My Approach to Bonds (and Cash)

I wrote about my overall asset allocation a while back (Part 1 & Part 2), but have been doing a fair amount of thinking late regarding the bond part, particularly in light of some more substantial cash savings from our remortgage that are eventually planned for home improvements/extensions, but with no clear timeline (at least

S&S ISA Experiment – September 2021

I haven’t provided an update on my S&S ISA experiment since the May 2021 update, but 3 months on I think there might be a few interesting things to note. Very quick reminder – because of the challenges in holding index funds outside of a “pension” for Americans abroad, I’m trying a “pseudo-indexing” approach in

Buying Index Funds – 2 More Options

In the last few weeks, I’ve run across two more options for buying index funds, the key building blocks of my portfolio (and of anybody taking a passive, buy-and-hold, Bogleheads-ish approach). I haven’t implemented either of them yet, but wanted to share what I’ve found and I’d be very interested to hear if any of

Tax Management in Traditional Retirement (Phase 3)

This is Part 3c of our Retirement Withdrawal Strategies series. Quick summary so far: Part 1: When can you access your retirement savings? Part 2: How to avoid paying US and UK tax again (or at least minimize them) Part 3a: Putting it together in Early Retirement Part 3b: Putting it together in Middle Retirement

Estimating Social Security for Americans in the UK

I’m back after a short break – a week on holiday in Cornwall, and another week just catching up. I’ll continue my withdrawal strategies series in due course, but this is another quick aside, which is related but not central to that series. A lot of people in the FIRE community, especially on the younger

Tax on UK Pension Withdrawals

A relatively quick one today, on a topic I’ve been trying to nail down for a while. Disclosure up front – as always, I’m not a professional. This topic is particularly complex, and I invite discussion and disagreement; I’ll happily update this post if anybody finds any inaccuracies and call out any alternative viewpoints. Just

Tax Management in Middle Retirement (Phase 2)

This is Part 3b of our Retirement Withdrawal Strategies series. Quick summary so far: Part 1: When can you access your retirement savings? Part 2: How to avoid paying US and UK tax again (or at least minimize them) Part 3a: Putting it together in Early Retirement Today, we’ll look at “Middle Retirement” or Phase

Putting it Together: Tax Management in Early Retirement (Phase 1)

This is Part 3a of our Retirement Withdrawal Strategies series. In Part 1, we looked at when you can actually access your retirement savings, dividing retirement roughly into three phases: In Part 2, we explored the tax-free buckets that you can use so you never pay US or UK tax again (or at least keep

S&S ISA Experiment – May 2021 Update

First update on my S&S ISA Experiment – I don’t know that I’ll actually do these monthly for the long term, but at least for now I’m curious to see how it’s doing. Quick recap of the experiment: Americans can’t hold index funds in a S&S ISA due to PFIC regulations 😦 But we can

RMDs vs Lifetime Allowance – Which Alligator Should You Focus On?

Fair warning: this post is for people who have reason to be concerned about both RMDs and the Lifetime Allowance. If you don’t have a Traditional 401k/IRA/etc. balance or you have no concerns about exceeding the LTA, you can skip on past – just focus on the one that affects you. Also – this one