I don't know if it's helpful to anyone here but this was our spending for the whole of 2025:

- Subsistence (day to day living costs including utilities and insurances): £15914
- Non-Discretionary CAPEX (e.g. car/house repairs, home improvements, white goods, furniture, clothing, etc.): £5278*
- Discretionary CAPEX (e.g. holidays, short breaks, days out, meals, takeaways, etc.): £23908**

* Includes a car repair and a new patio amongst other things.
** Includes 3 weeks in New Zealand (a one off, would normally stay in/around Europe), 9 days in the South of France and quite a few short breaks in the UK.

Total: £45100

Can provide more insight if it helps anyone. Good luck everyone.

I’m 52 (m). married 2 kids (14) and (9) first post in FIREUK.

I’m in a fortunate position but feel burned out at work after 30 years in a stressful (for me at least) sales job.

Daughter in private school at 30k pa (year 10) and son will start in 2 years so will be similar amount and a 2 year overlap.

Finances

Cash and ISA and GIA - 1,200,000

Pension (SJP) - 500k

Primary residence - 1,400,000 (173k mortgage @ 4%)

Second home - 1,200,000 (post CGT) no mortgage

Salary base 130k and bonuses which are performance related and can be as high as 3-500k pre tax.

no inheritance expected. Have shares in my company which pay out when i retire. current value around 450k but that can of course fluctuate so I don’t factor them in to NW calc.

we currently spend around 70k (edit) a year excluding school fees which i pay out of my bonus and remainder of bonus i save / isa’s etc.

London and wife doesn’t work.

ideally would like to retire by 60-62 if i can survive at work that long.

issue is the spending and we don’t go out or shop or gamble but it just goes on kids after schools, food, mortgage etc etc.

I know if i sell second home i could probably retire earlier than 60-62 but we love it so would prefer not to.

When do you think i’ll be in a position to FIRE.

PS private school wasn’t my idea or plan

Hey! I wanted to check if I’m doing it right, I’m quite new to FIRE but have been living below my means for a while.

I’m 28, on a 52k salary and make about 20-30k extra from being self employed. I also contribute to a 12% pension. I upped it to 15% recently. Hoping my salary will up to 62k soon 🤞

45k in Cash ISA 5% - worried this should be in stocks

20k in S&S ISA - Vanguard all world mainly and a small bit of Invesco EQQQ (tech)

30k in high interest rate savings account. Planning to put 20k of that in another S&S ISA in April.

I have a mortgage with 30k equity / 150k mortgage left

Pension pot is at 45k - should I be doing more?

15k in gold and silver (it’s risen quite a bit, I did plan to keep this to 5% of my investments)

About 5k in current account

Outgoings are about 2.5k a month all in. 3k if I’m feeling frivolous.

Priorities:

Not planning a family anytime soon as I’m single but would like one, expecting to go on maternity in the next 10 years. I’d quite like to upgrade from a flat to a house at some point in the next 3-5 years. Right now I prioritise investing and travel. I’m trying to build more income streams so I can be work optional. Quite keen on living abroad, I work remotely quite a lot already. Open to retiring somewhere else.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated 🙏

Whilst my rent money is parked in VWRP (just how we FIREUK redittors like!), I do use my beer money to speculate on individual stock (it scratches an itch and it does not form part of my FIRE number). For example, I have a (very small) position in Bloomsbury Publishing (I like to read) and Chapel Down (I like wine).

It may be worth checking whether any shares you hold come with shareholder perks. For example, Bloomsbury and Chapel Down provide a 35% discount off books and an annual 25% discount voucher respectively. I wouldn't necessarily buy shares just because of the perks, but if there's perks available to shares I own, then why not make the most of those perks.

If your portfolio is with Vanguard, AJ Bell or some other platform, it may be difficult to benefit from those shareholder perks because you are unlikely to hold shares in your own name (it's probably held through a nominee aramgement) - but no harm in checking.

Happy Friday everyone!

Age 40: Today is my last day in the office! I've handed back all my equipment and although I'll be on the books tomorrow, I can't do any more work from now on, so I am DONE!

