By their own admission, today’s interviewee is straight from the high-earner IT professional FIRE central casting department. But as we’ll be reminded once again, everyone faces obstacles and Rich has had to overcome an early property debacle and some very difficult family planning challenges in their journey to financial independence.
A place by the FIRE
Hello Rich! How do you feel about taking stock of your financial life today?
Thanks for having me, Monevator team!
How old are you?
My wife and I are in our early 50s.
Whereabouts do you live and what’s it like there?
We moved north of London a few years back mainly because we wanted space for a kitchen garden.
My wife is a keen gardener, growing loads of vegetables and fruit especially during the summer. I’m a keen cook, so it all works out!
When do you consider you achieved Financial Independence and why?
I’m afraid this is going to be one of those stories of “how on earth can someone in IT earning six-figures become Financially Independent and Retire Early? It’s a mystery!”
I consider that I became FI some time in 2020. I haven’t retired yet, but may do so in the near future.
My wife is also working, but she enjoys her job more. We expect her to continue to do it part-time even after we both nominally retire.
Assets: a millionaire next door
What is your current net worth?
Total net worth excluding our house is £1.7 million. Of that, the pension is just under a million, ISA is about £300,000, and our general investing account (GIA) is about £350,000. It’s almost all invested in whole market funds and ETFs.
I favour Vanguard VWRL/VWRP and VAFTGAG in the ISA and GIA. For my pension – which doesn’t offer Vanguard funds – I have some Blackrock iShares ETFs, chosen to reflect roughly a whole market index.
We have about £50,000 in cash or equivalents. That’s in savings accounts and premium bonds. I’m trying to build up the cash position to the point where we will have three years of spending, and to have something to invest when there’s a downturn in the market.
Those figures are from 1 February 2025. I may look back on these numbers with nostalgia. The man in the White House and his Nazty little sidekick are running round the factory stripping out the wires and copper pipes for scrap. I fear they’re going to break something important soon.
Approximately 80% of our net worth – including the house – is in tax-sheltered accounts like the ISA, pension, and primary residence. The other 20% pays low thousands per year in dividend tax, and one day will pay only 18% or 24% capital gains tax. I’ll only pay the basic rate on my pension when I draw it down.
I call these ‘middle-class benefits’.
Some people claim our welfare state is in trouble, and sure it is if you’re poor, disabled or ill.
But isn’t it great that the NHS is World Class, our Army is Fighting Fit ready for the war in Europe, our roads and railways are immaculate, and we still have money left over to help a middle-aged man on a six-figure salary?
What’s your main residence like? Do you own or rent it?
Before I was married I bought my first flat, a leasehold, at the beginning of the 2000s. It was a disaster from the very start. I made every mistake you can make!
I bought it with a mortgage from my bank without considering the mortgage market or even knowing that was a thing. I locked myself into a fixed interest rate – 8.5% – for three years as interest rates were falling. I bought expensive monthly payment protection cover. I used the solicitor that the estate agent recommended. I bid the full asking price. Then after I moved in, I found the flat had noisy neighbours so it was barely habitable.
And those weren’t even the worst things that happened!
A few months after I moved in, the leasehold (‘fleecehold’) for the property was sold to an outright conman. He immediately started increasing the ground rent and piling on demands for bills to repair this and that. Needless to say, no builder was ever seen.
I lived there about a year, rented it out for a bit, and then after a couple of years I tried to sell. Every mistake I’d made when buying now came back to bite me. The original solicitor hadn’t bothered with any of the council searches you’re supposed to do, and had missed that there was some kind of dangerous structure order on the whole building. Even without that, the flat wasn’t worth the full price I’d paid and the estate agent advised me to knock £10,000 off. It ended up selling for even less – it was quite an achievement to lose money on London property at that time.
But the biggest problem was the new leasehold landlord who wouldn’t provide the documentation buyers need to prove that I’d paid all the baseless demands for money. Instead he tried to use this as leverage to force me to sell the flat to him. All perfectly legal apparently.
I was very, very lucky in the end. The buyer was as naive as me and instructed his solicitor to buy my flat anyway without the documentation from the landlord and ignoring the council order. So I got rid of it, probably £25,000 down in the end.
Checking now – that flat’s a rental and has not been sold since. At least the building hasn’t collapsed.
This put me off home ownership for quite a long time. But after I got married and we moved out of London, we finally got sick of renting and moving every year and we bought again.
A house! Freehold! Arranged using an independent mortgage broker!
Given that this is an interview with someone who has achieved Financial Independence, it sounds like we’ve hit a turning point in the story…
Yes, I was starting to educate myself about money and freedom at this point and I was determined to pay the mortgage off.
As well as my unjustified but hopefully understandable fear of owning a house, I have a much larger horror at being in debt to anyone.
