2025: it's a big year for me, as I'm 66yo (or hope to be) on 8th November 2025 and will be able to draw on my Old Age Pension from the government. My current plan is to commence drawing my pension from my 66th birthday - as there's no benefit in delaying payment - but, also, to carry on working at least until Easter 2026. My current employment isn't too taxing on the brain-cells, and I enjoy the camaraderie of the office: I'm also paid a decent salary.
The downside to staying in full-time employment is the lack of paid holidays, so I'm planting the idea in my manager's mind that I could be a useful "mentor and assessor" on a part-time basis.
Will that work? Who knows?
What I'm not going to do is a paid hobby: nobody values skills anymore, and having visited a number of craft fairs on the run-up to Christmas, and watched skilled craft-makers struggling to sell their (sometimes) high quality goods for little more than cost-price, there's little point in doing that.
I've been writing my horseracing blog for 15 years (I've been following horseracing for nearly 60 years being introduced to the sport by my dad when I was a 7yo), and while I know I'm good at reading the form and spotting horses that are better than they have yet to show on the track (the only way to win at the sport is to spot potential earlier than anyone else), the number of hours that you have to put in versus the rewards do not merit the effort involved. As such, this jumps season (which ends in April), will probably be my last one writing the horseracing blog.
That's not to say I'm abandoning blog writing, I really enjoy it. The whole experience of writing gives me the chance to examine my thoughts, and set out my plans in a manner to accomplish them. The Pension Builder blog will continue unabated, in fact I can see it becoming more detailed. The "upsides" of the Pension Builder blog are far greater than having £20 on a 6/1 chance at Haydock come in 1st.
Having missed the initial target of the blog - £500,000 by my 65th birthday - I'm re-assigning my goals. I'd like to have a SIPP fund value of £325,000 on 1st May 2026.
From that, my intention is to drawdown approx 7.50% per annum (£24,000) which - after tax - will bolster my Old Age Pension by £20,400pa. I think that would provide a comfortable retirement. My SIPP goal will be to grow the fund to meet that withdrawal, and some. I expect we shall have inflation of an average of 5% for the foreseeable future, and endeavouring to grow the SIPP value to be able to cover that will be vitally important.
At the moment, I'm having an in-depth review of my SIPP holdings, and can't advise what changes I shall be making just yet. However, I am indebted to the recent post by Cassini, writer of the "Green All Over" blog - the link is on the right - as that resulted in a spike in readers of this blog. I hope some of those who visited, enjoyed what they found and will return again. What I found particularly interesting was the overlapping of our personal circumstances (we're both, reading between the lines, around the same age and soon to be reliant on our pension funds) and investment strategies. We are both on the lookout for multiple "baggers", we both use index-trackers as the bedrock of the SIPP, and we both have a element of "play" money for more speculative investments which may (or may not) come off. I always find synergies like this interesting: is it because we are "boomers", is it something to do with the way we were brought-up and the values we inherited, could it be just coincidence?
That's it for now, lunchtime is over - back to the grindstone.
