Category Archives: Family

Thought Experiment #2

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This isn’t SavingNinja’s 2nd thought experiment but it is the 2nd one I’ve taken part in and neatly follows on from the first one I did.

Here’s the scenario:

You wake up one rainy morning and after checking on your accounts, you find out that you have been wiped out by a cyber-criminal! You’ve lost all of the money and assets that you’ve ever owned and can’t get them back. What will you do?

Not actual depiction of a cyber-criminal

The assumption here is that a hacker will overnight siphon off everything in my accounts, by which I mean all the cash sitting in my current accounts, savings accounts, cash ISA and premium bonds account. Also, the investments in my S&S ISA and my SIPPs will have mysteriously disappeared (unlikely for the SIPPs, seeing as they can’t be accessed til I’m 55 but humour me!). Shockingly, my DB pension is also gone and there’s a mini-meltdown in the US as it was part of a global pension pot and not only my pension was targeted!

Even the cash I have in my betting and exchange accounts has been hoovered up! Contacting said providers prove futile, the money has disappeared into the ether. I don’t have any cash around the house (around £20 change in moneyboxes and at the time of writing, £12.58 in my purse).

I will assume however that the hacker hasn’t managed to persuade HR to fire me overnight, so I’m still employed, that I will still have my rental property and I will still have a roof over my head.

So not quite starting from absolutely zero, but still a bloody nightmare scenario.

What to Do?

The first thing I would do would be (in no particular order) to panic, swear a lot, beat myself up about how I should have changed my online passwords more often and then drown my sorrows in vast quantities of alcohol.

I would probably spend hours trying to find out if anything could be done about recovering my DB pension since there will be over half a million other people in the same situation.

Once I’ve calmed down a little, I would tell my family (though not my parents or my grandmother – don’t want them worrying needlessly) and probably a couple of my close friends. My message however will be that despite what’s happened, I’m alright, because I know they will want to help me. I would probably get a short term cash loan from the family, to cover expenses until I get paid.

What Next?

It won’t just be the fact that I’ve lost all that I’ve saved up, but I’ve lost the ticket to achieving financial independence, retiring early and retiring comfortably.

With my FIRE plan down the pan (heh!), I would need to draw up my new plan, which would be probably be to ensure that I end up retiring comfortably at normal retirement age.

What would I do differently ?

I would set up an emergency fund first and foremost. I would then see about building up my pension/SIPP investments again, more so than in my ISAs. Seeing as I won’t need the money until later in life,  I may as well take advantage of tax relief.

I have a feeling that I would be a lot more frugal, verging on the extreme side as I try to claw my way back to a comfortable financial situation. In desperation, I might even cross the line and become stingy and penny-pinching, although I hope not!

One thing I would probably do would be to go back to my strict budgeting, which I haven’t done since I was eyeballs deep in credit card debt. It’s no fun logging every penny spent.

Perhaps I would consider looking for a better paid job but more likely, I would certainly spend my spare time just hustling and looking for more money. And yes, I’ll be scouting out for coupons!

More time spent matched betting (even consider multi-accounting which I don’t do now) and I would dial down on my social life but not completely as my friends are important to me.

I’ll still put money aside to travel to see my family once a year – that’s one thing I wouldn’t ever change.

And finally, I will just get my head down and be a worker bee to earn a steady salary.

Miserable yet…?

This all seems to point to me leading an extremely focused but not very happy life, being obsessed with trying to build up what I lost.

Yet if I think about it, there are a lot of people who are in this situation, where they do not have savings for their future and yet they are happily going about their lives.

I think due to the fact that I had saved up and then lost it all, it’s possible probable that I would become quite obsessed about it all, which doesn’t sound good at all.

Plus I would need to get my head around working until my mid-60s, something which I was quite happy to do before I discovered and planned for FIRE. I really shouldn’t have taken that FIRE Red Pill, which made me see the light!

I would hope that I would still be able to enjoy my life and my work but knowing me, I think it would take a while before I could get over something like this.

Gosh, that’s gone a bit dreary and bleak, hasn’t it?

Anyway, below is SavingNinja’s take on the thought experiment and as and when I see other bloggers taking part, I’ll add below:

What would you do if this happened to you?

Changes Afoot

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So I mentioned in my goals post that one reason why I wanted to keep my goals simple and familiar was because my life (as I know it) was going to be turned ‘upside down’.

Not in a bad way, I was being a little melodramatic there but certainly, there will be a big change happening later in the year.

So what’s the big change? Continue reading →

Thought Experiment #1

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I’ve been persuaded to take part in a ‘thought experiment’, where people give their own take on the same thought/idea or scenario.

Please check out Saving Ninja’s post which explains in more detail.

So here’s the first scenario:

What would you do if right at this very instance you got given £1 million? This could be from a lottery win, an IPO, a scratch card, you name it. No tax needs to be paid, it’s just been plopped directly into your run-of-the-mill bank account.  

Lucky me! 🙂

Ok, off the top of my head, I would….