Our garden is one of those very long and quite narrow ones which are so common in the UK. The plot of the house and garden is actually a 7:1 rectangle.
In the first few months of living there I calculated how much of the garden was notionally mine. Just the deposit I’d put down on the house to start with. I marked it out on the fence. And saw I owned the sun deck and a small shed at the bottom of the garden.
Everything else felt like a big black hole of debt. I suppose if all else failed I could live in the shed, but I’m not sure my wife – or the bank – would go along with it.
I wasn’t able to overpay the mortgage for the first year – more on this later – and what you pay in the beginning is almost all eaten by interest, so the mark on the garden fence moved only a little at first.
But with determination, working very hard in a better paying job, living modestly, and putting every spare pound into overpaying the mortgage, I willed that mark on the fence to move along. I ended up paying off the whole mortgage in a snip under eight years.
My bank couldn’t transfer the final payment to the mortgage company online so I had to go into the branch. The woman who was helping me to do it asked me what it was for. When she found out I was paying off my mortgage, she straight-up asked me when I was going to buy a second house, since obviously I should do that now. I think my gurning face told her that wasn’t something I was considering.
With the house paid off and no debts at all, I was now free to go for FIRE for real. We still live modestly and every spare pound goes into the stock market.
Do you consider your home an asset, an investment, or something else?
Why isn’t ‘problem’ one of the options?!
It’s somewhere to live, and that should always be the most important thing. It’s always trouble, this and that breaking down and needing to be fixed.
But with my financial head on, the answer is it’s neither an asset nor an investment. Unless you own two of them in which case my advice would be to sell the one you’re not living in and invest the money into the stock market.
Nvidia have bathrooms in their offices, but as far as I recall they’ve never tried to call me up to fix a toilet that started leaking.
Earning: well-paid but not so rewarding
What’s your job?
I work in IT and earn about £150,000.
Does my job spark joy? No.
If you type my father’s 1980s salary into one of those online inflation calculators, then it was similar to mine at the same age. (Of course not including his gold-plated Defined Benefit pension.)
My father drove his company car to a large private office every day. His secretary, who had an office of her own, kept his diary, dealt with interoffice memos, and typed up his letters. He was responsible for factory safety across the whole UK in a particularly dangerous heavy industry. He had a budget, but otherwise management stayed out of his way and he did his job as a respected professional, setting his own direction, with a medium-sized department of other professionals working under him.
At the end of an eight-hour day he went home to a five-bed house in the countryside.
No one will be crushed under hundreds of tons of steel roller if I don’t do my job well, but it’s still important for The Company, being a vital link that enables sales in the hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
Yet I sit in the second bedroom of my two-bed semi.
‘IT’ can sound a bit nebulous. What do you actually do?
The first thing in the morning is to check if customers raised new tickets and firefight those. Then, after triaging hundreds of emails and replying to what I can, there’s a ‘gamified’ ticketing system that sorts issues into ones that must be completed in this ‘sprint’.
The other guy who was working on this resigned and I only got the budget to hire his replacement last month so I’m training someone up in my spare time. If the training works out, we might have two-thirds of the staff needed to provide round the clock customer cover, assuming neither of us goes on holiday, ever.
The latest wheeze is The Company threatening to introduce ‘stand-up’ meetings to make us more ‘agile’. Each day we’ll have to appear on a video call at a certain time and discuss which tickets we’ll work on that day.
The job effectively doesn’t have fixed hours. It’s very often the case that I’m answering emails or chat messages at both 9am and 10pm on the same day. It’s not full-time 13-plus hours a day – there are often times when I’m waiting for hours with nothing much to do. But I need to be ready to jump in when whatever was blocking me gets unblocked.
I do realise that I don’t have it so bad. I have a job, I work at home, I have a house and a lovely wife, a big salary, and I’m well off. Many people work much harder for less money. Those factory workers would probably be Deliveroo drivers today, with no job security at all and working for a fraction of the wage.
I worry a lot for the younger generation as things seem to be headed only in one direction.
Not to be rude, but if it’s such a grind and you’re FI then why don’t you leave?
I’ve been asking myself that. Part of it is that I’ll miss the people I work with, who are all great. By leaving I’d be making them do the work, since you can be sure The Company will panic but won’t hire anyone to replace me.
Part of it is a severe case of OMY – that’s ‘One More Year’.
Another year of work means I could save another £80,000, along with compounding my existing investments. That’s a few thousand extra every year in retirement.
Writing it down makes staying seem even less compelling.
Do you have any sources of income besides your main job?
Back in the day I used to own some niche community websites, running Google AdWords to generate income. They earned altogether probably £2,000-£4,000 each year, but it was hardly passive income as you have to deal with spammers and all kinds of malign actors.
After paying half of the income in tax, you’re making so little that it’s not worth the trouble. I closed them all down in the early 2010s.
Did pursuing FIRE get in the way of your career?
