u/ForwardFan6283

So we plan to retire at 55 and at that point we need 1M in partner’s DC pension+ our S&S ISA. I’m 35 and my partner 37, contributing 1200/mo to S&S ISA and 900/mo to DC. Current pot 28k S&S, 45k DC pension. With this contribution I’ve calculated that at 41 we could stop contributing to ISA, or reduce it to 300/mo, continue pension contributions and still hit 1M at 55. At this point we’re planning a SWR of 5% or 50k/annum for retirement. To sustain us till 68. At 68 both our state pensions kicks in and I will have a DB pension of ~15k/annum. Combined that covers ~40k of total expenses. From this point on we need to take only 10k from investment pots which will still be ~500k. I’ve assumed a real growth rate of 6% (3% inflation, 9% nominal growth - all investments in an All world fund) for the next 20 years on our ISA and pension.

My mind is reeling with this realisation. Somebody please correct me.

So in the forbidden forest when Voldemort does Avada Kedavra it destroys the horcrux but Harry doesn’t die. Now first time I read this I thought it could be due to 2 reasons.

1. Harry at that point was the master of all 3 deathly hallows and hence the master of death. That means he cannot die. He is close to immortal as anyone would ever be.

2. Voldemort took his blood to regenerate so Lily’s sacrifice lives in Voldemort and that anchors Harry to life. Bit more convoluted but okay. In King’s Cross Dumbledore confirms this so this must be the real reason.

But recently I started believing that the whole scene in King’s cross was Harry’s wishful thinking, his version of truth that Dumbledore actually cared whether he lived or died. Remember Snape and Aberforth raises questions about Dumbledore’s intentions. Snape says you brought him up so that he could die at the right moment? All through his walk to the forest this is the question haunting Harry. Dumbledore wanted him to die. He wanted him to sacrifice himself at the right moment. He’s hurt by this. All through Deathly Hallows Harry is haunted by the truths coming out about the man he trusted above anyone else. His hero and this was the final blow.

So in King’s Cross what we see is the version of truth Harry wants to believe. Dumbledore although flawed always had a plan for him to survive. The chooses to interpret the look he saw on Dumbledore’s face when he told him about the blood in Goblet of fire this way.

But if that is so why did he actually survive? Was it really due to the Deathly Hallows after all. The thing is it doesn’t negate the fact that Dumbledore cared. Dumbledore is the one who put him in track of deathly hallows after all.

I’m spinning you all. Please talk some sense.

So in the documentary they said that she had to take some days off because while the guy’s postmortem is going on she can’t be there due to the conflict of interest. Perfectly reasonable. Take a few days or weeks off until that’s done.

But then they start talking like she lost her job. The friend says “her job was everything to her and she lost her support system etc etc.” I don’t get it. Even afterwards they just move on and the rest of the series it looks like she doesn’t have a job so that she is going and hanging out with the twins at the farm. I’m confused. Did she lose her job? If so why? Or was she just asked to take a leave of absence until they do the postmortem?

We are buying our first EV. Going for a used car as our budget is ~30k. We test drove lot of options: Tesla model Y, Audi Q4 etron, Skoda Enyaq etc etc… But these are the two we really liked MG S6 - for our budget we can get a 2025 barely used one with very low miles on it or BMW IX3 - this will be older, 30k+ miles on it unless we stretch the budget which we don’t want to do. Which do you think is the better option. What are the pros and cons for both. We are leaning towards MG.

We are buying our first EV. Going for a used car as our budget is ~30k. We test drove lot of options: Tesla model Y, Audi Q4 etron, Skoda Enyaq etc etc… But these are the two we really liked MG S6 - for our budget we can get a 2025 barely used one with very low miles on it or BMW IX3 - this will be older, 30k+ miles on it unless we stretch the budget which we don’t want to do. Which do you think is the better option. What are the pros and cons for both. We are leaning towards MG.

I used to subscribe to blue rewards before when they paid the 5£ fee back as long as you transfer in 800£. Barclays being my salary account this was not an issue. But when they removed this I unsubscribed. Recently I wanted to watch a movie and a series in AppleTV. Monthly premium 9.99£. But you get it for free if you have Blue Rewards. So I reopened the Rewards account thinking thats AppleTV for 5£. Just coz I subscribed I was looking at the perks, cash back etc which you get. Minimal stores giving cash back. Overall seemed a bit useless. Are you getting something good out of your Barclays Blue Rewards. The saver with 3.96% interest is nice but other than that the rewards, cash back etc seemed pretty useless. Once I’m done watching the series in AppleTV planning to cancel.

