Moneymakeover Couple in 30s, would love to semi retire in the next 10 years

Thank you so much for everyone’s replies and esp PandPs for your detailed reply. You’re absolutely right about us being nervous of rent a room scheme with children at home. But it could be a possibility when they get older. The excel idea is great, I will look into that. I haven’t figured out how to reply to individual posts yet but here’s some more context.

  1. Apologies if it’s not clear from my post, we earn about the same, he gets more bonus and I get RSUs. We both already put in 20% to pension.
  2. The majority of our investments outside pension is in broad market ETFs, we buy 4k worth every month. We do hold some individual shares though, I understand it’s higher risk.
  3. Our family car is financed through pcp, which I know doesn’t make financial sense while holding cash. However we change this car every 2/3 years for a newer version about 2 years old, services are usually covered by the dealer and we’ve never had to pay for any repairs since it’s always in great condition. it’s a luxury that costs us 5% of our monthly net pay. Other car was bought with cash.
  4. We’ve been thinking of moving mainly to have access to better schools when kids reach secondary school age. The 1m is an estimate considering how much house prices has gone up lately. Hopefully this is an over estimate. The 100k in cash is 60k in MMF and 40k in current account. I don’t plan to sell any investments if buying the next house so I’m building up cash and maybe get a small mortgage. We will then focus on paying it off asap.
  5. I think I’ve been a little fixated on the early retirement idea after reading about FIRE/coastFIRE/baristaFIRE. Maybe because we both work very mentally stressful jobs. I don’t think changing employer will help, it comes with the role. But the possibility of working less hours/ taking summer months off etc is appealing. It would be great to work for half the salary in half the hours, which will be enough for expenses and not have to dip in investments. Letting it compound.
  6. Our expenses has been 62k so far this year, 50% exactly of net pay. What else should we be doing with our finances? We have followed a simple strategy so far, max pension, save 50%, DCA into ETFs.
  7. Yes we bought our home at a great time, pure luck. Nothing inherited.
 
jjcooke said:
We’ve been thinking of moving mainly to have access to better schools when kids reach secondary school age
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Are you talking logistics of getting to school or enrollment due to catchment area? Catchment is not generally a criteria for enrollment in secondary, key one is usually primary school you are feeding in from. Just in case you hadn't considered this, to get into your desired secondary you have to start with the primary and that is usually based on address. So maybe your target area is the one that will get you a place in the primary and then the desired secondary.

That is not to say that you would not get a place if you didn't join from the feeder primary school, but you are not guaranteed one. And if you are moving specifically for schools, this is important.

Also consider that the best school for one child might not be for both. I know of families with children in different schools, not just gender based splits but also things like sports, music, science facilities, support etc differ from school to school. Just to bear in mind that if you are far away from secondary school, things might change a lot in the meantime.
 
jjcooke said:
I think I’ve been a little fixated on the early retirement idea after reading about FIRE/coastFIRE/baristaFIRE. Maybe because we both work very mentally stressful jobs. I don’t think changing employer will help, it comes with the role. But the possibility of working less hours/ taking summer months off etc is appealing. It would be great to work for half the salary in half the hours, which will be enough for expenses and not have to dip in investments. Letting it compound.
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Is working half the time for half the pay a realistic option? E.g., if you're a finance director then sure you can get fractional work. But if you're an investment banker, I'm not sure there's too many 20 hour weeks on the go. Take a careful look at what kinds of careers people around you are having and assess if this route is really viable, or if you could shift the emphasis of your career to make it possible in the near future.

Are there ways you can further accelerate your pensions, I wonder (employer giving future raise as pension contributions?) and certainly plan to increase contributions with age. Basically it's the best route to speed run to early retirement given the lack of tax drag on compounding gains inside the pension vs out of it.

I think you are taking the correct approach to maximise your investments, though as others say on here you need to consider the wider scope of what you're thinking about and also the impact on your ability to reach your goal of adding a more expensive home in the mix - you'd want to be sure of what your real goal is.

After that it's lifestyle. I couldn't see myself sitting at home from age 50 with nothing to do but whatever came into my head. But I know some people who are happily partially retired with board seats or fractional work and so on. Dual effect of stuff to structure their lives plus an income.
 
Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) is for many much more the freedom and independence, not the retirement.

I think many posters, including myself, talk of retirement but it doesn't mean going to sit in front of the fire under a blanket, doing nothing.

Many people will be super open to keeping their brain active, in a low pressure low hour gig - fractional CFO, day rate consulting, a board position, ad hoc project in their network, a day a week employed somewhere else, or whatever. These could easily be 25-50K per annum, even a lot more. This type of future income however is very uncertainty compared to cost uncertainty, so it becomes a much more painful to try and forecast. I try to setup my forecasts in a way they are easy to update later.
 
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