I found that becoming Financially Independent while working has a downside that no one talks about…
…you can become an asshole.
I’ve struggled a little bit with this. The reality is that when The Company does something stupid – and it’s a big company, so it does something stupid almost every day – you can tell everyone it is stupid without serious consequences. But doing that frequently makes you an asshole, and a bore.
I’m trying to make sure that if I’m going to be an asshole, it’s only to senior management, only very infrequently for the few things that really matter, and only if doing so will practically help others. And it should go without saying, but never to act like an asshole with juniors, peers, or immediate managers.
Spending and saving: putting it into perspective
What’s your annual spending? How has this changed over time?
In 2023 we together spent under £40,000. That was up a lot on 2022, which was under £30,000.
I haven’t done the sums for 2024 yet but I expect it’s under £40,000 again.
We don’t live frugally or have a budget, but we’re not big spenders. We have one rather old small car. We’re both fantastic cooks, and find it’s more fun to cook than going to a restaurant. When we go on holiday, which we do several times a year, it’s always to places where we know people and can stay at their houses.
That is a lot more fun than going somewhere you don’t know anyone and have to stay in a hotel. Or a beach resort, which I absolutely hate.
I don’t believe it’s ever come up before in a FIRE-side chat, but there was one large obstacle we faced, in life as well as financially. We had IVF to try to have children.
IVF is a grubby experience for the man. If you’ve never ‘donated’ from a single bed in a dimly-lit side room off a hospital corridor, you’re lucky. It has little to recommend it.
But it’s much worse for the woman, weeks of pain and indignity. Starting with self-administered daily injections to swell your ovaries with an unnatural harvest of eggs. Then you’re off to hospital for the first time. A large needle is inserted into your ovaries under general anaesthetic. A week or two later you return for the doctor to manually insert the embryos. Repeat the whole thing for four cycles.
Usually these IVF stories end with “but it was all worth it for our rosy-cheeked baby girls”. But I have to tell you the actual statistics are not so rosy. The chances of IVF succeeding are less than fifty/fifty for a 35-40 year old woman, and they drop precipitously after that.
Ours didn’t succeed.
So what now? We are happily blessed with many nephews and nieces, and one grand-niece. It’s a joy when we visit them or they visit us. And – to bring this back on financial track – their aunt and uncle will be helping them out with ISAs and house deposits as they get older. One day – hopefully in the very distant future – they’ll get to split whatever remains when we’ve shuffled off.
Financially IVF is challenging. The all-in cost including the drugs was roughly £8,000 – £10,000 per cycle (probably more now), with one cycle free on the NHS.
We did it in our thirties when our careers were ramping up but we weren’t earning a lot just yet. These are years when you should be investing and letting the magic of compounding do its thing, but for three years every spare penny was spent on IVF.
Thank you for sharing. You’re right that IVF is not something that ever gets talked about in FIRE circles. But in the spirit of getting back to the clichés that are, what’s the secret to saving money?
Both when I was paying off the mortgage, and after that when I was properly investing, I invested everything that I didn’t spend. It was for sure over 50% of my pay after tax. My wife also invests regularly.
There’s no great secret to this. If you have a lump of money left over, you simply don’t spend it. If you have debt, it’s used to pay that off first. If you’re not in debt, you put it straight into your ISA, pension or GIA, and forget about it.
Do you have any other hints about spending less?
I don’t sweat the small stuff. I’m paid very well so I shop in Waitrose. If I buy a bottle of wine, it’s going to be something nice. My wife rolls her eyes at my collection of guitars. Is four really too many?
What counted most for us was the big stuff: not driving a clown car, not living in an enormous house, never getting into debt, and making sure every spare pound was invested in low fee, whole market funds.
Do you have any passions or hobbies or vices that eat up your income?
I suppose I’m fortunate that I don’t have expensive hobbies. Did that happen because I’m trying to save or did having inexpensive tastes allow me to become free?
Cooking, preserving, brewing, playing musical instruments, visiting friends, reading books, and going for long walks. They are all fun, healthy, and not expensive.
A favourite walk can be a good step towards financial freedom.
Investing: passive less aggro
What kind of investor are you?
Nowadays I’m passive all the way.
One change that happened in 2024 was getting out of single shares entirely. For a long time I spent pin money buying shares on ‘feels’.
We’re talking £500-£1000 a go, so I suppose I had expensive pins! But never more than a few percent of my net worth.
I sometimes made money. Investing in Shell, Rolls Royce, and Carnival – back when the general opinion was no one would ever fly in a plane or go on a cruise again – wasn’t too bad. And sometimes I lost money – oh hey there Purple Bricks, William Hill, and many more. Never very much money in either direction.
But I had to deal with the bother of corporate actions. Or more to the point, my wife would have to deal with it if I died. So I chose to simplify down to whole market funds and ETFs of the kind she already invests in.
