Top Tips to get Enough Money for an Early Retirement

There are many of us that would really like to be able to retire early, perhaps because we have had enough of working, we want to spend more time with our family or because our health isn’t that good. Whatever the reason, we will have to plan carefully to make sure that we are financially prepared for this situation.

Assess current retirement fund

To start with you will need to think about how you will pay for your retirement. You will probably be entitled to some government pension and you will be able to calculate how much this will be using the governments website. If you sign in to your account or set one up, it will look at your National Insurance contributions and calculate how much money you will receive. It will assume that you will be paying in to retirement though and you will need to check to see whether you will have paid in enough by the time that you retire to live off. You may also have other pension funds as well as so you will need to take those into consideration. Of course, you may have other funds that you plan to use for retirement which are not pensions. Things like investments that you might be relying on, for example.

You will then need to calculate how much money you might need in retirement. It might be similar to the amount that you need now. This is because although you may no longer have dependent children, need to pay to travel to work or a mortgage or even little loans to repay, you may want to spend more on holidays, you may need a cleaner or gardener and you may also need to have your heating on for longer at a higher temperature. Once you have worked this out you will need to compare it to the amount that you will have in retirement to see whether it will be enough for you. If you do not think that you will have enough, then you will need to think about how you will get the money and plan this, before you think about early retirement planning. If you think you will have enough, then you will able to start planning for early retirement.

Consider how to fund early retirement

If you are happy that you will have enough money to be able to afford to retire at your proper retirement age, then it is time to work out whether you will be able to retire early. It will not be possible to take your government pension early, although it could be possible to take a private pension early. If you do take a pension early, you will find that the payments will be significantly lower and you will have to decide whether that will be enough for you to manage on.

It is more likely that you will need to find another income to manage on. There are lots of possible options for this. If you have money that you can invest then this could be a good solution for you or if you have money you could just spend that, but many people do not have a big chunk of money available for them to spend.

It could be that you will need to concentrate hard on saving up a chunk of money by spending less, saving more and potentially earning more as well. However, you might want to do something when you retire which could earn you money.

Just because we give up work does not mean we want to give up earning. If you wish you could start up a business, do some online work or freelance jobs or things like that. This will not be so full on as your current work and could allow you to earn enough money when you need it. It is good to think about whether you have skills, time and enthusiasm for doing this sort of thing.

It is worth thinking of all sorts of ideas, perhaps by yourself or with family members and work out what might be a good option for you. You could try several things or just one, but be confident in what you choose. Make sure that you do enough research to be sure that it will work out for you. It could even be wise to have a back up plan, just in case it does not work.

Another possibility is to cut your working hours and try this out on those days, then you will get used to doing something different but will not be taking such a big gamble than if you just left and tried something new all in one go. It will give you the freedom to try out a few things and still be getting in some income before you give up your job entirely.

How to Calculate if you can Afford a Bigger Family

There are many people that just like the idea of a bigger family and therefore try for one. However, others might consider whether they can afford to do this first. This is because it is expensive to have children and you might want to make sure that you will be able to all live a great life without too many financial burdens and too much borrowing being needed. However, trying to calculate this is not always that easy, but there are some main things that you can consider which could help.

If you have children already

If you already have children then you will already have some idea as to how much they have cost you and what a difference it has made to your finances. This should help you to decide whether you can afford another one. If you have not really looked at the figures then you should be able to look back at old bank statements to be able to work it out. You should have some idea anyway as to whether you have been able to afford as much as before, whether you have been struggling, had to borrow more, save less or whatever.

If you all work full-time

If all of the adults in the household work full-time then you will need to consider how much of a cost impact you will have when you have another child. It is possible that one of the adults will need to take some time off work and this could have a financial impact. If there is paid leave this can help, but it may not be at such a high rate than you are used to. You may decide not to take much leave, but then you would need care for the child when you were at work and this could cost you money. You might eb lucky enough to have a family member who can help out for free, but this is often rare and so you will probably have to pay for this and this cost would need to be allowed for.

If you need to buy lots of new things

If you have to buy a lot of new things for the child then this will be costly. However, if you already have children or have other family members who are able to pass things on to you, then this will help with the cost a lot. So, it is possible that you will not have to pay out lots of money. There will still be some things that you will probably need though, such as a bed for the child as you are unlikely to be able to give them a bed another child has finished with unless your oldest one is ready to leave home. There will be other items like this that you will need to buy.

Extra Costs

There will always be some extra costs of an additional child. There will be food for them and they will need clothes even if you manage to hand some down from others. As they get older there will be a lot more things that they will need as well including gifts, electronics, clothing, school items to name just a few. You can find websites which will list all of the possible costs and that could help you to get an idea of what sorts of thing you might need to buy and how much it might cost you. Some will just estimate that a child will cost you £100,000 but that will depend on what sorts of things you decide to buy and how long they are dependent on you. It is also spread over a long time period so may not be as scary as it sounds.

There might be other costs that you might need to think about as well as financial ones. Some people are considering the cost to the environment of having a child and whether they feel happy with doing that. Some people might think about the costs to the time they can spend with their other children as they will have less available time for this. Some people might think about the cost on their relationship with their partner as they will have less time to spend with them or perhaps the cost of the time they have to spend on friends and family. Some women might even think about the cost it will have on their body. However, if all this sounds very negative it is worth remembering that there are very few people that regret having children. They can bring such joy to their parents lives that they are worth the extra money that has to be spent on them as well as the non-financial costs as well. It can be better to work out how you can afford them rather than wonder whether you can afford to have them at all.