Ten years or less to reach FI

[prognastat]

I can attest that downgrading from a 1500 sq ft house with 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms and a yard to a bedroom close to work allowing me to also not have a car has for the vast majority been a massive improvement as it has nearly eliminated the vast majority of maintenance work.

Eventually i'll probably have a house again, but probably not until I'm FI and have more time to deal with the maintenance and even then I probably wouldn't go as large unless I had started a family.

[TenYearsOrLess]

Trying to get in the habit of posting more frequently to keep myself on track! On that note, it's about a week out from payday and I am currently on target to achieve a 45% savings rate this month.

Mentality wise, I'm feeling okay-ish about the flat and the mortgage. Definitely an improvement compared with a few weeks ago. I calculated my monthly interest charge for the mortgage as £463, which was initially depressing... but then I realized that it's actually cheaper than what I've spent on rent every month for the past 10 years. In fact, to rent my current flat would cost between £800 and £850 a month! So it's a win. And it's a good investment because once I build up a bit more equity there's definitely money to be made by renting it out. I am not trapped, I'm just temporarily living in my future investment vehicle to set myself up for my next stage of life.

[mooretrees]

Going from 30% to 45% so quickly has got to feel great TYOL!

I wonder if you can rent an extra room in your flat? I don't recall you saying if you have the space, but perhaps if you can stomach a roommate, that extra money will push your savings rate higher. We have a mortgage and I'm ready to jump ship on owning a home. I'm not capable of keeping it as clean or tidy as I want so I feel I'm chasing my tail trying to catch up on my days off, we have more space than we need, and it will take a lot of working years to pay it off. We have the space to rent out a room, and have someone lined up which will cut our mortgage + utilities by a third. It is worth any extra hassle to feel like big progress is being made on that front. However, not everyone is up for a roommate, but for us that is going to help a ton.

Good luck and keep posting!

[Zanka]

Nice read. Following

[TenYearsOrLess]

Going from 30% to 45% so quickly has got to feel great TYOL!

I wonder if you can rent an extra room in your flat? I don't recall you saying if you have the space, but perhaps if you can stomach a roommate, that extra money will push your savings rate higher. We have a mortgage and I'm ready to jump ship on owning a home. I'm not capable of keeping it as clean or tidy as I want so I feel I'm chasing my tail trying to catch up on my days off, we have more space than we need, and it will take a lot of working years to pay it off. We have the space to rent out a room, and have someone lined up which will cut our mortgage + utilities by a third. It is worth any extra hassle to feel like big progress is being made on that front. However, not everyone is up for a roommate, but for us that is going to help a ton.

Good luck and keep posting!

This is a great idea and definitely something I would seriously consider had I not bought a one bedroom flat. I definitely think that if I decide to stay here long term, I will sell my flat and move to a cheaper house further out of the city with additional rooms to let out.

[TenYearsOrLess]

About a week out from payday and my spending is looking a bit crap this month. Three of my friends had birthdays this month and the presents, trips and activities have blown a hole in my budget. If I had been more organized I could have ordered better presents online, but because I left it until the last minute I ended up buying expensive generic gifts.

I've been using my own excel sheet to budget for the past few months but have decided to go back to YNAB since I find that it keeps me more accountable. It's going to be damage control for the rest of the month with no unnecessary spending.

[TenYearsOrLess]

It's annual performance review time at work. Got mine over and done with asap because these things always stress me out. It went fine though, and there were some hints at possibly taking on more senior work such as reviewing other people's work and getting involved in business development. This COULD be a sign that I'm being considered for promotion, or it could mean that I'm just going to take on more senior work this year in preparation for promotion next year. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much because promotion would definitely come with a pay rise, although I honestly have no idea how much that would be. If there's no promotion then my pay will probably increase ~ 6% like last year, but I'll find out the exact amount in October/November time. Should also get told what my bonus will be. Looking forward to being able to put away more money each month because I feel like my savings rate is still too low currently.

YNAB is going well this month and am on track with all my budget categories. Feels good to be in control after last months spending fail.