Did you make any big mistakes on your investing journey?
All the usual! Starting my investment journey too late. Not having a pension at all until I was about 30. Dithering in badly-paid jobs at dubious start-up companies early in my career. Not educating myself about money earlier.
What has been your overall return, as best you can tell?
My broker account is saying 40%, and my pension account says I’ve doubled the money I’ve paid in over the years, but the truth is it’s not something I track or think about.
The stock market goes up. The stock market goes down. More up than down recently and I’m expecting that to change soon.
What matters to me is am I FI? Do I have enough to RE? How much will I have to live on in retirement? Is that more than me and my wife are likely to need?
At the moment I believe the answer to all of those is yes – although I wait to hear what the good folk reading Monevator think about it.
How much have you been able to fill your ISA and pension contributions?
We’ve been able to fill both of our ISA allowances every year since 2018. I wasn’t very good about filling my pension allowance in previous years, but since last year I’ve been trying to add £40,000 – the old limit before it was raised – every year.
I could fill the pension to £60,000. But it would involve realising gains in the GIA and doing complicated capital gains tax calculations so I put that in the ‘too hard’ bucket.
To what extent did tax incentives and shelters influence your strategy?
I’ve been cynical about what I call our middle-class benefits system, but that hasn’t stopped me from using it.
What I especially like about ISAs is how they get rid of the tedious, needless complexity of calculating dividend and capital gains taxes.
How often do you check or tweak your portfolio or other investments?
I calculate our net worth every month, and add money every two or three months. But I only review our investment choices annually, and I tweak them even less. The last time I moved any investments between funds was two years ago. I don’t expect to have to do it again, possibly ever.
That said, I am mindful of where I add new money. Recently I’ve been trying to increase our cash allocation, in anticipation of retirement and to weather falls in the stock market.
What would you say to Monevator readers pursuing financial freedom?
The easiest way to accumulate wealth is to not spend any money that you’ve invested, so if that’s a strategy, then I guess it’s our strategy!
This is easy as we don’t have expensive tastes so we really don’t feel the need to spend very much. It’s not as if our combined £40,000 annual spending is in any way frugal.
In the weeds
Can you recommend some favourite resources for anyone chasing the FIRE dream?
I think I was turned on to FIRE by reading the Mr Money Moustache blog. I don’t exactly remember when that was but perhaps around 2012-2014.
There are some posts there which still stand up as classics and resonate with me. I’m thinking about Your Debt is an Emergency and Curing your Clown-Like Car Habit.
As for websites and YouTube, obviously Monevator is going to be top of the list but I also watch James Shack and Meaningful Money.
For books, JL Collins The Simple Path to Wealth is a classic, but I’d like to mention one book that really opened my eyes which is When Money Dies by Adam Fergusson. It’s about hyperinflation in Germany in the 1920s.
What makes it interesting to FIRE readers is who failed and who survived. Those on fixed pensions or annuities and those who kept their savings in cash were all wiped out. Those who saved abroad – the Swiss franc was popular – or invested in companies survived. As did landlords since they could screw over their tenants by increasing the rent. But landlords can come to sticky ends in these kinds of situations.
What will your finances ideally look like towards the end of your life?
We are helping our nieces and nephews, and expect to continue doing this. Lump sums for house deposits are on the cards, assuming the stock market does well enough in future.
I don’t intend to die with zero, as we want to leave a legacy and there are so many of them to split it between.
For the same reason I don’t think an annuity suits our plans. The State Pension will be a kind of annuity if we both manage to live that long.
My thanks to Rich for a very thoughtful interview. When I began these FIRE-side chats, I wondered if they’d quickly get repetitive. I’m much less worried about that now. Every story has its unique chapters, and different interviewees see the path to financial freedom through varied lenses. Please remember that constructive feedback is welcome, but anything bad-tempered or nasty will be deleted. Rich is a regular commentator on Monevator, but because of the particularly personal nature of elements of today’s interview he’s chosen not to reply to comments under his usual guise. Perhaps I’ll try to scare up a reply from him and post it under my own name in a few days.
My goodness. Please quit that job and enjoy your well earned retirement with your wife. You’ve understood the rules, made some mistakes, played the game and won the race. That extra 80k will not make any difference to your happiness.
Well done – debt free and not too materialistic. But beware of fiscal drag! There may not be much you can do about it, but be aware that when you say you’ll only pay the basic rate on your pension when you draw it down that is likely to be pie in the sky!
Casual reader here.
I just came in to say how much I enjoy these as a series and this one in particular. It’s always strange, nice, and comforting to see people with exactly the same thoughts, past mishaps and future challenges as yourself. I would read these at 5x the length, but they’re so well written and well articulated that they’re perfect anyway. Thanks!
