↑ Eurozone Stock Index Fund is up by $3,393 or +2.2%
↑ US 500 Stock Index Fund is up by $1,000 or +0.3%
↑ Growth fund is up by $1,890 or +2.6%
Total gains: $6,283
↓ Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund is down by $4,632 or -3.5%
↓ Global Small Cap is down by $4,569 or -3.0%
↓ EUR is down to USD by 1.9% or $5,306
↓ GBP is down to USD by 0.8% or $583
Total losses: 15,090
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| January 2024 Financial Independence update. |
Observations:
To earn a full basic state pension in the UK one has to work for 35 qualifying years (paying sufficient taxes). Today this pension is about $13 K a year or $1.1 K a month. State pension age is 67 years old.
As long as you worked at least 10 years (doesn’t necessary consequently) you will get proportion of it (divide $13 K by 35 and multiply by the number of qualifying year). At 10 qualifying years the pension is $445 a month ($3.8K a year).
In principle this is available to anybody who has worked in the UK. There is also option to top up the missing years by paying some money. I checked with the pensions department and I need to pay $11K today to get to 20 qualifying years. I also need to wait for 25 years before I get the pension.
At 3% inflation adjusted return $11K will become $23K (or $29K at 4% return) after 25 years. 20 years will give you $7.6 K pension a year. So as long as I live over 72 years old, I will be able to get my money back.
Using this logic, I sent the government $11K
today. Only the government can take away
the pension away from me. Its not a lot
by if I ever work again there is still time to get full 35 qualifying
years. To get a guaranteed $13K a year
income I need to have 440 K nest egg (for $7.6K a year I need to have $251K
nest egg). In a very odd way I can say
that I have $1 million nest egg today. Joking aside $1 million will give me about $2.5K a month which would cover basic living (once the house is paid), assuming that I will have some kind of job on a minimum salary should it come to it.
