FIRE starter

[Mia85]

This is a thread for discussing FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) and supporting each other in planning for the future.

For anyone new to FIRE, the idea is that you live significantly below your income and invest the surplus, usually in low cost funds. The aim is to amass enough that you can live off the returns. At that point you are finanically independent and you are free to spend your time as you wish (which might include working if you want to do that).

There's a huge amount on the internet about it. Lots of news stories e.g. here and here One of the main gurus of the movement is Mr Money Mustache and his website is a good starting point www.mrmoneymustache.com

A lot of the FIRE discussion out there seems to be very US based and/or men in their 20s with no kids trying to retire extremely young so I though it'd be great to talk here and hopefully find likeminded people.

Hello! I’ve been following the FIRE movement for a few years. In our case DH and I have a 15 year age gap so I would like to retire quite early. At the moment DH hopes to retire from his current job at 60, and concentrate on a side hustle he has, and I’d like to be in a job share by my early 50s with aim to fully retire myself in my late 50s.

At the moment we are focussed on pensions but also would love to have one BTL one day!

Hi @Mia85 thanks for starting this thread! Looking forward to having other people to get excited about FIRE with.

A little bit about me:
I am 31, live in London and work in financial services no children but they are in our short term plan. I always remember having the mindset of the FIRE movement but only actually found out that it was a thing a few years ago. My main goal is to have flexibility.
I am not frugal with things that give me value (nice food, holidays, learning experiences) but do not spend unnecessarily and definitely don't feel the need to 'keep up with the Jones'.

Learning to make my own delicious coffee during lockdown every day has saved me £££

Thank you @Mia85 very interested in this, I’ve looked at Moustache before. Made me feel very fortunate not to live in the US iirc! (Huge cost of health insurance etc).

He also talked about not washing clothes so frequently as even that cost money which really struck me.. not to mention the impact on our time and the Earth... I will have another read tonight.

Being married to someone who isn’t particularly frugal is a bit of an issue but I have made him see the light re paying extra into pensions. So that’s a win!

I like spending on food, clothes etc but don’t feel the need to keep up with the Jones’ either @bertieb7.

DH is 10 years older, he would like to retire about 55, then possibly do some consulting part-time. Without downsizing this is a pipe dream. Problem is we need the house for the meantime for our kids (youngest age 9) who are only getting bigger...

waves My people! I’ve been interested in the ‘degrees of FI’ concept for a few year (RE feels a little unattainable to me given my circumstances but I’m open to possibility )

I was in a terrible marriage for nearly 20 years and walked away from it with nothing except my children and my own earning potential. I even signed a waiver with my solicitor at divorce to state I was willingly foregoing my share of marital assets against their advice (they weren’t the one who would have had to deal with the death threats...)

Couple of years on, I’m finally digging my way out of the financial rubble I was left in — loans I was bullied to take out in my sole name, etc. No child maintenance or anything like that but worth it 100% for my freedom and sanity!

Now I am finally living by my own rules and owning my purse strings, I have embraced frugality, living below my means and always paying myself first at the start of the month. I’ve mastered the budgeting and savings habits and finally know the joy of telling every penny where to go, to be spent on things and experiences that matter rather than mindless crap.

I’m early 40s. Just bought a house with a mortgage and I’m overpaying that and now turning my attention to pensions. Not sure given my age and starting point I can RE but I am fairly confident I can achieve a degree of FI a lot sooner than that.

Joining, would love to retire at 55, more realistically it will be 60

Hi everyone, I’m 28 and single. I first heard about FIRE about a year ago but similar to Bertieb have always had a money saving mindset. I’ve been listening to the choosefi podcasts so find that they’re very American focused and seem to be aimed at people which a much higher salary than me.

For fellow podcast lovers, Bigger Pockets is an alternative to Choose FI- it is also American (and avoid the US specific ones like taxes) but they have a great variety of guests on very varied incomes.

Hi everyone!

I’m 40 and fortunate to have a reasonably supportive DH. We are mortgage free and are currently renovating our home, mainly DIY, and part way through renovating an outbuilding into a holiday let. It seemed like a great idea when we bought the place, but we are knackered and often I think it would be easier to downsize.

We want to move abroad to live, although I don’t know where or when, but I do know I want to be away from the working world ASAP.

Getting DH fully onboard will be tough and we still have costs for the renovation. I like travel as does DH and he likes a very comfortable and warm house. I can get him mostly on board and then he will go and spend on furniture or recently new carpets. So I shall be saving as much as I can and trying to earn a little extra.

We have recently upped both of our pension payments from our salaries but my pot is only £4K so needs a lot of work. I am waiting on a statement from my last job to say what my last pension is worth.I also want to look at other forms of investment. We have premium bonds so do have savings but the returns aren’t that great.