Having worked in IT I can relate alot to what Rich said, including his numbers. Having retired early at 55 I can heartily recommend Rich does the same as soon as he can. Life is so much better away from The Company.
One aspect that surprised me in Richs numbers was the high amount in his GIA. With his view to simplify for later life surely that needs to be moved into both his and his wife’s ISA and SIPP, albeit gradually over the next few years.
Beautifully written and I’ve just bought a copy of ‘When Money Dies’ – 2nd hand, naturally.
Just out of interest, does anyone have a corporate job that isn’t completely shit?
Loved the comparison with your father from a work perspective. Perfect description of enshittification.
At least you get paid well
Re houses
> Why isn’t ‘problem’ one of the options?!
Bravo Yet another victim of Britain’s favourite asset class break the omerta that housing != money tree 😉 The primary reason for buying a house in the UK is to get its landlords out of your life.
OMG Standups reminds me of the absolute crock that is Agile, that was being introduced as I left.
If you’re in your early 50s, not living in the Great Wen then I am with Cain #1. It sounds to me you have enough to RE right now. I had less when I retired at 52, and then went and bought more house.
It’s easy to worry about the money, but it’s not the only thing you can run out of. Think of it this way, you have another 30 years, perhaps 40, and you’re running out of those bad boys one day every 24 hours, come what may. So if you have the desire to RE, and I acknowledge not everybody does, but you seem to, then JFDI, and I wish you all the best!
What a lovely and relatable read, thank you Rich. Congratulations for being in such a great place. I’m a little ahead in years (& guitars – four is absolutely not enough, you may need to build an extra room!), rather behind in funds but pressing the button soon in any case – defo think you should do the same.
Definitely not repetitive all these stories are unique
I’m 5 to 8 years behind you less income but aiming for similar net worth and I’ll be running .for the door . Go now you’ve definitely got enough and could easily return if it doesn’t work out
Another thumbs up for a very honest and relatable life and investment story. I really appreciated the candour and honesty to address the challenges life throws in our path, the difficulties and costs of medical treatment such as IVF, and housing mistakes (been there, got the negative equity medal).
I finally retired 6 months ago (not really early as 62) … from a very lucrative IT career, the ‘one more quarter’ (because of the shares) is a real golden handcuff challenge. I would advocate, ‘go early’ … time is more important than money (once you have sufficient to fund the lifestyle you want), I’m increasingly sure I waited too long.
Fascinating story .. all this series are .. thank you for sharing it.
If you’re not enjoying working then at least take a break.
I’m still working because I mostly enjoy it and find it interesting .. it helps that I’m a contractor, WFH half the time and didn’t work for 6 months before this contract.
Interesting story Rich, thanks for sharing. Your nieces and nephews are lucky to have such a generous uncle & aunt.
I can see why OMY is a dilemma. Personally, given the parameters you have described, I’ll offer a contrarian view and say I would be tempted to set firm boundaries at work and operate with an optimised stress:income ratio for a while to max out optionality later on. Suspect the quiet quitting route may not reconcile with your ‘don’t be an asshole’ criterion though!
Great read Rich! Appreciate you sharing your numbers and the issues you are wrestling with. I tend to agree with one or two other comments here. Seriously consider leaving now (or taking an extended break). Most likely you’re working just to pass on an even greater legacy to your extended family…
Run, don’t walk away, Rich. You’ve earned it, and the job sounds like it’s rubbish.
Great read. I’m a few years behind also and can see me following down a similar path. Certainly share similar principles which I believe are the key to building wealth.
@ Rhino… I’ve got a corporate job that’s only maybe 50% shit. Consider myself lucky! The shite is all related to the corporate stuff, the core of it is interesting. Exit strategy involves consulting as former colleagues have. Slightly less pay, and slightly less interesting projects (construction) but significantly less corporate nonsense.
Thank you for sharing your story. IVF must have been crushing. I’m sorry it didn’t work out, so glad you’ve got nieces and nephews.
The contrast between your working experience vis a vis your father was insightful. And you’re so right. My dad had a big office, secretary and company car too (plus a stay at home wife).
He died this week. He lived with Parkinson’s disease and was in fact diagnosed a few weeks after retiring. The silver lining is that he had time to experience gentle joys like learning to cook (his speciality was rice puddings), tai chi and generally being at our family dogs constant beck and call.
The final three years were awful. His final week was pain free for him, but scarring for me.
If time matters to you, and if you think you will enjoy slow living, I really hope you consider using your optionality sooner rather than later. We all pay attention to finances to develop the skillset and confidence to recognise ‘enough’. Best wishes and regards…
I really enjoyed that, quite relevant to myself similar age and numbers.
I’ve been in “IT” all my life, don’t miss stand ups 🙂
I would also be out the door. Corporate crap really isn’t worth it. I changed job because the corporate crap ruined it.
