I'm a 26 year old living in the UK currently trying for a kid with my partner (who is on board with the ERE philosophy). I sold my house 6 months ago and moved back in with my mum bringing my partner with me. The living situation has been ideal so far. I check in often with my mum and partner, separately, to check how they are finding it. The plan is that we will hopefully have only one kid (I guess small chance of twins and chance of no kid) and continue to all live under the same roof. Not sure if I'm being naive in thinking this will work. I just know that I don't way to pay the banks interest on a mortgage or to pay extortionate rent and bills.
Mine and my partner's assets currently consist of the following:
40k cash
35k equity in partner's property which we are trying to sell
20k UK gov't bonds
10k Global index linked short term bonds
15k Developed world equity ex-uk (large cap index fund)
10k Emerging Markets index fund
5k UK equities index fund
5k Global small cap index fund
5k Global property fund
We were blindly dumping our income into bonds and funds prior to reading ERE and prior to me stumbling across Tony Deden on this forum (I've really enjoyed reading his Edelweiss Journal issues). Jacob and Tony have me very uncertain of continuing to invest in bonds and index funds hence the large cash allocation. I feel I need to get a lot of real investment reading under my belt before investing now. Tony's writing has made me concerned about how high real inflation (not just reported nonsense) actually is hence I have looked into gold. I am leaning towards this currently:
www.wisdomtree.eu/en-gb/products/ucits- ... sical-gold
Any advise on gold investing would be greatly appreciated particularly as I am currently considering a fairly big move into gold (currently thinking 25% of the portfolio). I would then keep a cash buffer of 5% of the portfolio with the remainder being individual stocks selected (should I feel comfortable doing this after substantial reading). Any suggestions on the reading would be much appreciated.
Job wise I am miserable at my current workplace. It takes up 53 hours of my week (door to door time). This includes 45 mins for lunch and my 100 mins train journey round trip. My take home is roughly 2k a month after train cost. The plan is to get an office admin job within a walking or cycling distance (1 hour round trip commute max) where the working hours total 20-25 per week. This would give me a take home of about 1k per month. This income would have to be enough to support my partner and the potential kid for the first two years as neither of us want her working during this period. She would then go back to part time work after this period with one of us being home at all times (plan to home school).
The part time job would be equally mind numbing as my current job but I lack any really useful skills and I am currently a very specialised cog in a niche industry I don't actually like.
This plan would have the benefit of giving me time to learn about investing as well as being able to spend more time with my partner and hopefully kid. I would also like to use this extra time to learn some skills such as bicycle maintenance and food growing so that we're less reliable on job income.
We currently pay £340 a month to my mum to cover rent, utilities and council tax (this is a very fortunate deal for us I realise). My mum's monetary situation is such that this amount is highly unlikely to increase in the coming years. So for the first two years we will not be adding to the pot but £660 should be enough to cover remaining expenses without having to dip into the savings built. Again please let me know if you think I am being naive.
TLDR summary and points for me to action in order of priority:
- Learn more about gold investing as my current view is both index funds and bonds are massively overpriced and real inflation is probably not far off 10%.
Consider dropping down to part time office admin jobs and look to update my CV.
Get reading on individual stock investing.