I am really excited to have like minded people to talk to, share knowledge and be encouraged by. It will be nice to be able to say to people that I’m really pleased that we didn’t do a M&S meal deal and buy Valentine’s Day presents this year. Instead we made a stir fry and have had a no spend weekend. I am definitely up for a bit of scrimping if it’s going to mean I get to live in a villa with a pool!

@bertieb7, thanks for the recommendation, I’ll give that one a try.

I am currently trying to increase my savings rate... currently 35-40% of my pay is going towards investments.

A question: If you have a paid for home, then do you count the market value of that towards your FI number? Once you reach FI you still need somewhere to live.

@nannynick we will be looking at it in terms that we will be able to have less income as we will have no rent or mortgage to pay. It’s also likely that we will downsize to free up some capital to invest.

Hi everyone, sorry to start the thread and run off for the evening.

Just a bit about me. We’ve both recently turned 40 and have children at end of primary/start of secondary. That’s probably pretty late in FIRE terms and I’m expecting the next 10 years to be fairly expensive so I doubt I’m going to achieve the classic FIRE dream. That said I think there’s a lot that’s valuable in the movement for people on different life paths.

I’m very motivated by the flexibility and freedom that comes as you get closer to FI. I also like the emphasis on being mindful about how you spend your money and time and avoiding waste of both. DH was always one of those people who said he had no interest in ever retiring but a fairly stressful work year, plus some family/friends who’ve had serious health problems has made him much more motivated to have that freedom to choose. At the same time this year has made me very aware of how many things we want to do with the children in this phase of life. E.g. we’ve done some great trips with them and I don’t want to waste the chance to do those things again when we’re able, even if it sets back the savings. So hopefully that has brought us both to a fairly similar place on priorities.

@nannynick we still have a reasonable mortgage (it doesn’t seem worth paying it down at the moment for us) but I never include house equity in my FI number. I doubt we’ll live here forever but I don’t want to plan on the basis that we have to downsize. We’re in an area that is fairly good for renting out so I’ve always thought we might rent out and travel at some point in the future.

@bertieb7 Thanks for the podcast recommendation, I’d not heard of that one before. I also like the podcast Afford Anything by Paula Pant, again it’s American but she interviews a variety of people.

What do you plan to do after retiring early at 60 or rather? Genuinely wondering as this fixation on retiring early has always kind of baffled me. Many live into their 80s and 90s these days, and I'd be so bored not working for 30+ years! Is it more the flexibility to do low-paying hobby-type work people are after? Like a second career?

For me, I don’t want to fully retire and do nothing, but the absolute freedom to pick and choose exactly what I want to do. I think a lot of work stress would disappear if I knew I didn’t need the salary to live on.

@Highfalutinlootin

• very part-time job
• hobbies
• travel
• volunteer
• keep fit

I suppose I did FIRE but did not call it that, just thought it would be nice to retire early. I retired at 56 from teaching. I am still a Foster Carer to a 14 year old but he has lived with us for 9 years so feels like family and I get a generous allowance for that. Whilst I was a full time teacher I paid into Teachers Pension Scheme but also into a Stakeholder at the same time. I used to tutor two evenings each week and also examine in both Summer and November for major exam board. All money from tutoring and examining went into buying btl. Over time I also got rental income too. All ploughed into 2nd btl, then 3rd. I inherited some money when my Mum died which I invested into 3 more btl deposits. Once generating income from 6 I was in position to retire early. I at no point went without holidays and meals out as I lived on my main salary and used additional incomes for investing into my future. I also bought shares too. In August I can get my Teacher's Pension and lump sum. I am considering also drawing down Stakeholder over 7 years until I can draw state pension which will almost replace my Stakeholder. I will have £30k fostering allowance until child is 18, so 4 more years, I get around £40k before deductions from btl's. From August I will get about £9k each year from Teachers Pension + about £31k lump sum. I can also draw down approximately £8k per annum from stakeholder but only for 7 years. When 67 State Pension will replace stakeholder of approximately £8.5k per annum. I also have a 7 bedroomed holiday home in Brittany, France which is mortgage free and I could let out if I needed more income as 20 mins from beach. It took committment over many years and a determination to keep tutoring for 2 or 3 hours twice each week, even when I was tired I kept pushing myself to continue and focus on goal to retire early.

Forgot to add mortgage on my home has just under 3 years left to go. Am overpaying but as on a very low rate not too much. DH is 3 years younger than me at 57, and still working full time. We will finish mortgage just before he hits 60. He has less investment in property than me but his pension is over twice mine.

Wow @caringcarer , well done. Are your btl local to you or did you just do some research on the best cities for btl? I have one but it is where I used to live so was originally bought for me to live in until I moved.