Final 12 months for me, life can change very quickly and that time is precious, wasting it on corporate life is pointless.
I loved the clown car link.
Thanks for sharing your story Rich. I’m moved to learn of your journey with IVF and the impact it can have on the couples especially the woman. We are in similar position and tried several times with no success.
We both have nieces and nephews to whom our legacy would go to. When the national lottery started 30 years ago, we used to dream about winning a million although rarely played it.
Funny you mention Nvidia, we’ve held the stock since 2016 and added to it along the way and largely helped by it’s skyrocketing price we are both well passed the ISA millionaire mark. Although I don’t feel a million holds the same value as it would have 30 years ago. Still we are happy about our investment achievements.
I’ve decided to retire in 3’ish years time at age of 55’ish with DB pensions for both (smaller pot for mrs G), SIPPs, GIA and BTLs will be sold before retirement. No OMY (one more year) for me even though it’s the easiest job I have and lovely colleagues.
Enjoyed that. It’s very interesting to hear how others approach and reflect on life’s problems.
Big up to the interviewer as well. You have to ask interesting questions to get interesting answers.
What would be really interesting is to have a job amnesty, people give a brief description of what they do and then explain how shit/good it is. Would be super useful for those looking for ideas on less enshittified jobs. I’m also wondering whether the main factor at play is the person and not the job?
Its absolutely the person. That corporate nonsense is abhorrent to some but is desired by a minority and a comfort blanket to others.
Life is a balance in almost every respect. Careers hugely so. What we find interesting, what we are prepared to tolerate and what the balance is between those things and the reward, be it pay or satisfaction in other aspects, is deeply personal.
A job amnesty would be a great idea, especially useful for young people. Careers advise is typically useless and never includes that level of openness.
@Rhino #20 > Would be super useful for those looking for ideas on less enshittified jobs. I’m also wondering whether the main factor at play is the person and not the job?
I know we all get more cantankerous and crabby as we get older, but
> main factor at play is the person and not the job?
It was the metrics and endless having to justify yourself that got on my nerves, at the start of my career the measure of a decent project was does it work and remain in service without falling apart. Fast forward 23 years and the measure of a decent work was filling in the SuccessFactors management rubbish say how great you were, which is good for braggarts and not a test of competence. In the case of our author, the standups seem to be that sort of thing.
In my job the enshittification applied to the management structure and performance management. The job itself was okay and often interesting, on my last day I was investigating a problematic optical trunk. – it was a decent day’s work, this thing was ratty at the beginning of the day and sorted when I got on the train back home. Although it would have been the wrong thing for me because of that 30/40 years of life left, I would probably have worked to normal retirement age without that enshittification of how the job was done, not what was done.
In the case of our author, it seems to be the standups that encapluslate the increasing crapness. We had those starting too, and I’m of the general view that if we all stopped talking about what we were going to do and how then it would all get done a darn sight quicker. Standups may be OK in a team of less than five and if you actually do stand up for the meeting so people get tired after 10 minutes, but if you sit down and do it by Zoom then the blowhards will make all the running. I think ERE called this part of late stage capitalism the gamesmen and they carry the seeds of their own downfall, because that approach is net negative by focusing on form not function.
I would say that gamification is kryptonite to introverts.
Some snarky comments about Agile development here – not very unusual for older workers, though I also fall into that category.
Agile is a standard methodology for delivering software solutions and done properly, delivers far better than the old school ‘waterfall’ model that some people still get misty eyed about.
It’s not ‘gamification’ to always prioritise your customers’ requirements, especially when they’re changing.
We welcome change.
PS Agile team recommended size is 4-7 and stand-ups 15 minutes max with a standard format. Do it right and it works.
Thanks for sharing Rich, congratulations on achieving so much! While we are nowhere near the level required to RE, I feel I can see light at the end of the tunnel. However my very vague plans already have OMYs creeping in. You gotta do what you gotta do, but don’t forget that you are just a number in a cloud-based HR and Accountancy platform.
And again on the FIREside chats, I can’t tell you how much I enjoy them. Genuinely inspiring and a wonderful opportunity to celebrate others’ successes. Already can’t wait for the next one!
Great Fire-side chat. Agree these are super interesting.
It’s easy to say FIRE now. Also agree with others that your remaining time, crucially when fit is reducing daily.
But it’s not easy in reality and I can see why you’ve a foot in the one more year camp.
You’ve got £1.7m assets (presumably £1.6m as of now) mostly in equities at the back end of bull market. The 4% rule looks vulnerable. 3% is £48k including costs and taxes. £40k withdrawal for potentially 45 years (10% chance of you live to 100) is potentially tight. Equities can easily be cut in half from here. Lots of if’s and but’s obviously.
The bit though, which I feel you’ve missed is state pension? State pension assuming you both qualify is £25k from 68. Assuming your spend doesn’t increase much that changes things significantly. It’s not likely the state pension is done away with completely although it might change somewhat.
