This time we have our regular guest John and we are looking at questions posted in our Facebook group (see the community link below) covering a wide range of FIRE areas including:

What are the trade-offs in retiring early and how important is it to understand tax?

How do you deal with one partner having a much larger pension?

Should you include the state pension in your planning and what if it needs topping up?

What about house or pet sitting as a way to reduce holiday costs in retirement?

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As a follow-up to the last episode, in this one we talk in more detail about Richard's investment approach, which involves a mixed portfolio of property, index funds and investment trusts.

When does index investing become 'active'? What are the advantages of investment trusts over mutual or exchange-traded funds? How do you known when to buy and sell investment trusts?

More information about investment trusts can be at the association of investment trusts here.

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In this episode we talk to Richard who started very early and reached FIRE before 50. We discuss his early life where while working in a number of jobs he quickly learned about investing and how it could eventually free him from work - and how this affected his attitude to both work and life.

We then cover his attitude to investing, including property and investing in individual companies and how his involvement with mentoring organisations and charities in retirement.

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In this episode we talk about index-tracking investment funds and their relevance to people looking at financial independence and early retirement.

What are indexes?

What are index funds?

What should I look out for?

We look at popular funds, like global trackers and how they compare across indexes and platforms. And we also go a little deeper into how index funds work and what risks they may entail.

The fire place wiki article on index funds

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In this episode we talk to Man Tai who reached FIRE and retired early, then became a counsellor and has helped many people deal with the psychological issues of retirement.

We cover his upbringing in an immigrant community and how that affected his views of money and work; his career in business; and what lessons he has learned from counselling both for himself and his clients.

Links to topics covered in the podcast:

Phil Stutz on Netflix

Conditions of Worth and Carl Rogers

The 8 C's of self in Internal Family Systems therapy

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Following earlier episodes on 'bridging' (#10) and how pensions work (#12) we take a deep dive into a typical retirement journey from work to early retirement and beyond.

In this we look at: using ISAs to fund the period from retirement until access to a company pension or SIPP; then drawing down from that pension; incorporating a defined benefit pension and whether to take it early; and then dealing with the state pension.

Website mentioned in the episode:

Fireplanner

Wiki toolkit

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Does running a business make FIRE easier as the tools and skills are transferable? Or does it make it harder as businesses take up so much of your time? For this episode we're talking to Anne-Marie and David who own and manage two businesses.

We talk about how they first heard about FIRE and what their future goals are, along with managing a healthy work/life balance including managing employees. We also cover the parallels between running a business and managing your family finances and the differences between saving for retirement as an employee and as a company director.

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This is a follow-up to episode 17 where we discussed forthcoming changes to inheritance tax with John. In this episode we discuss what practical measures you can take now, such as setting up pension drawdown to ensure more of your estate gets passed on to your dependents.

We go into more detail on the different approaches to gifting and how these can help avoid inheritance tax later on, along with other areas to consider if you want to avoid losing some of your estate to inheritance tax.

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For this episode we're joined by John to discuss inheritance tax. Coming changes to tax law mean that many more people will have to deal with inheritance tax and we discuss ways to maximise how much of your inheritance gets passed on to your dependents.

What is changing in April 2027 and how does it affect inheritance tax? What can I do to minimise the effects?

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This episode is a follow-up to episode #12 where we discussed How Pensions Work. This time we look at the practicalities of drawing down an income from a self-invested personal pension (SIPP).

The SIPP has been chosen for simplicity although many occupation defined contribution pensions will behave in a very similar way. We again cover the difference between flexi-access drawdown (FAD) and uncrystallised funds pension lump sums (UFPLS) and how these relate to the 25% tax-free allowance.

[Correction: the podcast mentions Origo as a provider or back-end software for investment platforms. They do provide transfer services between pension platforms but the actual backend software provider for Vanguard and Interactive Investor is FNZ.]

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