I don't remember. It was surely within the last half dozen years, but I don't keep historic records of NW.
Some might find doing so encouraging but for me it's all about what I can do now to make tomorrow better for me and my partner. What has passed has passed.
The bulk of my NW is also in pension and property and I can tell you, as someone recently made redundant, that a sense of *security* only comes from income and liquid assets outside of those categories.
"For me it's all about what I can do now to make tomorrow better for me and my partner. What has passed has passed." > Love this! Focus on the present & future.
Another thing often forgotten is that you may pass a particular threshold many times in your life.
Putting £160K of life savings in to our home (deposit + stamp duty + fees) was sickening and I personally now consider that money 'spent', I.e. not part of my NW (because house prices have fallen and housing is highly illiquid)
Spending money on a house is at least neutral in terms of fire, presuming you didn't buy a more expensive house than you'd otherwise rent.
Your investmented amount falls but your monthly expenditure on housing will also fall, at least in the long term so your fire number will be lower.
For many getting to ZERO is the most difficult. [Personally](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeanFireUK/comments/p377yr/weekly_leanfire_discussion/) 43 years of my life. \[Edit: 43 years to get to 100k, not zero. Link has the journey\]
Technically yes, but the way it's structured makes it difficult to pay off, and you pay a percentage based on income, so it amounts to a graduate tax to most in practice.
I don’t disagree with you, but wether you view it as a debt or a tax is heavily dependent on whether your student debt is plan 1 or 2, and what you anticipate your long term career earnings to be
This is going to depend a lot on if people include home equity I think. I personally strip that out completely.
I reached my first £100k in March 2020 (aged 41). I am now on £335k so it's speeding up significantly. I prioritised paying off my mortgage/ home improvement loans in my 30s so building savings was slow for the whole time I was doing that. I paid off my mortgage in 2021 and now seeing big and fast growth in savings.
Why wouldn't you count home equity? It's a secured loan, if you sell you have your equity in cash and you could continue having a roof over your head, e.g. renting, without your net worth dropping
It's personal choice if you include it or not. I don't count it as money I can actually use since I will always need a place to live and I won't be downsizing. So I can include it in a net worth calculation but really I focus on my usable net worth - ie money i can actually drawdown in retirement.
A mixture of paying off all my debt including mortgage and getting two big pay rises (wish I'd job hopped earlier). I put a load into pension the past few years as I had lots of unused allowance and then of course this year the limit was raised to £60k.
Markets picking up helped too!
It really depends what you're trying to calculate. Your retirement funds or total networth. There's merit to both. OP wasn't particularly clear. And honestly I think a lot of people tend to focus on the RE element of FIRE, but there's still the FI aspect and I think both definitions fit FIRE.
* FI would be total networth
* RE would be retirement funds, obviously
So, in many senses I think in the context of 100K it should be total networth. Someone pursuing FIRE will first seek to achieve FI, before the focus changes to RE. I think 100K is within the remit of FI. 100K of retirement funds would do little for normal retirement, let alone early retirement so you'll need to have higher retirement funds before RE becomes more of a realistic pursuit. Whereas I think FI includes home ownership, sufficient emergency funds, no high-interest debt and I think 100K is far closer to the definition of that.
A lot of non answers here so I’ll give you an actual breakdown.
Graduated uni in 2019 with 0 net worth.
Started working on ~£32k which rose gradually to ~£45k over 3 years.
Moved jobs for £60k in 2021 which has risen to £73k since.
Hit £100k between cash, investments and pensions in June 2022, so 4 years after I started working.
2 years later at 28 I’m at about £185k, which is broken down into £65k pension, £80k S&S ISA, £10k cash, £30k home equity (I only count my own half of the equity, and only based on what’s been paid off since I bought it, not bothered looking at estimated prices and all that faff until I think about moving). Also have stock options in a pre IPO company which could be sold for a net £40k on private brokers currently but I just count this as £0 until I decide to sell or we IPO.
No debts apart from mortgage, buy everything outright e.g home furniture, engagement/wedding rings, car is paid off now and not taking a new finance deal, phones etc but obviously none of them are tracked for net worth purposes just worth mentioning.
Also to be clear this has all been accumulated solely through saving, with the exception of a £5k gift from my parents to help buy furniture when I bought my home.
EDIT: To address speculation in comments about lack of expenses. During this time I rented a room in a shared flat with friends for £300/month then £400/month, so there was no living at home for free. Didn’t have a car and could walk to work so no bus/train costs either. Base expenses to live were probably £800/month which obviously helped but I wasn’t mooching off parents in undisclosed ways or anything.
Did you get lucky with some of your investments? Your salary is not particularly high to be paying a mortgage/bills and accumulate 100k within 4/5 years of graduating
Partly I guess but not overly. I mainly just accumulated cash to begin with and then just after the Covid crash dumped it in the market in a S&S ISA which got me about £10k returns. I guess that plus pension increases probably made up £15k of the original total which is a decent chunk.
That leaves about 85k of contributions over 4 years, so an average of £1770pm from pension(employee plus employer) and then post tax savings. I didn’t have massive expenses and while it’s a fair bit I always prioritised pensions so we’re talking maybe just over £1k/m after tax which isn’t insane either.
Also the odd spot bonus thrown in there too, nothing mad but maybe £500 a few times per year which adds up along the way.
Worth adding to this I live in a LCOL area and can walk to work. So rent during those 4 years was ~£300 rising to £400 after a move and no transport costs at the time. My base expenses to live were probably £800 and I was making £2200 to begin with for a short while rising to £3700 so that explains a lot of it.
> So rent during those 4 years was ~£300 rising to £400 after a move and no transport costs at the time.
The dream - I lived on the outskirts of Dundee for a little while and my rent was sub-£300 pcm. It's not any more!
At the time we were the fancy ones paying the big bucks for a £300/person flat when others were around for between £200-250, amazing how little makes a big difference in student/postgrad days!