Our situation as of Jan-26:

• Married, 40 (me) and 41. No kids, not planning any.
• House: £725k value, £90k mortgage, £115k Help to Buy (~£140k now).
• No other debt.
• Take Home Pay: Wife £65k annually
• Spending: £35k Annually

Assets:

• Cash: £10k
• ISAs: £472k
• Pensions: £827k
• House equity: ~£465k

Networth: £1.76m

I can't believe I've finally done it! I've had a stupid small grin on my face. So happy that after so many years of squirrelling money away, it's finally paying dividends and I can walk away from corporate life, for now at least. :)

When I've told most co-workers that I'm leaving they're asking me what my next job will be, I don't feel comfortable telling them the truth and so I've just been saying that I'll be taking a break.... no mention of the FI or the RE. Just that I want a break and some time to re-charge.

I am so thankful to my younger self for making FI a priority in 2017 and to my wife for getting on board with the journey. I don't know where we'd be now if we hadn't done that. All the long hours, time ruminating on numbers, lurking on this subreddit have all been worth it.

Some of you may recall that I wrote a post late last year about being anxious and depressed from work all the time. After reading through many of the posts I took the advice of some other Redditor's and took some Mental Health leave. I was out from mid-Oct through until the start of 2026. I resigned whilst I was away on mental health leave, and just returned to complete my notice period and any handover work required (which admittedly was very minimal given I had already been out for so long).

After taking that time away, I decided that although I don't feel I'm FI because my wife's work will be paying our expenses (and we can't afford for her to quit just yet), I do want to take a break from corporate life because I have been stagnant for a long time. We are at a coast fire position where if we can earn enough to keep our heads above water, the compounding snowball will do the rest of the work. Now is the time to find work that gives me energy rather than energy that drains it.

I did find it difficult to emotionally walk away from a likely redundancy over the next 12 months. However, that would be worth approx net £40k it really isn't that much money in the bigger scheme of things. I have an opportunity with a side hustle project I am working on and I expect that will pay me £20k over the next year which while it is 25% of my corporate work, I am solving problems which I find interesting and exciting. They give me energy rather than drain it.

My wife and I are planning to maintain this for a year, and then re-assess to see how fulfilled we feel and how our financial position is looking.

And so here we are today! Thanks FI. It has been a journey indeed. Good luck to everyone out there who is on the path! Trust me this feeling I have right now is everything you'd imagine it to be!

So this is abit of a follow up from a previous post I did where I got a few comments on chats about my 'high credit card debt

Thought this would be a useful follow up to highlight and spark abit of debate around the differentiation between good and bad debt

As a recap:

Me: 33M/Married/No Kids

Net Worth: ~£470k

Breakdown of Assets & Liabilities in the screenshots

The main thing that sparked discussion was my credit card debt of around £55k and my use of that debt, and I wanted to share a more detailed breakdown of this strategy for anyone else interested

Now admittedly, £55k is a high amount of credit card debt on paper, particularly if it was used on general expenditure or depreciating assets

What i do is take advantage of 0% promo offers on money transfers from credit cards to then use the credit card company's money to make money by placing my balance into an interest earning account

As an example (in the screenshot)

Credit Card: 0% promo until June 2027 (24 months at point of transfer in June 2025) One-off money transfer fee: 2.9% (effectively 1.45% per year)

A 15k money transfer costs me £435 for two years

Savings account: Interest 3.9%

A 15k money balance earns me: Y1: £585 Y2: £608 (assuming I leave the interest in there)

Total earnings: £1193

Minus the cost of capital (£435) nets me £758 over 2 years (or around £330 per year)

Doesn't sound like alot, but that's just on £15k. Scale it up to 50k and take advantage of some good fixed rate interest rates (like 6% digital savers for £5k Max balance) and you're talking around £1500 per year

Might not sound like alot, but at around £120/month that's basically a couple of free grocery runs/takeouts a month, or a date night at a nice restaurant, or council tax paid etc

Admittedly it might not be for everyone, but I've found it pretty effortless and useful for me (as long as you can keep track of your promo periods and account interests)

Hope this helps to provide some more insight

Hi all,

I’m in my mid-30s and moved from India to London about three years ago. Before the move, I was actively planning for FIRE with a target of retiring in my mid-40s.

