3 hours drive even both ways is pretty horrific even for a couple of days a week. Hard no from me purely on that basis.
Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE)
- Thread starter throwaway4372
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I don't have an issue with it, I've learnt that companies don't value loyalty.. at my current place there's redundancy cycles every year which is normal for a large PLC, thou I'm seem to be directly unaffected by it mainly cos I'm a specialist in a field that is hard to recruit for and that we are understaffed in our department, there's always the chance. Which I would welcome as then they would have to pay for my gardening leave and have to make all my shares in holding avaiable tax free.
The worst case scenario is that the TUPE the department to a out source company, where we would lose our access to company shares and benefits.. I've had that done to me before.
sorry I should have made it clear 1.5 hours there and 1.5 hours back, thou it's Manchester to Leeds and that road is meant to be horrible route.
Just that...
I have a monthly save as you earn, £50 pounds per month... in three years they double the shares that I brought that month, they are pre-tax but become tax free after 3 years. The free shares have to be held for another 2 years then they become tax free.
I have 3 (one for each year), 3 year share shemes all paying £50 pounds per month.. where they offer shares at a discounted price and after 3 (or 5 years if you select that option) you can buy the shares at that price. Those are post tax and I do plan to up the amount to £100 pounds per month on the next offering as I have one maturing this year.
I have some "bonus" shares which are held for 3 years from the time of acceptance, I had to pay the tax on those at the same time so I don't have to pay the tax in 3 years time when the shares are expected to be higher.
company shares are 50% for the last 12 months, it was at 75% pre-trump so there's a tidy profit to make this year, which I'm just going to re-invest in market trackers with vangaurd.
so yeah, every month I pay for shares, they are either discounted or will double.. in 3 years time I get them.. goldern handcluffs forsure!
It's funny looking back at one of the questions they asked me, "Do I have more than 5 million in shares"... at the time I was like "**** if I had 5 million in shares, do you really think I would be working!" but now I can see how some of the directors can quite easy have 5+ million in shares.
My main question right now would be about job security and then I would do the maths on how much I would lose vs the increase in salary and the increased (4 hours extra driving per week) time at work essentially. How much do you enjoy your current job.
I don't know where you are financially, age wise etc but enough money is enough money. If you could stay in the current job for 15 years and retire wealthy vs 12 in the other job, is that worth it? Is there more potential for promotion/growth in either one?
I don't know where you are financially, age wise etc but enough money is enough money. If you could stay in the current job for 15 years and retire wealthy vs 12 in the other job, is that worth it? Is there more potential for promotion/growth in either one?
The way that I'm planning things, the pay ain't going to make a difference in me retiring early or not, as I plan to put everything over the tax threshold into my pension. So it would be a case of how much extra cash I have when I retire.
Just done some maths, as I'm not working today..
my aim is to have £3,000 pcm which is way more than I'm spending at the moment even with a mortage. So I want £36,000 per year.
I'm 47 years old this year, my mortgage should be paid off in 8 years time (55 years old). if I max out my ISA after I paid of my mortgage which is very possible as I pay £1k per month currently and continue to abuse the share schemes at work from now til I'm 60, winding them down so that they are all tax free when I'm 60. I will have more than the £252,000 in my ISA and savings even with a -1% return to cover me for the 7-8 years before my pensions kick in.
In regards of my pension, if I stop paying into it at 60 and including state and 2 DB pensions.. I just need to draw down the remaining amount for the £36,000. The pension pot should last me till I'm 92 years old. My life expectancy is 80-85. I do expect to have loads left in savings, ISA and premium bonds as I don't think I can spend 3k pcm.
I know some people think retiring at 60 ain't FIRE, but it sure as hell beats working till 67/8.. honestly if you asked me 5 years ago if I could retire early, or 10 year ago if I could buy a house.. I thought you would be taking the mick.
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Soldato
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I wouldn't do 3/4 hour commutes personally, I find it bad enough doing multi modal (car/bus and then train) under 2 hours 2/3 days a week.
I've done 3 days this week because we've had auditors in and I'm knackered.
I've done 3 days this week because we've had auditors in and I'm knackered.
Caporegime
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He is only doing it twice a week though and 90 minutes each way isn't that bad.
Listen to a couple of podcasts while driving.
Over a 5 day working week it works out at a little over an hour commute per day which is pretty average really for people who go to work every day.
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Soldato
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I currently do a 1.5hr-2hr commute each way 3 days a week and it’s very tiring.
More than that though it means on those 3 days I have no real time to myself when I get back as I’ll get straight to cooking/washing/tidying.
Don’t mind it so much as I only work 3 days a week atm.
More than that though it means on those 3 days I have no real time to myself when I get back as I’ll get straight to cooking/washing/tidying.
Don’t mind it so much as I only work 3 days a week atm.
The way that I'm planning things, the pay ain't going to make a difference in me retiring early or not, as I plan to put everything over the tax threshold into my pension. So it would be a case of how much extra cash I have when I retire.
Just done some maths, as I'm not working today..
my aim is to have £3,000 pcm which is way more than I'm spending at the moment even with a mortage. So I want £36,000 per year.
