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Mind the (early retirement) gap

/ Gracie Sunderland / 1 Comment

Quick reminder to come and join me (and the FIRE community) on Instagram @brilliantladiesmoney. At least join once a week for the Friday Banger – music that inspires me on my journey – definitely my favourite moment of the week. From Sauti Sol to Sizzla (plus artists who don’t begin with S), it’s all the tunes that get me back on track.

Following my posts on working out what you need to retire on and looking at where my current portfolio will take me I wanted to talk about the early retirement gap.

Unsurprisingly, most non-FIRE retirement discussions focus on investing in pensions. Paying into pensions is a tax efficient way to save, and has the added benefit of hiding your money from yourself so you can’t change your mind about your future plans and spunk it all on a beach house. But the early retirement gap is the time between quitting traditional employment and being able to access your pensions.

Mmmm beach house though. Photo by Harshil Gudka on Unsplash

Looking at my portfolio really showed how critical this gap is. Since my assets are heavy on real estate and on pensions, there is a gaping hole in the middle where more flexible options should be. Add in the need to wait for pension income, and it might be time to rethink the plan a little.

So I went back to basics in terms of what I will need and when, and mapped out income against it. This resulted in a long and complex spreadsheet which I won’t share here but started from the premise of living until I am 80. I already wrote about being at the ‘tail end’ or probably half way through my allotted time on this earth – and I would caution that you think about this stuff when you are in strong existential form as I found it quite depressing. Anyway – it’s infinitely less depressing than not thinking about it and ending up broke, so here we go.

You will see I put in some assumptions and I wanted to unpack two of these a little. The net result though if I follow my plan to retire at 50 is three years where my expenses will still be super high, then 15 years of gap until pensions kick in.

The impact of having kids and the choices we make. I don’t know where I would be financially if I hadn’t had children, but without them I could already retire on my current portfolio. I wouldn’t change them for the world of course – this is purely a financial observation. If you want rantings about how the system is stacked against single mothers, then pretty much the rest of the blog awaits you.

One big question though for the next phase is about whether I support my children through higher education, assuming they want to go. I have already committed to putting them through private schools, most of which is based on the fact that we move country every three years and need some consistency. Part of me absolutely wants to make sure they get through university debt-free. Whilst debt levels in the UK is still nothing like the USA, it is heading in that direction. On the other hand, with the right money mentality and guidance, there is nothing to stop them getting scholarships, working and managing what debt they had to get through on their own. The FIRE community tends towards the latter, with Mr Money Mustache in particular being vocal about both reducing costs for college and letting your children use the tools you have given them and find their own way.

I looked at the most basic costs for a UK college education and it would add around £20,000 per year per child to my expenses. Because of the age gap between my kids, I would need to cover this for six years, three of which are after my planned early retirement date. So that’s likely £120,000 in total that I would need to earn in that period in order to cash flow it.

In some ways this is a conversation that will never end though – will I help my kids buy their first house, look after their kids for them, whatever else? Or just focus on not being a burden to them and help out when I can? It is one of the times I hate being the only parent giving financial support, because whilst I don’t want them to miss out, it’s a lot.

Will an Oxford education even still be relevant in the future? Photo by Ben Seymour on Unsplash

Pension dates and what the future looks like. This is another interesting question which I never really thought about until I hit 40 and my future as a creaking elder suddenly felt a whole lot closer. Most of the US podcasts on FIRE assume that pensions kick in from 59.5 but in the UK – at least with pensions in any way connected to the public sector – pension age is 67. This really does add a lot of years that have to be covered by investments or income. By the time I retire, this could easily be 70 years old. Public sector pensions may be great because they are defined benefit but they are also pegged to the national pensionable age so there is a chance these will all shift to be much later. And pensionable age continues to increase, as the overall population ages and there are more people drawing pensions than paying into them. Which I understand but it’s hard to plan when the goalposts keep moving.

I have also bravely added in the UK State Pension which I struggle to believe will exist as anything other than a means-tested benefit by the time I retire. And whilst at £716 per month or £8,592 per year, it’s not enough to live off it would make a significant difference to how much I need in my overall portfolio. However I hold it very lightly as a possibility in spite of paying tax and NI for my whole career, even the overseas year. We already have ample evidence that the UK Government will not hesitate to shaft women (and by shaft I mean change the age at which they can access their pension with almost not notice, then underpay women £1 billion and not even bother to try and clear it up) if they think they can get away with it.

Planning for the sunset years <cries in Young Person> Photo by Jason Blackeye on Unsplash

So that is how it looks. The gap is real but thankfully there are a number of ways to think about filling it without having to stay in full time employment – more on that in a future post. For now though, working out exactly what this looks like and what the options are makes me feel more confident about making movements.

What does your early retirement planning look like and how are you thinking about future support to your kids?

Back to Basics part 1: what is FIRE?

/ Gracie Sunderland / 3 Comments

Following a chat with a friend this weekend, I realised that I don’t have a single post on here which actually talks about the basics of FIRE. To be fair I’m quite like this in real life as well – just starting sentences wherever I had reached in my own head and assuming everyone else was there with me. As my mum once said, “it’s like your train of thought is half way out of the station and off down the track before I realised you were speaking to me”. But as with saving (see what I did there?!) it’s never too late to start a new habit, so in these next two posts I am going to outline some of the basics.