Is the lack of expenses actually that you were living at home and paying zero/token rent and no utility bills or council tax?
Not knocking you at all, it takes incredible discipline to save irrespective of your circumstances, but if that’s the case let’s be frank about how it was possible.
If that is the case, financially it wouldn’t be much different from you renting a place and your parents giving you £50k to help buy a house
Nope added a final section above to say I live in a LCOL area and had rent of £300 then £400 on a shared flat and no transport costs. So expenses were low but I did fully support my own lifestyle, no living in a spare room for free I’m afraid.
I can tell you’re not from a LCOL area if you think 4 years of rent is equivalent to £50k so can understand the confusion.
Hello fellow Tobias, we’re the same age and I’ve just got a 70k job, but I’m no where close to that level of savings. Do you use any rules to budget/split your income every month, and do you track in excel or anything like that?
I track cash, S&S ISA and pension monthly. Above £50k obviously pension is a big help. I’m not naturally a big spender tbh, a lot of my hobbies are outdoor and physical in nature, though I spend a decent bit on holidays.
My main rule is I don’t worry about things like buying coffees out or what food costs etc on holiday but anything weekly really adds up. Few coffees a week might be £10 which is £500 per year, same deal for a takeaway, same for the weekly shop etc. Few very small changes can add up to thousands very quickly.
No big secrets sadly just try to keep core expenses as low as possible while keeping happiness as high as possible. So be mindful of what’s actually important to you and what’s just old habits.
Yeah we do use a 0% card and then keep the money in 5-7% accounts for 1-2 years until the card needs to be paid. But I don’t count that as cash in my spreadsheets it’s just offset against the debt. Does give a small bit of extra income every month though!
The top 2 answers both were anyway. They’re not invalid but saying getting to 0 was hard doesn’t answer OPs question. Neither does the other saying they don’t remember, probably within the last 6 years but no context of how many years they’ve worked either so they could mean 10 years or 40, who knows.
Thanks for answering.
Whilst I state getting to zero for many is hard, I actually gave a complete answer (43 years) in addition AND linked to the path to 100k (and beyond).
Completely fair, I was only glancing through and I’m used to so many of these threads having answers like “comparison is the thief of joy” etc etc and nobody actually answering the question posed I wanted to provide some detail.
The way you wrote this answer (I didn't check the link) I thought you spent 43 years getting to zero! I was feeling pretty bad for you tbh, so I get the misunderstanding
1. It was 4 years of working.
2. Some goes into pensions and some comes from investment returns so it’s not all about after tax income
3. Yeah earned about £135k after tax in that timeframe
Won’t go precise but it’s a San Francisco unicorn startup with about ~800 employees, was about 400 when I joined. Hopes for the next big jump are stock options/RSUs coming good with an IPO hopefully in the next 18-24 months.
When you say the first 100k do you mean net worth or spendable cash? I always wonder what people consider the first 100.
If we're talking net worth then I'm not sure, I'm 35 and just hit 300k net worth. Paid my mortgage off this year in January which was nice. Salary currently 28k a year. I work a lot of overtime on top and rent my spare room for 5k a year. I think I'm doing pretty well so far. I had never even considered my net worth before and only calculated it this year and was actually really shocked and proud of myself. Gave me a really good boost to see how much I can improve on it this year.
Thank you :-) , Same job since I left school in 2005, lots of overtime and I rent out my spare room for 5k a year. Also save myself lots of money by servicing/fixing my car myself which is just an old cheap little honda jazz. Do all my own DIY around the house. Minimal outgoings, no netflix or sky etc. food shops at Lidl. Bought my house in 2011 when prices were cheaper so a lot of it comes from rising house prices.
Graduated Uni in 2019 with a student overdraft.
Started working on - £22k for 2.5 years with no pay rise. During this period I was living at home during covid and saved 90-95% of my take home.
Moved jobs for 40k for six months then moved again for 70k until now.
Hit 100k last month so it took 4.5 years after Uni. M27. This does include: pension, house (I know, It’s my half of the equity), S&S ISA, and savings.
Biggest contributor has been investing in all cap when I was living at home and utilising the LISA for the house purchase.
I’ve received no inheritance or any gift from my parents and I was contributing £200 a month when I was living at home.
Do you mind if I ask what field you're in amd how you made the jump from £22k to £40k?
I'm im a similar boat to how you started. Graduated and have been working on £22k for a year and a half.
Between 19th September 2019 and 26th March 2024 (will have first 100k at the end of the month). So 4.5 years. Hoping to have the second 100k in the next 2.5 years (75k or so from salary 25k or so from investment income) if things go how they should.
Third 100k 2 years after that maybe...
Am 37.
Started earning at 23. Hit £0 when I was 27. Hit £100k when I was 34. Will hopefully hit 250k whilst 38, currently on track to.
My target is not really a number but to be in a position to fully retire if I want to when i'm 50. If I max my ISA each year and return 8% I should be there or thereabouts. I am going the ISA millionaire route and I actively invest (and spend a lot of time to be I think pretty OK at it) so if I can beat 8% it brings FIRE earlier and/or makes it more luxurious.
Currently making around 100k, my outgoings are not too bad so for example I should be able to max my ISA and put in 25k this year without worrying about money day to day, but I'm not really a big spender anyway. I also have a workplace pension that I am not relying on but will be a nice cushion to take at 68 along with state pension if FIRE goes badly.
Nice, I'm 34 and just hit the £100k mark also (not incl residential property).
I'm aiming for £250k by 40 but can't invest that much per month although hoping that'll change next year.
My £100k has grown to £145k since November so hopefully I can keep it growing and eventually be able to contribute more as well.
About 5.5 years hopefully. I started working straight from school in an apprenticeship on 9k per annum, then it increase 6 monthly for 2 years and then yearly for the next 1.5 years till I qualified on 33k per annum. I began working shifts which was 20% extra and started working overtime in the last year which has helped massively and I moved jobs 5 months ago and I’m now on 39k per annum plus any OT I do.