[TopHatFox]

From the perspective of extremely high savings rate (75%+), I don't think "the grind" exists. First, the accumulation period is short (~5 years), so it feels more like a sprint than a marathon. This also creates more flexibility in terms of stopping and restarting. If you take time off, the savings drain will be low and if you restart, the NW quickly moves up again. Going fast, I've never felt a need to do countdowns, that is, whether it took 5 years or 6 years because I took a 1 year break (I didn't) or whether I would reach NW goals slower because I killed my income potential (I did) was not an issue because I knew that slightly slower than really fast is still fast.

I agree with this for sure. I've quit like 5-10 jobs already and have still gone from 1K to 20k to 40K to 60K to 50K to 90K and to 100K. The underlying factor? Whether I could stand a job for 3 days or a year, my expenses were anywhere from 0-7K/yr, and everything was tax optimized. It'd still be nice to find something I could do for longer than a year...

[TenYearsOrLess]

No update yet on my annual bonus or salary review although I have a meeting with my line manager tomorrow so fingers crossed I'll find out something.

In other news, my office is going to be moving in a few months, and there is a very good chance that it will be even closer to my home. Currently my commute is a 25 min walk so it's fine, but I'd love to be close enough to come home for lunch and cook an actual meal rather than have to eat the same miserable sandwich everyday. It would lower my monthly grocery spend and it would be easier to work from home flexibly too.

Budgeting is going well. All my spare money is currently going to mortgage overpayments ahead of my remortgage next year. Once I get the LTV to less than 80% I'll be able to remortgage to a more reasonable interest rate (around 2%) and then switch my focus to investing.

[TenYearsOrLess]

So apparently it's been four years since my last post. Time really flies when there's a Global pandemic I guess. Here's a run down of where things are - still at the same job but significantly more senior (promoted twice, sub-contracted out to a senior role with client) - doubled my income from £30k to £60k a year. Still have the same old banger car but I barely drive it since I work remote and my office is 10 minutes walk away. My net worth is £75k but most of that tied up in pension investments and/or equity. I'm still in the same one bed flat and it's worth probably around the same as what I bought it for 5 years ago.

I work so much these days. Routinely working from 9 am to 8 pm just to stay on top of things. I don't dislike my job but I feel like I'm just wasting my life doing this. I'm feeling such a big urge to travel. I've been on two holidays this year to dream destinations and it's just reinforced how much I haven't seen and how many places I want to go to. I wonder if trying to move abroad for work would scratch that itch or if I should just jack in my career entirely, sell my flat and take some real time out.

[Smashter]

I always love seeing people pop back in for updates!

If you...
- have a PhD in biomedical research
- are at a senior level in your job
- want to live abroad and make more money

I would be surprised if you couldn't make more in the US. I sometimes have to look up European salaries as part of my job at work, and I am consistently astounded at how low they are compared to the US. Even in tech, even for developers.

Grinding for almost 11 hour days for $75k USD per year for someone at your experience level seems sub-optimal.

I of course have no idea how this kind of move would work logistically for you, or if your job is country specific. Just want to say that you've probably got a lot of options and I hope you find something better (or at least more chill) soon!

[TenYearsOrLess]

Interesting you mention the US - the client I'm contracted to work for (through my job) is a the US office of a large pharmaceutical company and they defo pay a lot more for my time (to my employer) than is passed on to me personally. I'd also love to live in US for a bit honestly.

[guitarplayer]

Up until recently I would say that moving to Switzerland would be a way to go but after Brexit it is not that easy for UK passport holders ( unless you hold an EU / EEA one too - UK is a pretty mixed in terms of demographics so not that unlikely).

There’d perhaps be the language barrier outside work, but no paperwork barrier and salaries are more US like.

Not that I made the move but I consider it in a couple of years (also UK based now but EU passport holder).

[TenYearsOrLess]

Yeah step one is definitely updating my CV as I've got much experience over this past 6 years and then I'm going to try to find a decent recruiter to look for either Europe or US-based roles because my job is pretty specialized so it's not the sort of thing I see advertised on job sites.

Switzerland would be cool although I do hear that it's super expensive there in terms of living costs.

[2Birds1Stone]

I am curious about your lifestyle spending/savings rate. Your NW is significant, yet only 1.25X current salary (and 2.5X previous salary).....where does your money go?