If I was retiring in your position, I think a index linked gilt ladder would be a sensible consideration. Probably five years of expenditure minimum.
Coast fire is not a bad idea for a few more years.
I don’t agree with Fatbrit abroad that if you are out you can easily come back. Not in the early 50’s. Maybe but generally it’s harder than it looks.
Anyway, I think it’s a tricky decision. You are in a great position though.
Thanks for an enjoyable read!
I was hoping to hear about how they think they know if they are FI or not. He mentions MMM but are they using the one-size-fits-(all/none) SWR, or some version of that? or something else entirely like annuity purchase?
@all — Thanks for all the comments and gratifying to see these chats are so popular. I heard back from Rich (as of about 11am today, I was out and about) and he had these replies to share, beyond seconding the interesting conversation thoughts.
— @Rich from here —
Re: Whereto @4
Our GIA is very high and I didn’t go into the exact reasons why, so here goes. Firstly I was worried about hitting the pension Lifetime Allowance (LTA) and so was generally holding off using the full pension annual allowance. In hindsight that was a mistake since the LTA no longer exists (for now!) Secondly a fews years back I got a pretty enormous, one-off bonus which was much too large to go into either of our ISAs or pensions in one year, so most of it ended up in the GIA, and there it has sat ever since.
Re: PC @10 (and others)
Sabbaticals, cutting work hours, etc are not an option. The Company has flat out said that it won’t offer even unpaid sabbaticals. As mentioned in the article it wouldn’t be fair on others working there. Either I leave completely or stay full time as now. I don’t have the energy to go through looking for another job. It’s no longer like it was in my day where you sent off a paper CV and cover letter to a recruiter or a company. Nowadays it’s all online forms, AI interviews, ghosting and scams. If you believe the papers.
Re: Rosario @14, MJ @17
The corporate stuff is horrible. The core, fixing things and talking to customers, that’s interesting. If it wasn’t interesting no question I would have resigned a long time ago, even before I became FI.
Re: Rhino @20
A “job reveal” (what does your job *really* entail, hour by hour) would be very interesting! Some people love the bureaucracy, some moan but get on with it, some hate it, and some leave.
Re: ermine @22
That article about The Gamesmen (https://earlyretirementextreme.com/the-gamesme.html) was absolutely on point. I think The Company was at one point full of Craftsmen, was slowly taken over by Companymen, and they in turn are being replaced by the Gamesmen.
Re: John @23
This feels like a “but *real* communism has never been tried” argument. I don’t remember ever going to a stand-up meeting that lasted only 15 minutes. Even if that were to be achieved, it still happens some time in the middle of the afternoon (because everyone’s in a different time zone), thus interrupting my flow. When the general consensus is that communism, errrr, I mean, “agile” is bad, maybe the problem is agile, not the people who aren’t doing it right.
I talk to customers daily, or at least every few days, and it’s a team of 2 people who speak to each other frequently (well, chat system, who actually talks any more?). I don’t see how adding process here is helping. (We never did waterfall development before either.)
@Rich I guarantee it can work very well, having delivered with it for many years.
Poor implementation is common however and the fault often lies with management.
It’s not suitable for everything anyway – you wouldn’t build nuclear power station software with it.
I can remember a meeting where we were instructed to introduce ourselves, present a picture of our lives and background, and discuss a “passion”.
I gave my name, job title, and a brief sketch of my expertise, and ended by saying my passion was privacy.
It’s wonderful to have accumulated a “Get stuffed!” fund.
I remember the halcyon days of stand-up meetings. When asked how many software widgets I’d produced the previous day, at first I gave the actual number. I was then asked why so few. The only reasons I could think of were: I’m not very bright, I’m lazy and it’s harder than you think. From that point forward I selected a widget number that the management seemed content with based on the numbers reported by those interrogated before me. I really don’t miss working at all.
At the risk of repeating previous comments.
1. These posts are very encouraging and varied.
2. Lovely to read Rich’s honest and relatable account.
3. I admire his enjoyment of the simple things in life and his attitude towards money and other stuff.
Thanks Rich and TI.
Rich, sorry to hear your IVF journey didn’t end as you’d hoped. It’s physically, mentally and emotionally draining, so much more so on the mother. Very glad you have nieces and nephews to spoil.
I know it’s been discussed ad infinitum here but RE is not a binary and there are more options than ever – part time, CoastFIRE, “digital nomad” – especially if you’re not rooted to one spot by kids / schools. That bottle of Italian wine from Waitrose could easily be a bottle IN Italy 😉
Yes, I can only imagine we must all be doing Agile wrong. Around these parts, I’ve never seen an agile project deliver on time and to satisfaction. Usually, they just seem to fade out with a miasma of bugs and other issues hovering around them like bluebottles on dead meat. In some cases, the backlog has 100s of issues. The last big project in our place using it, is 2 years over due, has an external partner who’s completely failed to deliver and a team which is so overwhelmed that users are being asked to triage their own issues. Just nothing less than soul destroying. It was a nice idea once upon a time, but once again has been trashed by the reality of corporate life.