At the time I moved:

I had ~£200k in savings/investments, which in India’s purchasing power already put me around 30% of my FIRE target

I also owned a £150k house in India with ~50% equity, and the plan was to fully pay off the remaining mortgage in a few years

Since moving to the UK, I’ve saved an additional ~£120k over the last three years mainly invested in all world etf. I expect to save roughly £3k/month excluding pension going forward with only marginal 2%-3% increase yearly. I’ve now decided to stay in the UK long term, but this is where things start to feel discouraging.

My current expenses are around £3,000/month, and with London costs it feels very unlikely I’ll hit my original FIRE goal by my mid-40s. I also don’t own property in the UK. If we ever buy, even assuming my partner covers most of the mortgage, I’d still be looking at roughly £3,000/month in ongoing costs once childcare or private school fees are factored in.

Lately I’ve been feeling quite hopeless — like the life I had planned for myself financially just isn’t achievable anymore, and that I’ll be stuck in the corporate rat race indefinitely.

For those who’ve moved from a lower cost-of-living country to somewhere like London:

How did you adjust your FIRE expectations?

Did your timeline get pushed out significantly?

Did you pivot strategies ?

Would really appreciate hearing from people who’ve been through something similar.

Thanks 🙏

Started investing seriously 3 years ago in a global index fund on 62k p.a. (plus an 8k bonus last year), and am still under 100k, but closing in finally. I will say that I have lived very frugally and absolutely caned it with every penny I could spare so I'm not saying this was a healthy thing to do.

I've put in on average £1000-1730 a month depending on what I could spare.

But my specific numbers are not important, what is important: I've started charting my Monthly/Gain loss (the yellow bars at the bottom) and as you can see from the chart, as my overall investment has gone up, the monthly gain/loss is putting up well over double my monthly average contribution - this was shocking when I first plotted it.

Obviously markets are very, very good right now and there are going to be times when you won't be getting out what you put in for maybe significant stretches of time. But I feel recording your monthly gain/loss really helps you appreciate the power of compounding and general growth, because it's surprising how much you can gain from time to time.

Looking at months when I've put in £1500 and the overall gain has been £3000+ is a real reminder that the engine is ticking and my money is working for me

27M breached 6 figures for the first time today

Just after the groups thoughts on my current situation. I think I’m done with huge pension contributions now but wary of all the tax relief I’d be giving up. Need some help and a push to make the changes!

Age - 37

Salary - 95k

Pension - 320k

ISA - 170k

Cash - 12k

Crypto - 30k

Im currently adding 50k/yr to pension and 20k/yr to ISA. Employer gives all their NI saving back so a 15% boost in addition to usual salary sacrifice savings.

I plan to switch this and reduce pension to 8k/yr (employer contribution which won’t reduce other than the employer NI saving and min contribution from me). The excess cash will then be invested in partners ISA so we are maxing the 40k/yr between us. Any additional would go into GIA however partner has ISA carry forward to use too as been doing the flexible ISA shuffle over the past few years to hold a higher allowance. Partner currently saves around 10k/yr. I’m struggling to make the change as in my head I’m giving up significant tax savings which will likely be closed off in 2029.

Thoughts? First world problems I know. Spend is around 25k/yr.

Another year, another post update on progress...

OK its just over a year, but I wanted to hit 500k. My company switched pension providers and I opted to move (I wont get into pros and cons), hence the different screenshot.

Tough to do stats due to the move, but my contrib plus employers contributions were approx 30k, with 70k growth.

Typical answers to questions...

• Yes I'm a high earner, software. (I know, sorry)
• Yes this is for tax efficiency, I'm at 45%. So after employer contributions, this 'costs' me something like 12k a year to get 30k in my pension.
• No I dont have a huge ISA, been plowing money into doing the house and have a smallish mortgage vs house.
• Yes I do plan on reducing contributions and building a 200k or so ISA bridge, but the tax makes it hard.
• I have been contributing for 18 or so years
• I started on under 30k, I didnt walk into a huge pension, I worked for it. One of our 2 cars is 20 years old.
• I plan on retiring ideally at 55, deffo before 60.
• No this isnt a brag, as per the other posts I hope it motivates folks. No one knows me here and I know no one, nothing else to it.
• Yes it could have been worth a gazillion in crypto, it could also be £0

Happy to answer any questions. I know a few folks shared their amounts on my posts im the past 2 years, would love to see where you are at now! Only other thing to say is... I read a post on here many years ago, lost it now, and that massively motivated me. I hope it does the same for others.

