Finance update After three months of negative returns, my figures have bounced back in style! I've tracked my pots for just over a decade now and May was the biggest jump I've seen. It almost justifies chucking everything I did into the markets for the past 3 months both via my pension at the end of the tax year as well as into my ISA at the start of this tax year! Overall networth is now £1.2m Breakdown for May: ISA up £12k Pension up £16k GIA /easy access savings up £4k Crypto up £15k House price up £5k Total : up £61.6k Another good chunk into my ISA in May, which means it is now full for the year, the quickest I've ever done it! My priorities are now filling Premium Bonds, pound cost averaging into Crypto, and also contributing a few hundred a month into my kids JISAs. 2025/26 tax year: Total change over the past couple of months is now +£36k. Non-Finance update Unpaid Parental Leave No weeks off during May. The big 6 weeks off comes ...
The 4% rule is all well and good, but I've never really got to grips with this as a tangible model for calculating FIRE mainly because of the complications when working out the restrictions on when you can access the pots at different ages (predominantly pensions). Instead I prefer to break down FIRE strategy and planning into two distinct sections: Pension provisions . Including overall pot, what this might work out to be in retirement, and what age you can access. Bridge Pot . This will get you from your FIRE age to your above Pension pot access (above) In the past I've developed a pension calculator for the former , and here is my calculator for the latter aspect. What I've developed here is an Excel sheet which works out what you need between your desired FIRE age and your pension pot access age, aka your "FIRE Bridge pot". This has helped me to visualise when I could 'push the button' on FIRE, how much I could live off in the 'Bridge years' an...