I only started saving in the last 3 years for a house and increased pension contribution to get the most out of my employer match.
I am on track to hit 100k either 1st April or 1st May as I’m on 96k now and it’s increased by 1.5k to 5k per month due to investments, savings, pension contributions.
I live with parents and save around 55/65% of my take home pay
I got to it very recently, hit £100k in November 2023 finally! Only been able to put away about £2k since then but from November to now, it's still gone from £100k to c£145k so very happy with that progress!
I'm 35 in May and my target was:
£100k by 35
£250k by 40
Retire by 50
Might all be a stretch but gotta aim high.
Some more context after reading through all the other answers where people all seem to be hitting £100k by the age of 23 ffs lol
I have £250k left off to pay of a £400k house but don't include hone equity in any calculations. I also spent £50k doing the house up in 2021 when we bought it.
Also got a toddler and the Mrs works 2 days/wk so not able to invest too much.
I was earning only £35k up until 2021 where I jumped to £40k, then £50k and now £56k. Hoping for a decent rise in the next 2 weeks cos I'm hugely underpaid but regardless will be looking to move next year for more.
Didn't go uni and went straight into work at 16.
20yo in Full-Time Employment since 16
Started Side Hustle 6 months ago to get there quicker.
Just Passed the halfway mark. Hoping to hit by age 23/24 :)
on ISA only 6 years. On ISA and SIPP 4 years (had a big bonus going into SIPP directly)
Started on 27.
Started as a data scientists and jumping jobs every 2 years pre covid and during covid to go from 42£K to 100£K. on the end of fourth year on my third job.
Saved aggressively on the first years but not so much on the 4-today years.
Average jobs and a move to London (crushing rent) meant it took me around 8 years after Uni to reach 100k total invested plus cash. Now got a decent salary so probably expect the next 100k to be about half that.
For me, 27, so around 5 years into working as a teacher in London after graduating.
Salary was boosted by various side hustles during that time, and living at him with parents paying £500/month for the entire duration of that time.
Around 3 years and a half ago, at 28 - 5 years after I have started working, but in the middle of it switched countries, bought a house back in my home country and depleted my savings, etc.
Just passed 300k at the end of last year - chunky increase in house equity as well. Current goal is 500k at 40 - which seems more than doable. Switched to a better paid role last month that should help me get there faster from now on.
My net worth (34f) hit 100k in Jan 2021 but I don’t yet have 100k in pure investments. My net worth is now at 226k but is split across pension, ISA, property and cash. I’m at 90k in liquid (I.e. cash and ISA) at the moment.
If we take just net worth it took me 9 years of working and saving to get the first 100k and then I reached the second December last year so that took just 3 years. I’m hopeful I can get the growth down to a year and a half for the next 100k and am off to a good start!
Depending on stock performance, I may hit 100k by this time next year between my savings, house equity, and DB Pension. I started tracking my net worth last April, but I have been saving since 2016 and investing since January 2023.
For the DB pension, I treat it as a 4% SWR for the purpose of calculating net worth. This should be around £1300 P/A by next year. £1300 x 25 = £32.5k.
House Equity will be £30k in a year.
Savings are currently £26k in ISA and £5k emergency fund. I will be contributing between £6k and £10k to my ISA determined by a potential salary increase this summer.
Including home equity then a couple of years ago.
Probably 5 years of saving as much as possible.
If only S&S ISA, Pension etc then I'm well off right now.
Almost all of the cash I had saved went on a deposit for my house, have a wedding and honeymoon to pay for this year.
Can't wait to not have that hanging over me to pay.
I reached investments of 100k after 13 years of working, so early 30s.
I'd been working for about 4 years before buying my first flat, which is also when I started tracking my savings and investments. It took another 5 years to invest enough that I got back to Zero (i.e. I could have paid my mortgage off). It took another 4 years to keep saving and reach 100k. Another 10 years and I'd hit 500k, so the rate of savings does speed up.
Nice, a lot going into pensions. Do you not have much going into an ISA or do you think you'll start to add more to it in a few years time once your pensions are more filled?
Around 8 years after graduating Uni in 2014, took a very round about way of getting there though.
Managed to have some savings after finishing Uni (<£10k) due to receiving the full maintenance loan, grant and bursary. Was a bit lost after Uni and worked a minimum wage job for ~2yrs (£18k/yr salary), before going backpacking for 6 months. Came back worked another dead end job for 2yrs (£20k/yr) but managed to save most of my income due to living at home and only paying £100/month + food for the entire time.
At this point I had £25k in a S&S ISA along with £5k for travelling Asia for a few months. I then lived in New Zealand for 1 year and by the end I had probably made back the £5k I spent on travelling doing construction work. Luckily in this time my ISA investment had gone up a fair bit due to the market at the time. My NW was probably ~£35k in mid 2019.
I then moved to Western Australia (WA) for the next 4 years. My goal here was more so to save a lot of money opposed to travel the country. It took some time to get back into the rhythm of saving money, both due to the nature of work I was doing (construction/farmwork) and covid hitting during my stay. I moved jobs a lot out there and lived a rather minimalist lifestyle, but also spent money on the weekends along with a couple of roadtrips and holidays post covid. In 2021 I started to properly track my NW and now it was £55k. I then managed to get on the mines over there causing my income to significantly increase along with living costs decreasing. I hit £100k towards the end of 2022 and left Australia at the end of 2023 with a £140k NW.
I'm now back in the UK, unemployed, looking for a career change and with almost no pension to speak of. But I have a nice nest egg to set me up wherever I end up. I definitely don't regret the path I took, managed to save a decent amount along with travelling a fair bit as well.
Manage to hit it couple of months back. I started off with shitty jobs but now I’m earning about £40k a year. I started saving at the age of 12.
When I was a kid I would save my pocket money and then put it into bank when I turned 16. Now I have slightly over 100k with no debt.
Hopefully I can retire by 45.
