I'm interested in how other people here have found a balance between SIPP and ISA (and taxable) investing.
It seems pretty clear cut for people who will be FIREing very young (ISAs win) and people who will retire after the Personal Pension Access Age (PPAA currently 55, likely to be rising to 10 years below the State Pension Age (SPA), or something else), where pensions win.
My decision making:
I'm mid-30s, hoping to FIRE by 40. I've funded my SIPP to the point where, if I get average growth, by the time I'm 55 there will be 25x my current expenses (adjusted for inflation). Now everything else is going into an ISA or taxable account. If I decide that my expenses have increased, or growth is lower than I thought, or it looks like the tax-favourability of contributions is about to get worse I'll top up the SIPP.
For my ISA and tax money, instead of 25x expenses, I'll need a lower value because my SIPP will continue to grow and I'm happy to spend down my taxed-money after FIRE and before PPAA. My concern is that I don't know what the markets will do and how much I'll need to cover those years of spending. My other concern is that if I pull the FIRE cord in a couple of years, I could find out that the PPAA has gone up again and now I don't have the stache to cover until that age and I'm a few years out of the workplace.
I'd like to arrange an interest only mortgage so that I can put more money in my SIPP and then pay off the mortgage after the PPAA. I'm not finding this straightforward at the moment.
I don't rate Lifetime ISAs for higher rate taxpayers who own a home.
What do you think?