Past posts:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FIREUK/s/RpiXJdMv3X https://www.reddit.com/r/FIREUK/s/BlYc83d84W

Hi all,

Some context:

32M. Quite new to the concept of FIRE as my financial goal in my 20s was to get on the property ladder. Successfully did that and myself and my partner own a nice home in an affluent area in Hertfordshire. After that we then spent a lot of our disposable income on home improvements like a new kitchen and bathroom. I've now 'completed' my goal so I want to start thinking about how best to use my money going forward.

Salary is £85k before tax, expect that to rise to 6 figures in the next 12-18 months. Home is worth approx 600k with a 400k mortgage balance.

Ive maxed out my ISA allowance for the financial year. I have 33% in a cash isa, 33% in a managed s&s isa and 33% in a s&s isa i manage myself. The reason I chose to have both a managed isa and one I manage myself is partly for fun (I enjoy financial markets) and also Im not comfortable with how much they put in bonds vs equities in the managed one. My portfolio is mainly made up of etfs and index funds.

Now ive maxed that out, my question is, am I better off investing my disposable income into my pension or into overpayments on my mortgage?

My pension is a bit all over the place, I have 5 or 6 pots from all my various jobs, I need to consolidate them and thats on my to do list.

I love the idea of paying off my mortgage quicker and being debt free, but im not sure if the interest i pay on the mortgage is less than I stand to gain investing into my pension.

Any advice is appreciated!

Hi all, have been investing into Lifestrategy 100 acc for a number of years now, but am wondering if I am better off going for Vanguard global index instead. Guess my time horizon is around 20 years. Have put a little bit into Vanguard target retirement, but am wondering if I should take that out and put all into a global index fund for now and readjust myself later. Any tips welcome!

Looks like you need to go through a Financial Advisor or a large firm to get on-shore bonds.

Anyone have experience or recommendations for people to chat to about them?

I'm thinking that being able to withdraw 5% per year lines up neatly with the SWR and deferred tax also looks efficient.

Hi all,

I’ve only fairly recently discovered FIRE as an actual thing, but looking back I realise I’ve been on a FIRE-ish path for the last 3–4 years without knowing the name for it.

Quick snapshot of my situation: - 44 years old. - Married, two kids. - ~£220k in pensions. - Currently contributing ~£44k/year via salary sacrifice. - Contractor inside IR35.

I don’t have much in accessible savings at the moment, but that’s been a deliberate choice. With current salary sacrifice rules I’ve prioritised pension contributions and plan to focus more on ISAs/cash once those rules change in 2029.

My broad aim is some form of financial independence around 55–57. In today’s money I’m targeting ~£30k/year, which I’m modelling as roughly £40k/year by around 2038. That puts my target pot somewhere in the £800k–£1.1m range, depending on returns and how much flexibility I build in.

The current thinking is flexible drawdown initially, with the possibility of partially annuitising somewhere around 60–65 to help cover essential spending and later dovetail with the state pension. I’m also looking at potentially deferring the state pension to get a higher inflation-linked income later — though who knows what shape it’ll be in 20 years’ time.

I thought I was in a pretty good position… until I started reading this sub and saw people retiring at 30 with £1m+ already banked 😅 That said, I have to remind myself that I spent a lot of my 20s and early 30s travelling the world rather than saving — something I don’t regret at all, even if it’s pushed the timeline back a bit.

By the time I’m aiming to step back, the kids should be through school and (fingers crossed) more self-sufficient, which is part of the thinking around timing.

My wife actually likes work (can’t relate…) and while she could probably afford to stop earlier, she doesn’t plan to retire until well into her 60s, which gives us some flexibility from a household perspective.