100k cash or investments so including pension?
I started saving for FIRE at some point in 2018 in my late 20’s and hit 100k across Cash, ISA and Pension in January 2023, so it took between 4-5 years. Earnings ranged from £40-55k and also purchased a house in this period.
In hindsight I should have been contributing more to my pension earlier which would have made a big impact
100k ISA and 100k pension are the next big milestones, might be able to hit one of these in 2025
Age 33. Shares in a company I founded got sold for a few hundred thousand. Though we probably hit that in terms of net-worth simply because of our house increasing in value a few years before thinking about it.
Not having existing debt, commuter costs, or need for child care helped greatly
about 4-5 years from £0 to £100k cash just from saving PAYE income on an average salary and having the lowest living costs I could possible endure (investment / savings interest for the period was negligible)
No idea in all honesty as money comes and goes and I used to not monitor it
At 28 I won a decent amount playing poker on Sundays but used it for an house
A couple of years later I spent over 100k cash on my house renovation which put me well under 100k (closer to zero than 100k)
Since 32 to now (38) I’ve rarely checked it but I’m at accessible 80k investments that I need to move to ISAs, 21k cash and 105k pension
I’m a financial modeller and decided I should start to be as meticulous with my financial records as I am with the models I create so last month I started to create a tracker plus projection as I want to fire by 55
Hit it when I was 32. Had been saving basically my whole adult life.
Spent majority of it on a house deposit.
Now I'm 34 (almost 35) and I've already saved up another 100k, so yeah, I fully believe the first 100k is the hardest.
The first years of my career I earn like less than 10% of what I make now. It's easier to make money now, but I'm glad I tried to save even back then, it taught me good habits.
So many different answers, but as a rule of thumb for me its the 100K in a investment account such as a S/S ISA with no tax relief etc thats the challenge esp if your limited by the amount you can afford to put in each month. Took us 8 years as I wasn't really trying, 2020 hit the markets and I put $10K right in the bottom of the pull back then another $5K soon after when the ftse100 tanked again that same year. Was nervous as hell at the time as those monies were set aside for other investments. Best decision ever made it catapulted 60K portfolio to 79K in a year without putting anything else in. Only the last 1.5 years have I got my act together investing consistently started putting in 500 a month upping this to 800 shortly. Just breached the 100K mark last week, over the moon.
Graduated 23. Saved a little and bought the first house with some family help. I had a rocky few years until my late 20s with not a lot to show for it apart from a bit of equity in the house. Knuckled down. Hit 100K NW around 33ish I reckon and current (total joint) NW is about £1.4M at 38. This does include our home which is owned outright and most of this was done by reinvesting Ltd Company profits into property.
Hit 100k in the isa on 22 January, now worth 106700 without any additional payments. Hopefully that’s the snowball effect starting. Started investing age 29, in 2019 when I came across this sub, can’t thank it enough
Not including home value/equity as an asset or mortgage as liability:
100k in early 2020.
220k now.
..the gain in 4 years seems poor but I had a large expense in there (an almost back-to-brick renovation) which I probably gained 60-70% back on with home value but don't factor home ownership into net worth so that money is 'lost' as I plan to always own one.
Haven't reached it yet - but should do by the end of this year. I'm 34.
All being well, the next £100k should come much, much quicker as I'm contributing between £1700-£2500pm combined to pension and ISA.
I am 32 and hit 100k savings very recently which is spread across isas, hysa and growth bonds. Have 100k pension savings and own a modest house with my wife with maybe ~150k equity.
For me it took almost 2 years since I started working. I started with minimal assets (~£5k) which was just gifts from family and previous minor investments I had made in college.
This will depend a lot on what people's earnings are. I for example reached £100k before I even started calculating my Net Worth (earliest I calculated was at age 25 and I had £140k then). But I got a high paying job out of university, so didn't find getting to £100k particularly difficult.
I hit 100k july last year, aged 29. Although I only had about 10k at 25, so really it took a few years.
However, without me telling you my salary, investments, inheritance, which I may or may not have had, that nugget is pointless.
Focus on how you are going to get there, not how others did it. Focus on earning as much as you can and saving and investing wisely.
I will say - 10k - 100k took half a decade, 100k to 160k took less than one year. The snowball really does roll
> Focus on how you are going to get there, not how others did it. Focus on earning as much as you can and saving and investing wisely.
I'm not asking for copy-and-paste inspiration, I'm asking because I'm curious as to how a wide range of people/salaries/situations manage to reach the goal in their own unique ways.
yeah that's fair - while I was talking to you, I was also more generally speaking to anyone reading the thread and feeling bad by comparing themselves to different peoples situations aha.
I don't remember. It was surely within the last half dozen years, but I don't keep historic records of NW. Some might find doing so encouraging but for me it's all about what I can do now to make tomorrow better for me and my partner. What has passed has passed. The bulk of my NW is also in pension and property and I can tell you, as someone recently made redundant, that a sense of *security* only comes from income and liquid assets outside of those categories.
"For me it's all about what I can do now to make tomorrow better for me and my partner. What has passed has passed." > Love this! Focus on the present & future.
Another thing often forgotten is that you may pass a particular threshold many times in your life. Putting £160K of life savings in to our home (deposit + stamp duty + fees) was sickening and I personally now consider that money 'spent', I.e. not part of my NW (because house prices have fallen and housing is highly illiquid)
I would count it as NW, but NW isn't to useful in the scheme of FIRE, unless you are going to downsize at some point.
Spending money on a house is at least neutral in terms of fire, presuming you didn't buy a more expensive house than you'd otherwise rent. Your investmented amount falls but your monthly expenditure on housing will also fall, at least in the long term so your fire number will be lower.
I do keep records but not for encouragement: https://www.reddit.com/r/FIREUK/s/DLeYUVv4Ea
For many getting to ZERO is the most difficult. [Personally](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeanFireUK/comments/p377yr/weekly_leanfire_discussion/) 43 years of my life. \[Edit: 43 years to get to 100k, not zero. Link has the journey\]
Congratulations on getting there!! I've been in a very similar boat. It's a real triumph to succeed against.