I'm 47 years old this year, my mortage should be paid off in 8 years time (53 years old). if I max out my ISA after I paid of my mortage which is very possibble as I pay £1k per month currently and conutine to abuse the share shemes at work from now til I'm 60, winding them down so that they are all tax free when I'm 60. I will have more than the £252,000 in my ISA and savings even with a -1% return to cover me for the 7-8 years before my pensions kick in.
In regards of my pension, if I stop paying into it at 60 and including state and 2 DB pensions.. I just need to draw down the remaining amount for the £36,000. The pension pot should last me till I'm 92 years old. My life expectancy is 80-85. I do expect to have loads left in savings, ISA and premium bonds as I don't think I can spend 3k pcm.
I know some people think retiring at 60 ain't FIRE, but it sure as hell beats working till 67/8.. honestly if you asked me 5 years ago if I could retire early, or 10 year ago if I could buy a house.. I thought you would be taking the mick.
I can go at 53 with £21k pension per year payable immediately. Or if i keep going to 60 it will be around £30k+ (yearly increases would need to be added) and increases to £28k at SPA. I would go at 60 with £30K. £36k would be fantastic!
I'm also paying in £150 per month at source which gives me roughly £78 per year extra pension. I don't know whether to up that amount or put it into S&S.
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I’m paying an extra 15% pcm into my pension plus my yearly bonus which is around 8-10% percent of my yearly salary.
If it’s a tax benefit aka it will bring your tax bracket down, put it in your work pension. It’s should be the cheapest with fees and you may get some or all of the employees NI contributions.
If it should be a tax benefit but your company doesn’t do salary sacrifice, put it in a SIPP and get the tax back that way.
Pensions are for when you actually retire and can get access to it. If possible leave it till as long as possible to let compounding interest do its work. Time is the significant factor with compounding.
If you bare to leave it till you get your state pension then the state pension will help you stretch how long your pot lasts for.. but it’s important to guesstimate your life expectancy, to ensure your pension last and that it’s fully used or have what you want to leave behind to love one’s…
ISAs and savings are used pre-official retirement, to shave the number of working years off before you can/want to start claiming from your pension.
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Hindsight is 20/20… if I was 20 years old now, I would forget or put the bare minimum in to my pension and pour it all to my ISA till I’m 30. Which its kinda what I did but stocks and shares ISAs wasn’t as manageable and cheap as it is now. Honestly I was paying of debt and YOLOing my salary with a few k in my savings till I was 30, I didn’t have a pension at all.
It’s likely that you would need access to it to buy cars, weddings and houses.. also most people would be accessing that first, so you need to get the money in there first to let compounding take effect for longer. At the start of your career it’s very unlikely it’s going to be a tax benefit to put it into your pension.
Then once you hit 30s or it becomes a tax benefit, then start putting more into the pension.
Yeah, this!
I still can't get my head around paying £1800 for £78 worth of pension though. But i think it's the right way to go.
are you on a defined benefit pension? if so, it may be worth putting the extra into a personal SIPP.
Yes, DB pension. I still don't fully understand it, but this guy is very good at explaining it to us mere mortals. I'm in the 40% tax bracket, so am buying 12 months of added pension at £150 per month. I'm nearing the end of my time with my current place of work, so will only have 2 years to be able to do this.
When it comes to DB pensions, they work on PACE.. for every year you work and contribute you get a certain percent of your average salary.
E.G... one of my DBs is PACE 80... so it's 100% of your average divided by 80 and for every year I contributed I get 1.5.. so If I worked 6 years there I get;
6 x 1.5 = 9..
say my average salary was £30,000
30,000 / 80 = £375
9 x £375 = £3,375 per year
If you leave the place, the pension gets frozen and it increases normally by the rate of inflation.
From my understanding, for PACE 80 at 1.5 per year i would have to work 53-54 years at the place to get 100% of my average.
by paying extra your adding on to the years that you have contributed to..
As said, you may be better off not paying the extra to your work pension and paying it to a private pension with investing it on a tracker.
But do speak to a pension advisor for your own particular situation...
Soldato
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I commuted 90 minutes each way twice a week and got fed up with it eventually. I do it once now with another day in a more local office (still 40 mins each way but much better) which is ok. It might have been ok if I could have got a train but sitting in traffic and dealing with other drivers just makes the beginning and end of the day miserable for me.
I was 30
Saving for 10 years (houses only cost circa 80k then, even in the South East)
Just me. MIRAS still existed then.
So yeah, this is what makes comparing generations problematic in these scenarios.
You were born in 1967 (pretty much at the start of Gen X) and bought a house in 1997 aged 30 after saving for 10 years. If you take someone at the other end of Gen X (1977) then, the equivalent timing would be buying a house in 2007, right when prices had exponentially accelerated in the previous 5-7 years and the rises were outpacing someone's ability to save more.
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I will add that, I believe the average FTB was around 30 since 2000 so, although, I mentioned making generational comparisons can sometimes be problematic, I would expand a bit and say that, generally, anyone born from roughly 1972 onwards missed out on the easier house buying times.
This would mean these people were buying in 2002> when house prices really accelerated in multiples more than income.
So yeah, the second half of GenX and onwards were affected making what @D.P. say largely correct about Boomers being the proper last generation to benefit from housing costs. (accounting for the Boomer/GenX changeover from 1965-1970-ish) i.e it's not a cliff edge.