Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE)

Good day people.

I hope you don’t mind me asking here but this thread seems to maybe be the best place to ask regards investment opportunities.

I’ve been thinking about this for some time and dunno where to start and do it safely, mainly looking to invest a small amount and if it takes off look to increase it.

I have a small amount in an isa with RBS but I feel I want to invest in some stocks and commodities maybe solid things like gold, google , Nividia etc.

I feel I’ve missed the boat on crypto but I just want to be safe (I know there is risk in everything) but where to start mainly what app should I use?

I’m currently on holiday in Orlando and been using Revolut app and was checking out there investment section but they seem new to that side and want something proven?

Need an app or website I can safely invest and also a place that if it’s not for me I can sell and pull my money back out quickly.

Hope somebody could offer a little advice please.

Or anybody should follow or checkout advice.

Thank you have a great day.

Adam.
T212 app and open a S&S ISA.
 
T212 app and open a S&S ISA.
Thanks for the app advice I’ve downloaded that and will look at that for my purchases.

Can I ask is there any fees etc for using it or complelty free?

Say I invest £100 in something let’s say gold, if I decide can I pull my investment quickly and easily? Back to my original source?

Like if it goes up a little say total invested £100 now worth £105 will I get the full £105 back? Is what I need to know.
 
No fees when using S&S ISA unless you are buying international funds which have a small FX fee that is clearly explained.

In the example above you would get the 105 back .... if it goes up!
 
Well may FIRE plans have taken a slight knock... I'm picking up a new (to me) car this weekend as my old one is planned to go to great scrap yard in the sky this evening.

Poor girl as served me well in the 10 years of ownership and over 70k done in her mainly in the first 5 years, then it was covid and working from home.

Not cashing out on any shares or anything, just using the emergency funds in my savings but it does mean that I need to rebuild that back up and with a newer car comes much higher road tax and car insurance on going.
 
Well may FIRE plans have taken a slight knock... I'm picking up a new (to me) car this weekend as my old one is planned to go to great scrap yard in the sky this evening.

Poor girl as served me well in the 10 years of ownership and over 70k done in her mainly in the first 5 years, then it was covid and working from home.

Not cashing out on any shares or anything, just using the emergency funds in my savings but it does mean that I need to rebuild that back up and with a newer car comes much higher road tax and car insurance on going.


It's a little bit of a trap.. Your example is a car, but it could be anything, boiler packs in, house needs a new roof or a new boiler, medical emergency, etc etc. That just sets back your compounding by X years.

In the case of a car though you do have more choice though... Do you really need a 'nearly new car' for 15k when you could buy something a bit older, less desirable with a bit higher millage or whatever for half the price?

Some of the most wealthy people I know drive around in ten year old undesirable cars. Perfectly looked after and road legal, but they don't care about that.. They'd rather drive a functional rot-box and invest the rest, as opposed to the wanting the new face-lift Audi just because it looks cool.

There's an old saying... I might have this wrong, but if you are trying to figure out who the owner of a yacht is, it's not the guy on deck with designer clothes... Look for a slightly scruffy looking guy... That will be the owner!
 
Some of the most wealthy people I know drive around in ten year old undesirable cars. Perfectly looked after and road legal, but they don't care about that.. They'd rather drive a functional rot-box and invest the rest, as opposed to the wanting the new face-lift Audi just because it looks cool.

The reason why I opted for the car that I’m getting is that it will draw less unwanted attention than others that was in the same price range. The road tax and insurance is slightly cheaper. Yeah I could have got something super cheap, or pour cash into repairing my old one, but the bills for it was just getting larger and more frequent.

Hopefully this new car lasts me at least another 8 years by which time my mortgage will be paid off or nearly gone. Then it’s a different ball game, I most likely want something smaller when I get to that age.

The joys of living in a village in the middle of no where is that as long as you can stop shopping on the internet, you don’t get drawn into buying stuff from the shops that you don’t need but the flip side is that you do need reliable transport else your just trapped in the middle of nowhere.

If it wasn’t for the odd trip back to my hometown and going to work via the motorway, I would have explored the idea of a moped, but the time it would take me to get to and from work without using the motorway, just means extra hours of unpaid work.
 