So, what is FIRE?

There is a whole movement out there, so I start with the caveat that this is my personal take. Financial Independence, Retire Early (or FIRE) is all about becoming financially free from the need to do things you don’t want to. This includes spending money on things you don’t really want or need; and for most people, means being free to give up paid employment. There are different kinds of FIRE to aim for, which relate to the extent of your freedom and whether you need an income at all, and a few main steps.

FIRE!!! And/or the kind of delightful beach-side evening you could enjoy if you didn’t have to go to work tomorrow. Photo by Nathan Lindahl on Unsplash

Where do I sign up?!

The brilliant thing about FIRE is you can start from wherever you are. All the steps are simple to work out (or there are simple versions at least).

Step One: Start with your ‘why’. This is so important, but it could be anything. You hate your job; you want to spend more time with your kids; you have an amazing idea for a world changing small business but you can’t get started with the debts and commitments you have; your dad died before he could retire and you don’t want that to be you. FIRE is simple but it’s not always easy – having a ‘why’ to come back to really matters. And it might change which is totally fine. My why is about being able to live my dream life, with my kids, and a balance of the work, environment, community and service that means to me.

Step Two: Focus first on financial stability. I don’t talk much about this here because it’s not where I am at on my journey, but getting out of debt, and making the lifestyle changes needed to ensure that you are self-funding, is the first building block. Dave Ramsey is a good place to start, with a plan designed around simple steps.

Step Three: Work out what you need. There are some basic tips on how to do this which centre around two rules: the 25% rule for calculating how much you will need, and the 4% rule for calculating how much you can take out in retirement. You only need to do one sum, though the first part takes a bit of work. You need to work out how much you will need to live off in retirement (whether that’s at 65 or ASAP). This will be different for everyone, with two big factors being whether you have children or family members to support: and your accommodation costs.

Do a rough calculation of your monthly fixed essentials – utilities, transport, accommodation and so on, remembering to factor in giving up work so whilst your commuting costs might go down, your energy bill might go up. To be fair, you could probably use your in-COVID costs for this.

Estimate what are essential but not fixed, so groceries, charitable giving, entertainment. People have these in different categories, but I work to a ‘basics’ budget which includes e.g. good internet and some money for books, movies and whatnot but not much.

Get real about what you want out of your retirement. If you want to spend it all on cruises around the Caribbean, your costs will be very different to someone who wants to potter about at home and spend some time each year visiting family in the same country. There are also lots of different kinds of FIRE, some of which aim to cover all the basic costs but assume some additional income stream to cover luxuries – for now though, just start somewhere.

An easy way to just get going is to take an estimate. WHICH did some great research into what people in the UK actually spend in retirement, and found it was less then most people imagined. They have calculations for a basic, comfortable and luxury retirement, finding that a luxurious retirement for individuals (not couples who are calculated differently) costs £30,000 per year, but this is dependent on having a paid-for house.

There are lots of different ways you could go: you get to choose. Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash

Once you have these total costs, multiply them by 25. I worked out that I will need £30,000 – so I should need £750,000 invested.

Step Four: calculate your net worth. Whilst it can be disheartening to feel like you need to save an unfeasibly large amount of money, hopefully, you won’t be starting from zero. Working out your net worth can take a little while the first time you do it, but recalculating it annually is easy peasy. You essentially need to work out your assets: capital on your home, cash in the bank, money invested in pensions or non-retirement funds, premium bonds, money down the back of the sofa – all of it. This might take some digging, but make those calls to find out where your old pension fund went, it’s your money after all! Then work out your debts (mortgage, student loans, other debt) and minus this from your assets. Voila! Net worth. I share my net worth annually.

Once you know your net worth you can also revisit the figure that you are aiming for since there might be other things to take into account. For example, since I have two small defined benefit pensions which will are already projected to bring in £9,000 per year in retirement that means I actually need £21,000 more, or £525,000 saved and invested. If I add in the state pension (which frankly feels like magical thinking the way things are going, so I don’t count it – if I was closer to retirement then I would do) then I would have an additional £8,970 per year and only need to save £300,000. My calculations are also based on owning a home outright though, which is a massive additional aspect in terms of either saving enough to pay it off between now and retirement, or needing a lot more invested to cover your costs.

So simple you can have a little happy jump. Photo by Austin Schmid on Unsplash

And that’s steps one through four! Realistically if you are in a lot of debt, then these steps will take a while. But if you are an average person with a reasonable income, puttering along and thinking about how to get more out of life, you might have just moved into a whole new frame of mind. A quick moment to recognise that these are really hard times, and with the average British person being more in debt since COVID than ever before, this might all feel impossible. But I really believe that the tenets of the FIRE movement, some of the thinking and the simple actions to make a difference, are valuable wherever you are in your journey. More on all of these, and steps five through seven next week.

PS: If you want to find out about FIRE and get all fired up yourself, Mr Money Moustache’s ‘start here’ post is a great one. MMM is the hipster uncle of the movement (which also has grandparents, coming to that another day) and is all kinds of inspiring, though one of the reasons I started this blog was that, whilst I love his writing, he doesn’t resonate with me much.