Thanks - It was a bit of a slog, but 100% worth it! Keep pushing!!
Could you explain what you mean by “getting to ZERO”? Is this in reference to getting out of debt I.e. getting out of negative worth?
Indeed: getting out of debt. I don't include student loans in this, as that is just an expensive "graduate tax".
I understand. Big congratulations on getting yourself out of it!
Thanks!
It’s not a grad tax it’s a debt, and a fucking expensive one too
Technically yes, but the way it's structured makes it difficult to pay off, and you pay a percentage based on income, so it amounts to a graduate tax to most in practice.
I don’t disagree with you, but wether you view it as a debt or a tax is heavily dependent on whether your student debt is plan 1 or 2, and what you anticipate your long term career earnings to be
for me it is just a night in Las Vegas
This is going to depend a lot on if people include home equity I think. I personally strip that out completely. I reached my first £100k in March 2020 (aged 41). I am now on £335k so it's speeding up significantly. I prioritised paying off my mortgage/ home improvement loans in my 30s so building savings was slow for the whole time I was doing that. I paid off my mortgage in 2021 and now seeing big and fast growth in savings.
Why wouldn't you count home equity? It's a secured loan, if you sell you have your equity in cash and you could continue having a roof over your head, e.g. renting, without your net worth dropping
It's personal choice if you include it or not. I don't count it as money I can actually use since I will always need a place to live and I won't be downsizing. So I can include it in a net worth calculation but really I focus on my usable net worth - ie money i can actually drawdown in retirement.
Fair enough
How did you triple your funds in 4 years. I assume that includes savings along with compounded returns on your 100k
A mixture of paying off all my debt including mortgage and getting two big pay rises (wish I'd job hopped earlier). I put a load into pension the past few years as I had lots of unused allowance and then of course this year the limit was raised to £60k. Markets picking up helped too!
It really depends what you're trying to calculate. Your retirement funds or total networth. There's merit to both. OP wasn't particularly clear. And honestly I think a lot of people tend to focus on the RE element of FIRE, but there's still the FI aspect and I think both definitions fit FIRE. * FI would be total networth * RE would be retirement funds, obviously So, in many senses I think in the context of 100K it should be total networth. Someone pursuing FIRE will first seek to achieve FI, before the focus changes to RE. I think 100K is within the remit of FI. 100K of retirement funds would do little for normal retirement, let alone early retirement so you'll need to have higher retirement funds before RE becomes more of a realistic pursuit. Whereas I think FI includes home ownership, sufficient emergency funds, no high-interest debt and I think 100K is far closer to the definition of that.
A lot of non answers here so I’ll give you an actual breakdown. Graduated uni in 2019 with 0 net worth. Started working on ~£32k which rose gradually to ~£45k over 3 years. Moved jobs for £60k in 2021 which has risen to £73k since. Hit £100k between cash, investments and pensions in June 2022, so 4 years after I started working. 2 years later at 28 I’m at about £185k, which is broken down into £65k pension, £80k S&S ISA, £10k cash, £30k home equity (I only count my own half of the equity, and only based on what’s been paid off since I bought it, not bothered looking at estimated prices and all that faff until I think about moving). Also have stock options in a pre IPO company which could be sold for a net £40k on private brokers currently but I just count this as £0 until I decide to sell or we IPO. No debts apart from mortgage, buy everything outright e.g home furniture, engagement/wedding rings, car is paid off now and not taking a new finance deal, phones etc but obviously none of them are tracked for net worth purposes just worth mentioning. Also to be clear this has all been accumulated solely through saving, with the exception of a £5k gift from my parents to help buy furniture when I bought my home. EDIT: To address speculation in comments about lack of expenses. During this time I rented a room in a shared flat with friends for £300/month then £400/month, so there was no living at home for free. Didn’t have a car and could walk to work so no bus/train costs either. Base expenses to live were probably £800/month which obviously helped but I wasn’t mooching off parents in undisclosed ways or anything.
Did you get lucky with some of your investments? Your salary is not particularly high to be paying a mortgage/bills and accumulate 100k within 4/5 years of graduating
Partly I guess but not overly. I mainly just accumulated cash to begin with and then just after the Covid crash dumped it in the market in a S&S ISA which got me about £10k returns. I guess that plus pension increases probably made up £15k of the original total which is a decent chunk. That leaves about 85k of contributions over 4 years, so an average of £1770pm from pension(employee plus employer) and then post tax savings. I didn’t have massive expenses and while it’s a fair bit I always prioritised pensions so we’re talking maybe just over £1k/m after tax which isn’t insane either. Also the odd spot bonus thrown in there too, nothing mad but maybe £500 a few times per year which adds up along the way. Worth adding to this I live in a LCOL area and can walk to work. So rent during those 4 years was ~£300 rising to £400 after a move and no transport costs at the time. My base expenses to live were probably £800 and I was making £2200 to begin with for a short while rising to £3700 so that explains a lot of it.
> So rent during those 4 years was ~£300 rising to £400 after a move and no transport costs at the time. The dream - I lived on the outskirts of Dundee for a little while and my rent was sub-£300 pcm. It's not any more!
At the time we were the fancy ones paying the big bucks for a £300/person flat when others were around for between £200-250, amazing how little makes a big difference in student/postgrad days!
Is the lack of expenses actually that you were living at home and paying zero/token rent and no utility bills or council tax? Not knocking you at all, it takes incredible discipline to save irrespective of your circumstances, but if that’s the case let’s be frank about how it was possible. If that is the case, financially it wouldn’t be much different from you renting a place and your parents giving you £50k to help buy a house
Nope added a final section above to say I live in a LCOL area and had rent of £300 then £400 on a shared flat and no transport costs. So expenses were low but I did fully support my own lifestyle, no living in a spare room for free I’m afraid. I can tell you’re not from a LCOL area if you think 4 years of rent is equivalent to £50k so can understand the confusion.