There's an old saying... I might have this wrong, but if you are trying to figure out who the owner of a yacht is, it's not the guy on deck with designer clothes... Look for a slightly scruffy looking guy... That will be the owner!

Surely that just means people are just into different things and not what is being suggested. Scruffy rich guy prefers showing off his wealth on his yacht than being well dressed. There are plenty of very rich people with dozens of expensive cars just like there are plenty of very rich people draped in expensive clothes
 
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Funny enough I was in Kos a few weeks back.. some chap was saying “imagine being the owner of that yacht and then someone pulling in with THAT yacht”, applying that THAT yacht was much better.

I jokingly side.. “why what’s wrong with my yacht?”

Dude’s face went bright red…

I had to quickly say that it wasn’t really my yacht, before he walked out of ear shot.
 
Finally found time to make a Sankey diagram. Not as fiddly as I thought it would be (took about 20 mins). When I have more time I want to automate the generation of the Sankey notation so I don't have to manually update it.

Pretty interesting to view things this way. Tax makes me sick. It looks like I have a big chunk of income unaccounted for, but in reality there's pc/car/boiler purchases looming so I want to accumulate some cash for that.

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Curious on tracking pension contributions from both your pay and employer contributions. Is this going into a DC pot?

I'm fortunate to have a DB pension and wonder if it's worth me tracking the contributions? I do all my budgeting on take-home pay alone and have been ignoring income tax + NI.
 
Curious on tracking pension contributions from both your pay and employer contributions. Is this going into a DC pot?

I'm fortunate to have a DB pension and wonder if it's worth me tracking the contributions? I do all my budgeting on take-home pay alone and have been ignoring income tax + NI.
With a DB pension the pot/contributions aren't really worth tracking as they dont reflect pension growth and there is no true pot, atleast that's my amateur understanding.
 
Curious on tracking pension contributions from both your pay and employer contributions. Is this going into a DC pot?

I'm fortunate to have a DB pension and wonder if it's worth me tracking the contributions? I do all my budgeting on take-home pay alone and have been ignoring income tax + NI.
No.. as it dosen't matter how much you pay in..
DBs are based on your average or final (if you are lucky) salary and the number of years you put into it.

Some places do offer an enhanced scheme if you are can or prepared to pay extra but those normally add a percentage to your average or final salary.

It's worth doing the maths on what you would get if you was to retire now thou, not all DBs pensions are the same.. I have two and I worked out that with one of them I had to work there for 80 years (impossible) to get 100% of my average of the last 5 working years and the other one I had to work there for 40 years to get my career average.

There's also the option to have a SIPP as well..
 
Curious on tracking pension contributions from both your pay and employer contributions. Is this going into a DC pot?

I'm fortunate to have a DB pension and wonder if it's worth me tracking the contributions? I do all my budgeting on take-home pay alone and have been ignoring income tax + NI.
Yes I have dc not db
I have a spreadsheet to try to forecast my pot (because online pension tools never do what I want), estimates of contributions and growth are needed for that. Don't know if I'd bother if I was db. I've never had to deal with db.
I also have a spreadsheet for tax efficiency. I can change the pension contribution value and see how that affects tax paid, net income, and pension. This is something I got into when I started paying higher tax, I would contribute to avoid higher tax entirely, I'm further into the higher bracket now so I don't try to completely avoid it anymore, just find a balance. I'm very salty about paying more tax than other people for the same services.
Budgeting based on take home pay is fine for managing your spending. Once you get into overall wealth planning then tax and pension matter. Perhaps a place for you to start is to try to calculate your net wealth. Once you've done that try to forecast your net wealth each year for the rest of your expected lifespan
 
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No.. as it dosen't matter how much you pay in..
DBs are based on your average or final (if you are lucky) salary and the number of years you put into it.

Some places do offer an enhanced scheme if you are can or prepared to pay extra but those normally add a percentage to your average or final salary.

It's worth doing the maths on what you would get if you was to retire now thou, not all DBs pensions are the same.. I have two and I worked out that with one of them I had to work there for 80 years (impossible) to get 100% of my average of the last 5 working years and the other one I had to work there for 40 years to get my career average.