…be Financially Independent and would be able to retire early immediately, but I wouldn’t, not right away anyway. It’s a lot of money, I’d like to think things through properly so yes, I’d still go into work! I know for a fact that I would not be mentally ready to give up working just yet.

…remain anonymous and tell only my immediate family how much I had won and tell my close friends I had won a ‘large amount’. Why not tell them the exact amount? I’m not sure – never really discussed money with my friends so not really sure how they would react to be honest.

…put aside £300k to be gifted to my immediate family – all members of my family are already a lot wealthier than I am but I would still want to share my winnings and good fortune.

…put aside £100k to be gifted to my close friends. No idea how I would do this but in whatever tax friendly way I can do it, be it paying for their holidays, etc.

…put aside £100k for specific charity needs. Rather than throwing it into a charity pot, I’d like to pay for stuff like school equipment, that kind of thing

…use the remaining half to buy a property which would ultimately be my primary residence, perhaps buy another small property to rent out and invest the rest in boring index trackers to enable me to have a ‘fat’ retirement!

…be lying if I said I wouldn’t change because that kind of money all of a sudden is life-changing, for me anyway. I would probably naturally become less frugal but I think I still wouldn’t be wasteful or flash with my money. I wouldn’t buy a new car, as there’s nothing wrong with my current one, although I could realistically consider a new electric car as my next motor.

…start looking at holidays to Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the USA!

Reading back on the above, there are probably some tweaks and changes I would make or add but the point of the exercise is to not dwell on your answers and just write what comes to your mind immediately.

What would you do in this instance?

Edit – Here are the other bloggers who took part in this experiment and their thoughts:

Ms ZiYou
Saving Ninja
TheFIREStarter
in-deed-a-bly
Early Retirement – Early Freedom 
Steel Kitten
Inspiring Life Design
DrFIRE

If you fancy joining in and want to be added to the experiment, send a tweet to @SavingNinja or send him a message via his website.

PS – I live in hope that I bag £1m with my premium bonds!

Holiday and more Toilet Rolls

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I had a great holiday – enjoyed catching up with all the family, but as always, it was over far too quickly.

 

Not quite as action-packed as my last holiday but I still managed to squeeze quite a bit in:

  • A day out at the trampoline park with my niece and nephew – I did realise that I shouldn’t really be flinging myself around on American Ninja-style apparatus at my age but I couldn’t help it!
  • A karaoke session with the siblings – we sang all our 80s and 90s favourites!
  • Five days in Koh Samui, Thailand where I snorkelled, kayaked, ate a lot of yummy food and stayed up til 3.30am watching England in a nail-biting penalty shootout!
  • A foot massage evening with the siblings
  • An outing to celebrate my sister’s birthday
  • Ten pin bowling session, scoring 73 in the first game and 150 in the second – clearly the first game was just a warm up, haha!
  • A game of badminton
  • Lots of dim sum and sushi!

I didn’t know that planes with open propellers were still used commercially!

Budget Blown

As with previous holidays, I hardly bought anything for myself (just snacks and green tea teabags!) but I spent a lot on eating and drinking out and of course, I had to treat the kids and ended up spending a lot more than planned.

So much so that I had to borrow from my sis so she will be wanting to collect on her debt either later this month but maybe I can stall her until next month…

Some people buy souvenirs on holiday….I buy toilet rolls!

As always, I leave home with a heavy suitcase (full of stuff for the family) and end up with a light/empty one and as with my last trip, I stocked up on toilet rolls for my return trip home.

Toilet Rolls

Why toilet rolls? Because they’re something I will use, I can store them away and I needed to fill up my empty suitcase!

I usually buy Tesco brand, £3.35 for 9 rolls, 2-ply, average 220 sheets per roll.

The HK ones I buy cost £2.88 for 10 rolls, 3-ply, average 340 sheets per roll.

And that’s with a crappy Sterling exchange rate. There will, however, be no need for me to buy any more on my next trip – the stash I have will last a long time!

On the subject of spending, I successfully used my Starling card in both Dubai (airport) and Thailand – am very happy with the app so no doubt, I’ll be using it again on my travels.

Thoughts and Ideas

As mentioned previously, I didn’t do any blogging while I was away but while I was lounging by the pool in Thailand, I jotted down a few ideas and thoughts about my investments.

I’ve now got more of an idea of how I will use my SIPPs and ISA for income when I pull the plug on full-time work. It’s still only a loose idea and I’ll see how things look at the end of year as I’m overdue an update on my investments plan.

I’ve realised that I’ve been coasting along when I could probably make a lot more effort with my expenses and my savings. I guess a bit more focus won’t do any harm and might be enough to make a difference. I have family staying with me later this month so perhaps the focus will have to come after they leave!

Some clowns, plus a couple of guys wearing white make-up…

A shame that ‘football didn’t come home’ in the end as this trip was very much entwined with the World Cup, with various plans being made around catching the timezone friendly (and some unfriendly) matches.

I almost miss the ‘Three Lions’ song which has been played endlessly everywhere!

I shall still enjoy watching the final as a neutral and also look forward to catching the Wimbledon finals – tennis has been forgotten with all the football excitement!

Have a great weekend all!