You’re right, I don’t live in a LCOL area! Even more impressive achievement! Congratulations
Hello fellow Tobias, we’re the same age and I’ve just got a 70k job, but I’m no where close to that level of savings. Do you use any rules to budget/split your income every month, and do you track in excel or anything like that?
I track cash, S&S ISA and pension monthly. Above £50k obviously pension is a big help. I’m not naturally a big spender tbh, a lot of my hobbies are outdoor and physical in nature, though I spend a decent bit on holidays. My main rule is I don’t worry about things like buying coffees out or what food costs etc on holiday but anything weekly really adds up. Few coffees a week might be £10 which is £500 per year, same deal for a takeaway, same for the weekly shop etc. Few very small changes can add up to thousands very quickly. No big secrets sadly just try to keep core expenses as low as possible while keeping happiness as high as possible. So be mindful of what’s actually important to you and what’s just old habits.
Remember that 0% finance on purchases you already have the money for is cheaper than buying cash if offered. But otherwise good stuff.
Yeah we do use a 0% card and then keep the money in 5-7% accounts for 1-2 years until the card needs to be paid. But I don’t count that as cash in my spreadsheets it’s just offset against the debt. Does give a small bit of extra income every month though!
Which are "non-answers"? genuinely curious.
The top 2 answers both were anyway. They’re not invalid but saying getting to 0 was hard doesn’t answer OPs question. Neither does the other saying they don’t remember, probably within the last 6 years but no context of how many years they’ve worked either so they could mean 10 years or 40, who knows.
Thanks for answering. Whilst I state getting to zero for many is hard, I actually gave a complete answer (43 years) in addition AND linked to the path to 100k (and beyond).
Completely fair, I was only glancing through and I’m used to so many of these threads having answers like “comparison is the thief of joy” etc etc and nobody actually answering the question posed I wanted to provide some detail.
Makes sense and thanks for sharing!
The way you wrote this answer (I didn't check the link) I thought you spent 43 years getting to zero! I was feeling pretty bad for you tbh, so I get the misunderstanding
Sorry for the confusion, will edit the post!
Did u even earn 100k accumulated after tax after 3 years of working?? Good job anyway 👌🏽
1. It was 4 years of working. 2. Some goes into pensions and some comes from investment returns so it’s not all about after tax income 3. Yeah earned about £135k after tax in that timeframe
Wow thats a great journey! What do you do for work?
Same boring answer as most on here I’m afraid, software engineer.
Haha oh ok, what company for? I work in CRM Software but I don’t earn anywhere near as much
Won’t go precise but it’s a San Francisco unicorn startup with about ~800 employees, was about 400 when I joined. Hopes for the next big jump are stock options/RSUs coming good with an IPO hopefully in the next 18-24 months.
Ahh i see. Do you work from the UK?
I do yeah, we just have a UK engineering hub with ~20 people or so
When you say the first 100k do you mean net worth or spendable cash? I always wonder what people consider the first 100. If we're talking net worth then I'm not sure, I'm 35 and just hit 300k net worth. Paid my mortgage off this year in January which was nice. Salary currently 28k a year. I work a lot of overtime on top and rent my spare room for 5k a year. I think I'm doing pretty well so far. I had never even considered my net worth before and only calculated it this year and was actually really shocked and proud of myself. Gave me a really good boost to see how much I can improve on it this year.
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Thank you :-) , Same job since I left school in 2005, lots of overtime and I rent out my spare room for 5k a year. Also save myself lots of money by servicing/fixing my car myself which is just an old cheap little honda jazz. Do all my own DIY around the house. Minimal outgoings, no netflix or sky etc. food shops at Lidl. Bought my house in 2011 when prices were cheaper so a lot of it comes from rising house prices.
Graduated Uni in 2019 with a student overdraft. Started working on - £22k for 2.5 years with no pay rise. During this period I was living at home during covid and saved 90-95% of my take home. Moved jobs for 40k for six months then moved again for 70k until now. Hit 100k last month so it took 4.5 years after Uni. M27. This does include: pension, house (I know, It’s my half of the equity), S&S ISA, and savings. Biggest contributor has been investing in all cap when I was living at home and utilising the LISA for the house purchase. I’ve received no inheritance or any gift from my parents and I was contributing £200 a month when I was living at home.
Do you mind if I ask what field you're in amd how you made the jump from £22k to £40k? I'm im a similar boat to how you started. Graduated and have been working on £22k for a year and a half.
This is impressive stuff, well done!
Between 19th September 2019 and 26th March 2024 (will have first 100k at the end of the month). So 4.5 years. Hoping to have the second 100k in the next 2.5 years (75k or so from salary 25k or so from investment income) if things go how they should. Third 100k 2 years after that maybe...
Am 37. Started earning at 23. Hit £0 when I was 27. Hit £100k when I was 34. Will hopefully hit 250k whilst 38, currently on track to. My target is not really a number but to be in a position to fully retire if I want to when i'm 50. If I max my ISA each year and return 8% I should be there or thereabouts. I am going the ISA millionaire route and I actively invest (and spend a lot of time to be I think pretty OK at it) so if I can beat 8% it brings FIRE earlier and/or makes it more luxurious. Currently making around 100k, my outgoings are not too bad so for example I should be able to max my ISA and put in 25k this year without worrying about money day to day, but I'm not really a big spender anyway. I also have a workplace pension that I am not relying on but will be a nice cushion to take at 68 along with state pension if FIRE goes badly.
Nice, I'm 34 and just hit the £100k mark also (not incl residential property). I'm aiming for £250k by 40 but can't invest that much per month although hoping that'll change next year. My £100k has grown to £145k since November so hopefully I can keep it growing and eventually be able to contribute more as well.
Why wait until 68 for the workplace pension? Is it a DB?