There's also the option to have a SIPP as well..
Yea I'm on career average scheme (CARE) with accrual rate of 1/49.

I can do APCs to buy more DB pension or do AVCs to build a "side pot" DC pension (I could also do this via SIPP). I'm currently a 40% payer so really need to look into this.

Early retirement is heavily "penalised". I think retiring 10 years early knocks 30% off the guaranteed pension value, which of course makes sense given the contributions stopping early.
 
Yea I'm on career average scheme (CARE) with accrual rate of 1/49.

I can do APCs to buy more DB pension or do AVCs to build a "side pot" DC pension (I could also do this via SIPP). I'm currently a 40% payer so really need to look into this.

Early retirement is heavily "penalised". I think retiring 10 years early knocks 30% off the guaranteed pension value, which of course makes sense given the contributions stopping early.

the arrcural rate of 1/49 is really good, if you can put in 49 years.

are you taxed at source? I don't really know how the tax works when you are paying into a DC and a DB at the same time... might be worth speaking to a pension advisor.
 
Anyone thinking of FIRE'ing early to a cheaper country? I'm getting to the point where I could do somewhere South Asia and have a great quality of life. The concern holding me back at the moment is I wouldn't have enough to have a great quality of life if I then had to move back to the UK later for some reason.
 
Anyone thinking of FIRE'ing early to a cheaper country? I'm getting to the point where I could do somewhere South Asia and have a great quality of life. The concern holding me back at the moment is I wouldn't have enough to have a great quality of life if I then had to move back to the UK later for some reason.
Tbh not many people will be having a great quality of life here in the years to come. I keep looking at Portugal but I feel a bit old to make the jump now.
 
I looked into it before and decided it was too complicated. All the rules around citizenship, pensions, tax, healthcare, etc. Took half my life to get the hang of the UK systems.
 
Anyone thinking of FIRE'ing early to a cheaper country? I'm getting to the point where I could do somewhere South Asia and have a great quality of life. The concern holding me back at the moment is I wouldn't have enough to have a great quality of life if I then had to move back to the UK later for some reason.
Greece... Kos in particular for me. it's only busy with holiday makers for about 4-5 months a year, the remaining time people are working on farm land or fishing..

I've been serveal times and it's my go to place for a relaxing holiday, kinda asked questions...
average appartment price is about 120k (in euros)
citizenship ain't too bad, you kinda have to have a job.. it would be much easiler if we was still in the EU, but I could retire early then look for remote work there. A lot of UK companies are now insisting that you are in the UK, but I could do short term contracts, and maybe get a company to put me on a retainer.

I could have the income from two db pensions, hopefully rent from my house; I looked at the tax on it and no even if it was my sole UK income it would still be subject to the normal rental taxes and could not use my income tax allowance on it.

It is possible, just need to see what my pension pots are like come the time...

One of my mates was saying that he knows this old granny that goes on a 6 month cruse every year in winter, as it's cheaper than an old people's home and cheaper than trying to feed yourself and keep the heating on.
 
Greece... Kos in particular for me. it's only busy with holiday makers for about 4-5 months a year, the remaining time people are working on farm land or fishing..

I've been serveal times and it's my go to place for a relaxing holiday, kinda asked questions...
average appartment price is about 120k (in euros)
citizenship ain't too bad, you kinda have to have a job.. it would be much easiler if we was still in the EU, but I could retire early then look for remote work there. A lot of UK companies are now insisting that you are in the UK, but I could do short term contracts, and maybe get a company to put me on a retainer.

I could have the income from two db pensions, hopefully rent from my house; I looked at the tax on it and no even if it was my sole UK income it would still be subject to the normal rental taxes and could not use my income tax allowance on it.

It is possible, just need to see what my pension pots are like come the time...

One of my mates was saying that he knows this old granny that goes on a 6 month cruse every year in winter, as it's cheaper than an old people's home and cheaper than trying to feed yourself and keep the heating on.

I would be interested to see the cost of that 6 month cruise. Also not sure how that would work if you spend the summer in an old people's home, they aren't going to keep your room for you for free whilst you go cruising for the winter. However, I've certainly heard the case made in the past that it was cheaper to spend the winter in an out of season resort (such as Benidorm) than to heat a house etc. in the UK.
 
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