UK FI spreadsheet

[Tighterbelt]

Good evening everyone.  I'm relatively new to the FIRE concept, but its striking a chord with me and I've found this forum really interesting and thought provoking.   I've seen some template spreadsheets on FI status/planning that have been shared elsewhere on the site but I've only come across US focussed ones...these are helpful for the headings and structure but is there a UK template somewhere on here that has been shared previously and someone could point me to?

Many thanks

[never give up]

Hi Tighterbelt. Welcome. I’m not aware of one existing in here. People seem to have different spreadsheets. Some are for budgeting or tracking costs and others for monitoring their investments. The Monevator site has some useful planning articles but I’m afraid I’m not aware of a one-stop template for UK people.

[AnswerIs42]

While the general concept of a net worth spreadsheet is pretty universal, I have a few UK-specific things on mine that I find very useful:

- Separation of stash into pension and non-pension sections, due to age of access
- Estimated pension value at age 58, for lifetime allowance reasons
- A calculation of how much I can run down my non-pension stash each year so it's at zero at age 58. Once this figure reaches my basic target, then I'm FI, not too long now :)

[Tighterbelt]

Thanks so much for the replies.  I've got a basic spreadsheet so will continue to build on this as I learn more from members on here.

[PhilB]

While the general concept of a net worth spreadsheet is pretty universal, I have a few UK-specific things on mine that I find very useful:

- Separation of stash into pension and non-pension sections, due to age of access
- Estimated pension value at age 58, for lifetime allowance reasons
- A calculation of how much I can run down my non-pension stash each year so it's at zero at age 58. Once this figure reaches my basic target, then I'm FI, not too long now :)

Don't forget to also plot the drawings post 58 to get all nominal growth up to age 75 out of the pension in a tax efficient manner.  These kind of complexities are what makes a one-size-fits-all spreadsheet fairly impractical for the UK. 

[Playing with Fire UK]

Unless you have an atypical skillset, I'd suggest building your own spreadsheet. You'll learn more from thinking about making it than you would by filling in someone else's.

Things I like on my spreadsheet:
A summary of the last few years' spending to compare with the stash (e.g. so I can see that I could retire now if I didn't have holidays or wine).
Estimates of net worth as an adult to see progress (this is great for my motivation).
Each type of account (current, SIPP, work pension, ISA) is tracked separately with the ages that I can access them on a different tab.
Another tab where I can play with my assumptions (growth, inflation, pension access age, pay rises).
Lots of charts.

[auntie_betty]

Unless you have an atypical skillset, I'd suggest building your own spreadsheet. You'll learn more from thinking about making it than you would by filling in someone else's.

I so agree with this. For example, I tried playing with the cfire sim calculator and though I'm sure I filled it in correctly I didn't trust the results as I couldn't convince myself I was clever enough to understand what was going on! Instead of which I built my own, simple, spreadsheet and just added to it bit by bit till it was showing basically the same (but not modelling markets like the cfire one does, I just randomly assigned growth and losses to various years/groups of years). Then, as I didn't trust myself to have built something so complex, I built it again and got the same results. Then, not long after I FIRE'd,  I actually deleted it and now just monitor what is actually happening compared to a very simple prediction. If things start going south I'll build another more complex one, but I was spending way too long obsessing over it.   

[skip207]

Defo build your own.  I have and its not difficult and even with fairly poor excel skills I have managed it!!