@SeasonsInTheAbyss thanks for the recommendation! I will give that one a go today 

In terms of my motivations to reach financial independence, they are quite similar to @Chihuahuacat . My work completely takes over my life, and my mental energy at the moment. Hours are long and the demands are huge but it pays relatively well. I would like to make the most of the pay in the medium term to set myself up for a less stressful life in future where I can work on a passion project and spend more time with kids when they come along.

Hello all and thanks for starting this thread mia85! I’ve been lurking on the pension challenge thread but haven’t posted as I live abroad and there are no financial incentives or tax advantages to contributing any extra to a pension here (although I have decided to put more money into ETFs for retirement).

I’ve been interested in FIRE for three or four years now, ever since discovering Mr Money Mustache after he was mentioned on a thread about saving money IIRC. DH isn’t fully on board or quite as frugal as I’d like, but did agree that it would be a good idea to start investing and we have a monthly ETF savings plan. However, we took most of the money out after about a year (a cardinal sin, I know) to put towards a BTL, which we’ve bought – with a mortgage – but aren’t actually letting at the moment.

So after having been mortgage-free for a few years, we now have a mortgage again that DH wants to pay off asap, whereas I think it would be more sensible to invest more as interest rates are so low at the moment. I’m currently trying to persuade him that we need to increase the amount we put into our ETFs every month and that we should also start investing for the DC (tbf he's agreed it would be a sensible idea).

Re podcasts, I can recommend Financial Independence Europe (which does what it says on the tin and has a European slant). I also used to enjoy listening to Ms ZiYou’s podcasts (a Scottish podcaster who interviewed various people on their journey to FI), but she stopped podcasting a few years ago now.

Thanks for starting this thread Mia85, watching with interest.

At 50 I'm probably in the FI rather than the RE group but as a single parent my motivation is to be in a position to be able to manage when my child maintenance and tax credits run out in a few years. I'm sure there are lots of women in my position where potentially downsizing will need to happen in order to carry on with mortgage payments, so I'm overpaying that whilst also trying to build a pension pot.

I shall check out the podcasts!

So DH this morning starts going about what he think our next project should be - redoing the bathroom. It’s perfectly ok, it’s got gold accessories and we like chrome but he is suggesting we rip it all out and start again.

It does need a new floor as it’s just floorboards that let a lot of drafts in and the ceiling needs some tlc but we don’t need a new bathroom from scratch.

This is where we differ, I want to go full FIRE mode and DH is ordering a new sofa and carpets. We already need one new external door as it leaks and is ugly. Still at least by keeping costs down in some areas it helps pay for these things. I imagine we will have a split on wages, where his all goes on home improvements and mine on this, minus bills of course.

I have started looking at stocks and shares ISAs as they seem to be very well used and a lot of people are using Vanguard. I can open one of these for £100 which sounds a little scary, but I think it might be a good start. I’m wary as it has fees and stocks and shares can go down... I’m very risk adverse, but I guess if I start slowly on that it might help give me confidence later.

Hi @Dashel , does your DH plan to do the work himself? Maybe that could be part of the compromise? And it might also put him off a bit if you aren't that bothered by the renovation 😂

My stocks and shares ISA is with Hargreaves Lansdown. Their app is great and find it a little easier to use than Vanguard. Minimum investment in most funds is £25 and I put most of mine in Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap Index (not a recommendation as not allowed but just where I chose to put mine as it is well diversified). No dealing charge and the ongoing charge is very low giving that it is not actively managed and just a tracker. I am relatively risk averse too!

@caringcarer Wow, your story is really inspirational. I like the way you have built multiple income sources. I would love to own a BTL one day, some say to me that it can be too much work though. Do you find them easy enough to manage?

As for my motivation, I mentioned upthread that DH is older than me so we would like to have retirement time together in the future. Also, I’ve been a transport worker for nearly 17 years and work extreme shifts on a rolling roster. I’d like to be free of this in middle age. I would like to travel, have hobbies and perhaps help the DC (currently 14 and 11) with childcare if that’s something they would appreciate.

@bertieb7 DH and I do pretty much everything we can legally do ourselves except for plastering and carpet fitting. We usually have a few projects on the go at anyone time. Thankfully he is very good at what he does and is a perfectionist so it will be to a professional standard. It does save a fortune, we have refurbished our last two houses and DH was already very good at this before I met him. This will be the last time we take on a big project though.

We are trying to balance up between whether we stay here as the house doesn’t quite feel like home yet and we have been here nearly two years. But if we do sell we need to look at what is worth doing before we sell and where we would live next. I can work from many locations and DH travels a lot for work so we could live in one of three counties.

How long have you been with HL? Do you pay a lot in fees for that amount? We have talked about buying some shares as a hobby in favourite companies, in smallish amounts, but have always been so wary, hence putting it in premium bonds, but they are getting less and less appealing as the winning chances are getting worse.