In line with my goals towards early retirement plans, I’m always thinking of working on new methods, either making money. Or protecting my future to focus on my future. The next step in my journey has been focussed on two things in relation to this post.
- Creating a SIPP (Self Invested Personal Pension)
- Protecting myself from problems in my career
Whilst I don’t plan on working all my life, until you become self sustaining, you have to work in a career some how, this funds your goals.
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These are the two aims I’ve had this month
Self invested personal pension (SIPP)
For this first part of my plan, I always wanted to create an account somewhere that I could continuously add money to. Whilst I’ve talked about my income goal in my retirement plan and I’m making a more solid push to have several investments and revenue streams. I don’t want to be focussed on pure money, because I need to enjoy life too. So a set target on my SIPP investment, should give me a set outcome come pension time. This then leaves me with the remainder of my money to enjoy life or use it to make money from other sources.
In terms of my SIPP plan, I feel if I can reach a target of £100,000 (or more) in my SIPP and then leave it to grow, this can be around the £800,000+ mark by the time retirement comes. Normally £100,000 is the magic number for investments. It supposedly doubles in value every 8 years, so from a £100,000 investment, it should take 24 years to reach £800,000 (£100–> £200k 8 years), (£200k –> £400k 16 years), (£400k –> £800k 24 years). If I had this much money (£100k), in my SIPP by the time I’m 44 years old. It “should” hit £800k by the time I official reach retirement age at 68.
As a side note: I believe this doubling every 8 years or so is more related to dividends, however I’ll be interested to see how the account grows in value once I reach £100k invested. As I still have my Trading212 account for my investments to make me money this way, so I’ll be putting money into the ISA on T212 every year aswell.
The reason I’m doing this, is because realistically, I don’t believe the state pension won’t exist by the time I reach retirement age. So any money I have to live off is going to be from my own private investments, or assets I can sell off, or forms of passive income. I’d like to work on these methods instead. If the state pension still exists, then I at least get another ~£13k per year or so on top of this pension fund. To me this SIPP gives me a form of protection, and my current thought mindset is that unless it’s making me money some how I’m just losing it to inflation. So I aim to hold little money in my current account except for my regular bills, then the rest of my money is put into savings or investments where there is some form of return from each one
With regards to the SIPP. I had a couple of choices, but ended up settling and I setup an “InvestEngine” account. There’s a couple of choices, but this is the one I went for. As I don’t plan on moving money or receiving dividends, I’m only focussing on one ETF as this is global tracker which tends to do with market growth (usually around 15% – 20% each year). Generally ETF’s are seen as quite stable for investments. The one I’m personally using in my investment portfolio for my SIPP, will be 100% ont he ETF (VWRP).
This is a Vanguard one, which is well known, and one of the largest so is a good safety bet for my goal. You can see my portfolio that I’ve just started on InvestEngine (affiliate link) and watch it grow as I add to it, or as it accrues interest. You can withdraw money when you want, however it is linked in on InvestEngine. You have to sell an ETF before you can get the money. Whilst I don’t plan on doing this, I plan on pumping money into the account and watching it grow more and more each time until it reaches the set value.
Protecting my income
Now the next thing I’m doing is more for personal reasons. Whilst there are types of insurance you can buy that pays your income for job losses, this isn’t 100% covered if you quit for any reasons. I’ve always belived in having a so called “fuck off fund” in a bank account. So if you don’t like your job for any reason, you can walk. Feel like a job change, you can walk. Feel like a break, you can live off savings.
Having the stress removed about worrying for money is a big deal. As someone who has had large debts when I was younger, I know how much it looms over you when you owe money to people, or can’t afford to pay a bill. So the next option I went thorugh was setting up a bank account purely for the purposes of storing money there for job related queries.
I had a look about and opened a bank account (ISA) via a link I found from recommended sites via moneysavingexpert.co.uk
The company I selected was HTB Bank
The purpose of the HTB bank account, is purely a job protection fund. Whilst I do already have a bank account, I like diversifying my sources of income, alongside diversifying them on how they’re stored into their own little moneypots. I created the account with HTB and put in some money for a starter fund to keep the account open.
The end goal for this account is to store around £30,000 in it (which is approximately my annual salary 2026). My short term goal is to have at least 3 months expenses in it by the end of 2026. If my expenses were based on what I spend currently this would be £6000. However the purpose of this bank account is bare essentials, as in what I need to live. Not what I spend, in which case, I need around £800 per month to cover all my bills (internet, lottery, food, fuel, etc).
The goal therefore for the end of 2026, is to have approximately 3 months bare essentials (£2400 approximately) inside the bank account. I also gain a small amount of interest on this money as I add it because it’s an ISA account, so it’s just sitting there nicely. I then keep adding money to this and expanding it more and more, whilst it also pockets me a small amount of money each time.
As this is an income protection fund, it’s basically a fund which has been coined a “fuck off fund”. With the end goal for me being to hold around £30,000 in this account, it would me to be jobless for approximately 38 months. Or more than 3.5 years, which is a long amount of time assuming I had no other source of income, or the economy went to shit.
I don’t need this money urgently, so there’s no need to keep this money in my bank account. As I don’t receive interest with my regular account. So it’s easier having a separate account, and if I need the money within an emergency (say I lost my job or quit). As it’s an ISA, I can withdraw whenever I like from the fund, and in the instance of a job loss. The money can be within the bank account that pays all my bills, within a couple of days. I could instantly transfer any level of money from this account to my primary account to pay all my bills and keep going
As I get paid each money, or if I win any large sums of money, or find myself getting rebates. Any time I have spare money, this will split between many accounts, and added to the above ones to let them plant seeds and grow to bigger accounts. I don’t like relying on companies, most people are one bill away from homelessness. I’m fortunate enough that I have good savings now and can afford most major repair bills if needed, I followed the financial flow charts on reddit and I’m hovering between the later stages. As they talk about investing and then doing things later, where I’m spreading between them all so I’m doing a few stages at once.
