increase State Pension levels.

In short, once retired with mortgages and big purchases out of the way, its not difficult to live well for a lot less than you anticipate. You will spend more on experiences, but equally remember them for a shorter time.

Also get your state pension forecast it may well be good news. Especially if you had temporary jobs whilst younger. My daughter has also benefited from her part time weekend job in this regard so its not just oldies like me this applies to.

Good luck all.

When did that change? 16 year olds going into 6th form or college don't get two years of NI credited to them now.

These models are based on various assumptions at this point in time which can be very different 12/24/36/48/60 months down the line e.g. Your investment growth wasn't as good as you originally expected, regulatory tax changes is taking a bigger cut from your pension, your personal financial demands has changes for whatever reason etc....Hence, you should regularly revisit the plan with the latest updates to ascertain the impact to your retirement plan.

Quite a good article on FIRE.

https://monevator.com/weekend-reading-frugality-ou...

I agree that it can apply to anyone and in many different forms, Coast/FAT/Barista etc cover these I guess. I only really found out about such things about 3.5 years ago when my wife and I were early 30's, what it has done is change the mindset and know there is 'another way'. While I am learning everyday (annoyingly if I knew what I know now, I'd have done things VERY differently when we bought our current house a while back, hey ho), reading further into the topic has given me much more knowledge and understanding of the options that exist. This has been invaluable, I'd go as far as saying this will be a generational change for my kids and their kids. All thanks to reading up on FIRE.

I like to think of it a bit like what I knew at 25 vs 15 about 'work and careers' - when you're 15 you get told about the 10 different career types you could have, they're very generic and top line 'Fireman, Police, Doctor, IT, Lawyer etc' - when you are 25 you realise the amount of nuance and depth of some of those categories and have a far greater understanding of where to pitch yourself and what options you have - you wish you knew most of it before you did a degree in many cases. That is what FIRE has done for me with money.

I note there is a lot of binary thinking on the subject, I see it on Reddit a lot, especially around children's schooling etc "save it into an ISA, much more useful than any paid school" type comments, or people forcing themselves to live in grim places because they're cheap. I saw condi's note on page 1 and I do think he has a point about 'some' of the FIRE community, it is utterly depressing to read of someone who is 21 on Reddit looking for the fastest possible way to exit life, its super naive for one, but also missing the point of existence in a big way - are these people going to bumble on as single people and then retire at 36 living in some LCOL sthole and do nothing for the rest of their lives apart fromwatch the Global All Cap chart? Maybe, sounds horrid.

We haven't come up with any number yet mostly because our outgoings are so high now on things that will not exist once we've chosen to retire, it makes modelling it a bit of a headache, but we're also not desperate to quit yet. However, our saving and spending has certainly changed in the face of learning that we really could pack it all in fairly early (thanks to those lovely tech jobs the article above mentions, in part) - but I do think you can live a decent life and do things, go places, treat your kids, help them with tuition/houses, AND still be aiming at FIRE. Sure you'll cost yourself a year or two but I think it's a worthwhile trade off to make, personally.

The one undeniable truth of FIRE IMO is that it does hugely skew to higher earners, but even modest earners can create real wealth if they start early. But as we see on this forum, the allure of silly bets on single stocks/getting rich quick will mean most of the UK public are incapable of staying the course. I know of many of my mates who invested in various things only to cash out at a loss when it crashed. Or worse are the ones that have no real knowledge or plan and are rapidly entering into their 40's, a big shock coming down the line there.

I think anyone toying with FIRE has been a big net contributor over 30+ years or made some big money and paid big tax along the way.

Come on… you’ve got qualify that