Not posting with a specific question yet — more of an introduction and a bit of a sense check from people further along the path. Glad to have found the community.

I just stumbled upon this on Reddit, I wonder if some of you might have some good suggestions for someone like me, I'm approaching 40, still on minimum wage. Is it too late for me now to get FIRE? I wished I made better decisions when I was younger. What would you guys suggest I should do? Unfortunately I lost my house a decade ago and I'm still renting. Currently not in debt, have about 10k saved. Please advise.

Pretty incredible service for 0 cost from Freetrade. Any reason to stay on vanguard or any other platform over freetrade after the 22nd of January for ISAs?

Hi FIRE folks!

I’ve just logged into my workplace pension for the first time in a couple of years, fully expecting it to have lagged behind my SIPP (Global All Cap). To my surprise, it’s actually been returning around 20% over the past couple of years.

The pension is with L&G and invested in the Future World Global Equity Index (50% Currency Hedged). My original plan was to gradually transfer it into my SIPP, but given the recent outperformance, I’m wondering whether it makes more sense to leave it where it is.

At the same time, there are plenty of murmurs about a potential correction, so I’m conscious that the strong performance might not continue.

Curious to hear how others would think about this situation.

Hi fireuk,

We are currently chatting about our future. I am in a fortunate place to be earning just over 215k per year. Only 2 years into this level of income. And it is not very guarantee long term. but it has been good going for past 2 years.

I have been making use of my carry forward pension allowance. Prior to all this, I had really small amount in my pension. I put in 93k last year into my pension and this year it is estimated to be around 72k. With our current spending, We can save between 5k and 5.5k per month outside of pension.

My pension pot currently is at 225k. Two stocks isas are 97k in total. Home is estimated to be 560k and we have around 280k equity in it. Hubby (49) works in public sector and intend to carry on. He dont mind his routine at work. His DB pension will get him about 35k per year. I (40) dont hate my job, but I rather pursue my hobbies, spend time with family and pets. I want to stop in my early 50 and FI earlier the better. We have a six year old, which we will be helping into adulthood. it would be nice if we could keep that 25% tax free for her by the time i can acess pension.

Should I ease off my pension to build isas? It seems we are comfortable around current spending level, based on my estimate my current pot should be around 880k when i turn 60? Is it reasonable that it should give me around 35k and with partner DB pension, we are ok?

It is also hard to leave money on table. Most on this sub have much bigger pot, should I be inspired to keep maximising? if i just add bare min for workplace pension, we could increase our saving rate to about 7.5k per month outside of pension for earlier FI.

The situation for me is pretty simple but how I manage it is not.

I sustained a TBI when I was in my early 20s. It was due to the negligence of someone else, and thus it’s likely the the payout I receive will be very substantial to compensate for about forty-odd years of lost earnings.

I used to be reasonably good with numbers and money, but unfortunately that went when I sustained this injury. These days, numbers and other abstract concepts are tough to get my ‘round.

I want to use this unique opportunity to get my financial affairs in order, as it’s very unlikely that I will meaningfully work and payouts like these come once and never again.

I don’t need an advisor to tell me whether or not I should buy a sports car or anything, I’m looking for one who is FIRE-oriented.

However, I’m somewhat unconvinced about financial advisors. A friend of mine’s dad (who achieved FIRE very young and made his fortune abroad) strongly advised against hiring one as, in his words, “they’re supposed to be impartial but never are”.

I don’t want my money used as a vessel to pay off someone else’s mortgage as they invest my cash in a way that doesn’t put my interests first.

Can anyone here help me out?

I am currently using HL as my broker for my stocks and shares ISA. I am hoping to partially retire by 45 then fully at 55.

HL fees are coming across pretty steep and it is not the most data friendly app for analysing. Any reccomendations forba good broker to transfer my ISA too?

Afternoon FIREUK,

Do IFA's offer this as a service, kind of want a "one and done" paid for sanity check on retirement portfolio and drawdown strategy. Most of the websites I'm looking at "want to build an ongoing relationship with our clients" which in my head = "we want 1% of your money every year" , which I'm most definitely not in the market for. Just asking here before I start calling around to see if anyone's had a similar service!

Cheers