About This Blog

This is the diary of my progress towards funding my plan to retire early and live well during the process.

I hope to employ all the tools available - existing savings, spare cash, thrift, common sense and time to spare.

Despite my (tongue-in-cheek) title, there's actually no magic involved in working out a personal investment plan although sometimes it looks like a dark art to those unversed in its ways. Until recently this included me. Let's see how I get on.

This also seems a good place to include some disclaimers:

• Throughout the blog I refer to "my" investments, savings and plans but in fact all these things are based on the fact that I am part of a couple and we work as a team.  

• I am not aware of any copyright issues with any of the images I have used but if they do belong to anyone out there please do send me the details and I will be happy to post them up or remove anything as requested.

• Please don't expect my calculations to be coherent "as a whole" from start to finish because my plan is evolving as I work on it. Some of the assumptions I made at the beginning are already proving to be wrong. For example, I have lowered the figure that I think we need to live on in retirement as I have fine tuned our budget. Also I made a basic error about my LGPS pension when I first started writing about it, forgetting that if I didn't pay into it for the 6 years between 60 and 66 it wouldn't be worth the £12,500 I was reckoning on (more like £10,500). I've left the mistake in rather than correct it because things like this emphasise the value of writing this stuff down rather than just having vague calculations at the back of our minds when planning for retirement. 

• I am not qualified in any way to give financial advice, which should be apparent to any reader. 

Week 1 Reflective Questions