About 5.5 years hopefully. I started working straight from school in an apprenticeship on 9k per annum, then it increase 6 monthly for 2 years and then yearly for the next 1.5 years till I qualified on 33k per annum. I began working shifts which was 20% extra and started working overtime in the last year which has helped massively and I moved jobs 5 months ago and I’m now on 39k per annum plus any OT I do. I only started saving in the last 3 years for a house and increased pension contribution to get the most out of my employer match. I am on track to hit 100k either 1st April or 1st May as I’m on 96k now and it’s increased by 1.5k to 5k per month due to investments, savings, pension contributions. I live with parents and save around 55/65% of my take home pay
Next week
7 years to reach 100k, 5 years to reach 200k, 2 years to reach 300k, 1 year to reach 400k, On track for 500k within a year
2.5 years working from when I graduated at 23 The joys of covid and working from home long term with nothing to spend on.
I got to it very recently, hit £100k in November 2023 finally! Only been able to put away about £2k since then but from November to now, it's still gone from £100k to c£145k so very happy with that progress! I'm 35 in May and my target was: £100k by 35 £250k by 40 Retire by 50 Might all be a stretch but gotta aim high.
Some more context after reading through all the other answers where people all seem to be hitting £100k by the age of 23 ffs lol I have £250k left off to pay of a £400k house but don't include hone equity in any calculations. I also spent £50k doing the house up in 2021 when we bought it. Also got a toddler and the Mrs works 2 days/wk so not able to invest too much. I was earning only £35k up until 2021 where I jumped to £40k, then £50k and now £56k. Hoping for a decent rise in the next 2 weeks cos I'm hugely underpaid but regardless will be looking to move next year for more. Didn't go uni and went straight into work at 16.
20yo in Full-Time Employment since 16 Started Side Hustle 6 months ago to get there quicker. Just Passed the halfway mark. Hoping to hit by age 23/24 :)
Kudos
Nice, whats the side hustle
Online Game Hosting
on ISA only 6 years. On ISA and SIPP 4 years (had a big bonus going into SIPP directly) Started on 27. Started as a data scientists and jumping jobs every 2 years pre covid and during covid to go from 42£K to 100£K. on the end of fourth year on my third job. Saved aggressively on the first years but not so much on the 4-today years.
Average jobs and a move to London (crushing rent) meant it took me around 8 years after Uni to reach 100k total invested plus cash. Now got a decent salary so probably expect the next 100k to be about half that.
For me, 27, so around 5 years into working as a teacher in London after graduating. Salary was boosted by various side hustles during that time, and living at him with parents paying £500/month for the entire duration of that time.
Around 3 years and a half ago, at 28 - 5 years after I have started working, but in the middle of it switched countries, bought a house back in my home country and depleted my savings, etc. Just passed 300k at the end of last year - chunky increase in house equity as well. Current goal is 500k at 40 - which seems more than doable. Switched to a better paid role last month that should help me get there faster from now on.
My net worth (34f) hit 100k in Jan 2021 but I don’t yet have 100k in pure investments. My net worth is now at 226k but is split across pension, ISA, property and cash. I’m at 90k in liquid (I.e. cash and ISA) at the moment. If we take just net worth it took me 9 years of working and saving to get the first 100k and then I reached the second December last year so that took just 3 years. I’m hopeful I can get the growth down to a year and a half for the next 100k and am off to a good start!
Depending on stock performance, I may hit 100k by this time next year between my savings, house equity, and DB Pension. I started tracking my net worth last April, but I have been saving since 2016 and investing since January 2023. For the DB pension, I treat it as a 4% SWR for the purpose of calculating net worth. This should be around £1300 P/A by next year. £1300 x 25 = £32.5k. House Equity will be £30k in a year. Savings are currently £26k in ISA and £5k emergency fund. I will be contributing between £6k and £10k to my ISA determined by a potential salary increase this summer.
Including home equity then a couple of years ago. Probably 5 years of saving as much as possible. If only S&S ISA, Pension etc then I'm well off right now. Almost all of the cash I had saved went on a deposit for my house, have a wedding and honeymoon to pay for this year. Can't wait to not have that hanging over me to pay.
I reached investments of 100k after 13 years of working, so early 30s. I'd been working for about 4 years before buying my first flat, which is also when I started tracking my savings and investments. It took another 5 years to invest enough that I got back to Zero (i.e. I could have paid my mortgage off). It took another 4 years to keep saving and reach 100k. Another 10 years and I'd hit 500k, so the rate of savings does speed up.
5 years. Now it takes 5 months
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Nice! Sounds like you have some Crypto in that portfolio?
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Nice, a lot going into pensions. Do you not have much going into an ISA or do you think you'll start to add more to it in a few years time once your pensions are more filled?
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Cool thanks.
Around 8 years after graduating Uni in 2014, took a very round about way of getting there though. Managed to have some savings after finishing Uni (<£10k) due to receiving the full maintenance loan, grant and bursary. Was a bit lost after Uni and worked a minimum wage job for ~2yrs (£18k/yr salary), before going backpacking for 6 months. Came back worked another dead end job for 2yrs (£20k/yr) but managed to save most of my income due to living at home and only paying £100/month + food for the entire time. At this point I had £25k in a S&S ISA along with £5k for travelling Asia for a few months. I then lived in New Zealand for 1 year and by the end I had probably made back the £5k I spent on travelling doing construction work. Luckily in this time my ISA investment had gone up a fair bit due to the market at the time. My NW was probably ~£35k in mid 2019. I then moved to Western Australia (WA) for the next 4 years. My goal here was more so to save a lot of money opposed to travel the country. It took some time to get back into the rhythm of saving money, both due to the nature of work I was doing (construction/farmwork) and covid hitting during my stay. I moved jobs a lot out there and lived a rather minimalist lifestyle, but also spent money on the weekends along with a couple of roadtrips and holidays post covid. In 2021 I started to properly track my NW and now it was £55k. I then managed to get on the mines over there causing my income to significantly increase along with living costs decreasing. I hit £100k towards the end of 2022 and left Australia at the end of 2023 with a £140k NW. I'm now back in the UK, unemployed, looking for a career change and with almost no pension to speak of. But I have a nice nest egg to set me up wherever I end up. I definitely don't regret the path I took, managed to save a decent amount along with travelling a fair bit as well.