The only thing worse than it is the performative crap that is Prince II.
Always good to hear that a slow start and some mistakes early on can be overcome. It is easy for a new starter on a FIRE journey to be put off by the tales of those who started saving 50% of their income in their late teens and early twenties and think it is too late.
I would with respect point out that despite some pointed comments about middle class perks you’re happy to still sock a not insignificant amout of money to your presumably middle class nieces and nephews. I think the biggest travesty of our system is that one of the biggest differences is how much those who ‘choose’ the right family to be born into gain a massive unmeritocratic advantage. If you really want to try and change things for the better, I would suggest that instead of feathering the nest of middle class kids, you could instead use that money to try and help those born into far less fortunate circumstances. Help your nieces and nephews by giving them the benefit of your financial education. That will be far more beneficial to them than a house deposit in the long run.
@No Smog Without FIRE – That’s a bit strident to be criticising what @Rich and his wife decide is a worthwhile of use the money of which THEY have earned in an article such as this. (it’s not an article discussing the merits of inheritance tax after all).
@Algernond
Well put. Not to mention the absolute tin ear about it being a personal reaction to childlessness.
Honestly, somebody opens up emotionally online with a personal life story and there’s always someone wanting to score points and give an opinion. Not exactly reading the room there.
It wasn’t my intention to draw out such emotive responses with my comment, and I think the context hasn’t really been taken into account. To be clear, it’s not about telling someone what to do with their money or a comment on a reaction to childlessness. It was genuine intrigue from me as to how someone can be critical of middle class tax breaks then perpetuate them. If there was no criticism of tax treatment, I wouldn’t have offered that observation. For me, the rules of engagement are that if someone offers up such a view, it’s fine to debate it. If that’s not the case, I’ll refrain from interacting.
@Rich – I really enjoyed that, and your understated description of your journey. Thank you for being open and taking the time.
@London a long time ago – I’ve long enjoyed your comments. I’m very sorry to hear about your dad and what you both went through.
@No Smog – I don’t have a dog in this fight but I can’t help reading your comment as preachy. I take Rich’s mention of middle class benefits as an acknowledgement of good fortune – a positive quality in a person. To leap from there, to offering censorious advice on how to look after their own family is a bit much. I think you’ve read a lot into Rich’s situation without having anywhere near enough information to go on. My guess is you wouldn’t love it if the roles were reversed. That said, your follow-up suggests you are genuinely interested in debate and there’s probably some reason why you hold strong opinions on the topic. So maybe start there, with your personal position and experience?
Thanks for sharing this story Rich, I find myself nodding in agreement as a mid 50s IT professional in financial services.
And been there and done that on the IVF side. It sucks. You just have to look at the positives of the situation.
My nephew is a bit of a tosser, so any need to handover a legacy outside of provision for wife or the local cat charity is non existent. Opens up the Die With Zero option and equity release on the home if needed.
I think Ermine has nailed the enshittification aspects of corporate life, this year performance management and corporate politics has scaled new heights. Managing upwards is a bigger challenge than managing downwards, and the techical work itself is almost an irrelevance now. Teams calls outweigh any time spent developing or fixing anything.
I’m intending to jack it in and go contracting again this year, or do something with no line management responsibility.
In Rich’s position I’d call it a day now, but I guess I’m heading to some kind of CoastFIRE or Barista FIRE for a few years. E.g comfortable but not quite there yet.
The message to younger readers is mixed. You too could reach financial freedom and stick it to the man in your mid 50s, as long as you land a 6 figure career in financial services IT before offshoring by evil bosses or AI destroy even that opportunity, live in a 2 bed house and don’t have kids.
Sorry TI 🙂
@Rich – sorry to hear of your struggles with IVF, that must have been a very trying time to go through. You’ve got yourselves into a great financial position now though and it seems that you could move away from your work at any time. It sounds like you have plenty of interests to keep yourself busy.
@Rich:
Thanks for sharing. Nothing to add to the many sensible comments above.
@TI:
Thanks again; all these stories from the coalface are just rather special!
“agile”, “sprint”, “stand up” – Ahhh I live your pain! The corporate double speak (to which one could add “lean working” and “pacesetter”). All nonsense on stilts, but we each have to make sacrifice to the idols placed before us. How did the idea of a ‘career’ become a panopticon hybrid of Narkina 5 and Severance?
If you don’t want to retire immediately, how about trying to find a company or cause you like and using your IT skills there. Presumably with a big pay cut. Easier said than done, I know.