Description

We chat to Bex, who is a regular at the Sheffield and Nottingham community meet-ups (for details of these, see our community link below). She is a civil servant and is looking at retiring early so that she and her husband can enjoy more free time together.

Bex's retiring early means that she may have to wait for access to her civil service pension and we talk about building a 'bridge' fund to provide an income to cover this period.

Along the way we talk about quality of life, work/life balance and aligning your retirement with that of your partner. We also discuss setting a good example for children and some of the 'de-risking' activities you can undertake to help prepare financially for your life of freedom.

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We've used this episode to make a Q&A special to answer a number of questions that regularly come up with our guest John, who is a regular in our Facebook group.

We look at 'one more year syndrome', where it's very tempting to delay your retirement, along with dealing with how to generate an income to bridge the period between retirement and access to pensions.

We then deal with how to optimise planning for your retirement and drawing down an income once you get there, including gifting money to dependents.

Show notes

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This episode's News covers the planned rise in dividend tax rates for the 2026-27 tax year and

In the main section our interviewee is Evelyn from one of our Nottingham FIRE meet-ups. We talk about how you know when you've reached financial independence and finding a healthy work/life balance.

And in the Q&A we talk about using dividends as a source of income and whether the free investments platforms are likely to stay that way?

Take a look at our wiki with more details of the community here:

http://www.thefireplace.info

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