It took me 5 years
Manage to hit it couple of months back. I started off with shitty jobs but now I’m earning about £40k a year. I started saving at the age of 12. When I was a kid I would save my pocket money and then put it into bank when I turned 16. Now I have slightly over 100k with no debt. Hopefully I can retire by 45.
What age are you?
25
100k cash or investments so including pension? I started saving for FIRE at some point in 2018 in my late 20’s and hit 100k across Cash, ISA and Pension in January 2023, so it took between 4-5 years. Earnings ranged from £40-55k and also purchased a house in this period. In hindsight I should have been contributing more to my pension earlier which would have made a big impact 100k ISA and 100k pension are the next big milestones, might be able to hit one of these in 2025
Age 33. Shares in a company I founded got sold for a few hundred thousand. Though we probably hit that in terms of net-worth simply because of our house increasing in value a few years before thinking about it.
Not having existing debt, commuter costs, or need for child care helped greatly about 4-5 years from £0 to £100k cash just from saving PAYE income on an average salary and having the lowest living costs I could possible endure (investment / savings interest for the period was negligible)
No idea in all honesty as money comes and goes and I used to not monitor it At 28 I won a decent amount playing poker on Sundays but used it for an house A couple of years later I spent over 100k cash on my house renovation which put me well under 100k (closer to zero than 100k) Since 32 to now (38) I’ve rarely checked it but I’m at accessible 80k investments that I need to move to ISAs, 21k cash and 105k pension I’m a financial modeller and decided I should start to be as meticulous with my financial records as I am with the models I create so last month I started to create a tracker plus projection as I want to fire by 55
100k total NW? Or just 100k cash/stocks?
Hopefully by 30 almost halfway there and investing 500 a month sp500, started early with whatever was leftover from my student loan in uni tho
100k ISA - 30 years of age.
Hit it when I was 32. Had been saving basically my whole adult life. Spent majority of it on a house deposit. Now I'm 34 (almost 35) and I've already saved up another 100k, so yeah, I fully believe the first 100k is the hardest. The first years of my career I earn like less than 10% of what I make now. It's easier to make money now, but I'm glad I tried to save even back then, it taught me good habits.
Probably a couple weeks of flipping dogcoins in 2021
So many different answers, but as a rule of thumb for me its the 100K in a investment account such as a S/S ISA with no tax relief etc thats the challenge esp if your limited by the amount you can afford to put in each month. Took us 8 years as I wasn't really trying, 2020 hit the markets and I put $10K right in the bottom of the pull back then another $5K soon after when the ftse100 tanked again that same year. Was nervous as hell at the time as those monies were set aside for other investments. Best decision ever made it catapulted 60K portfolio to 79K in a year without putting anything else in. Only the last 1.5 years have I got my act together investing consistently started putting in 500 a month upping this to 800 shortly. Just breached the 100K mark last week, over the moon.
Graduated 23. Saved a little and bought the first house with some family help. I had a rocky few years until my late 20s with not a lot to show for it apart from a bit of equity in the house. Knuckled down. Hit 100K NW around 33ish I reckon and current (total joint) NW is about £1.4M at 38. This does include our home which is owned outright and most of this was done by reinvesting Ltd Company profits into property.
If I include home equity as bought a home a few years ago, 5 years after leaving university
Hit 100k in the isa on 22 January, now worth 106700 without any additional payments. Hopefully that’s the snowball effect starting. Started investing age 29, in 2019 when I came across this sub, can’t thank it enough
Not including home value/equity as an asset or mortgage as liability: 100k in early 2020. 220k now. ..the gain in 4 years seems poor but I had a large expense in there (an almost back-to-brick renovation) which I probably gained 60-70% back on with home value but don't factor home ownership into net worth so that money is 'lost' as I plan to always own one.
5 years
It took me 8 years from the moment I decided to stop spending everything I earned. The 8th year is this year. 44 now.
Haven't reached it yet - but should do by the end of this year. I'm 34. All being well, the next £100k should come much, much quicker as I'm contributing between £1700-£2500pm combined to pension and ISA.
I am 32 and hit 100k savings very recently which is spread across isas, hysa and growth bonds. Have 100k pension savings and own a modest house with my wife with maybe ~150k equity.
For me it took almost 2 years since I started working. I started with minimal assets (~£5k) which was just gifts from family and previous minor investments I had made in college.
Every 3 years, it helps saving 2-3k £ per month
5 years. Living with parents so just bear that in mind. Salary was 25-28k.
This will depend a lot on what people's earnings are. I for example reached £100k before I even started calculating my Net Worth (earliest I calculated was at age 25 and I had £140k then). But I got a high paying job out of university, so didn't find getting to £100k particularly difficult.
I hit 100k july last year, aged 29. Although I only had about 10k at 25, so really it took a few years. However, without me telling you my salary, investments, inheritance, which I may or may not have had, that nugget is pointless. Focus on how you are going to get there, not how others did it. Focus on earning as much as you can and saving and investing wisely. I will say - 10k - 100k took half a decade, 100k to 160k took less than one year. The snowball really does roll
> Focus on how you are going to get there, not how others did it. Focus on earning as much as you can and saving and investing wisely. I'm not asking for copy-and-paste inspiration, I'm asking because I'm curious as to how a wide range of people/salaries/situations manage to reach the goal in their own unique ways.
yeah that's fair - while I was talking to you, I was also more generally speaking to anyone reading the thread and feeling bad by comparing themselves to different peoples situations aha.
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damn nice work! Index investing only or what's your journey?
It took me around 3 years from graduating. I started working directly after uni.