In order to understand what my FIRE future looks like, so I can plan accordingly, I wanted to get a handle on what MAFF & I will get from our UK state pensions. This was actually surprisingly easy as the UK Government has a service you can log into and it tells you exactly what you will get, when you’ll get it and how many more years of National Insurance contributions you need to make.

Hang on, what does FIRE have to do with state pensions

I know some of you reading this will be wondering what on earth Financial Independence Retire Early has to do with state pensions.… Read the rest >

So my first step in sorting my finances out is getting to grips with what we spend per month and working out if I can make some savings.

I’m married and our finances are fairly intertwined, we have a joint account which all the bills get paid from and then our own separate bank accounts for personal expenditure. So the costs you see below are for both of us.

After a not-so-exciting few hours with a spreadsheet and my bank statements, I came up with the table below which shows everything we currently spend.… Read the rest >

I recently reduced my Virgin Media bill by almost half. Virgin are surprisingly tough to deal with, so I thought I’d share how I got my bill down.

I was on a 125Mbps+TV+Landline plan costing £95/$117 per month (yes, you read that right, £95 p/m! I don’t quite know how it got that high). I ended up on a 300Mbps+TV+Landline plan costing £50/$62 per month.

How Virgin Media Pricing Works

Virgin Media pricing works the same as most Insurance companies, cheap to start and then they hike the price, but Virgin are even more blatant about hiking prices.… Read the rest >