Is there a thumb rule or any guidelines to decide what is an affordable car for a certain income?

We are thinking of getting a new used car. Currently we drive a 2013 Mazda6 which we really like. We bought it paying full cash in 2022 (it was 9k - bargain) and we were really happy with it and enjoyed the no payment purchase. It freed up a lot of room in our budget to save and invest. Now that we are mulling buying a new car, we decided to go electric. The car we really like will cost 30-32k. We do have 20k in cash. The rest we will have to go for a personal loan for 5.7% interest.

We are really struggling with this decision. We can buy a nice used car for the 20k we have. But we sort of fell in love with this more expensive model and now anything else seems like a compromise. Are we being irresponsible with our finances? Should we just get a nice car with 20k and just forget about the one we like? Every financially sensible fibre in my body is telling me to just buy a nice used car with the 20k we have. And keep enjoying the no payment flexibility. But another part is telling me to just get the loan and buy the nicer car and enjoy what we really really want coz we can afford it.

For context the 10k loan will add a 300£ payment to our current budget not to mention the nicer car will have more pricey maintenance although being electric this will hopefully be less frequent.

I could see lot of posts on what people saved individually but none as a household. I know there will be a lot of variations here. Low income high income, kids no kids. But I am looking for those variations.

Our savings and investments

Partner 16% to pension (8%+8% employer match)

Myself - DB pension

S&S ISA - 1200/mo

Saving goals (car, home renovation, vacation) - 1300/mo

Our combined take home is ~6k/mo. Mid 30s no kids.

The Ring

The summer I turned twenty-three, I learned that some things are understood without ever being said.

He sold gold jewellery from a worn leather case that he carried everywhere, the brass clasps dulled from handling. I had bought a pair of earrings from him once, small hoops with a twist of filigree, more because I wanted a reason to stand near him than because I needed them. He had wrapped them in tissue paper with a seriousness that made me smile when I was alone later.

We were part of the same loose circle of friends, the kind that forms in your twenties and feels permanent and then quietly dissolves. In that circle we were careful with each other. Courteous. We laughed at the same things. Occasionally our eyes met a moment longer than necessary and then we both looked away, as if we had touched something hot.

I knew it was impossible. I had always known. My family was traditional in the way that doesn’t announce itself but simply exists, like the walls of a house. There were things that were done and things that were not done and everyone understood the difference without it ever being written down. He was kind and clever and beautiful and he sold jewellery from a case and that was the entire geometry of the situation.

So we didn’t speak of it. Neither of us. And there was a strange grace in that, a kind of dignity we had agreed to without negotiating. We would feel what we felt. We would not act on it. We would not insult each other by pretending it wasn’t there. That was the arrangement.

My friends, I think, suspected. The way friends do — reading the silences, noticing who you don’t look at. That summer when I went home, they came with me. He came too. I told myself it was simply how it happened.

My mother welcomed everyone warmly. She was good at that, at making a home feel generous. We ate and talked and the house was full of noise and I was almost relaxed, almost fooled into thinking this was just a summer, just friends, just ordinary life.

Then my mother turned to him.

‘I hear you sell gold,’ she said pleasantly. ‘We’re planning my daughter’s wedding. Would you show us some pieces?’

The room didn’t change. The light was the same. Everyone’s face was the same. But something shifted, the way pressure shifts before a storm, and I felt it move through me like cold water.

He nodded and opened his case.

I understood what she was doing. Perhaps she didn’t know she was doing it, perhaps it was simply practical, perhaps I was wrong. But I didn’t think I was wrong. This is what you are, the gesture said. A salesman. I buy from you. My daughter marries someone else. There is no confusion here.

I stared at the floor. I could feel my friends watching me with a careful neutrality that meant they were watching me very closely indeed. My mother was asking me to come and look, to choose something I liked, and I could not move. There was a pressure behind my eyes that I was fighting with everything I had because I would not cry, I would not, I would not give everyone in that room the satisfaction of seeing me shatter over a jewellery case.

‘Why don’t you choose something,’ my mother said again, gently, and in her gentleness I heard the whole architecture of my future.

I made myself walk over. I made myself look down at the pieces laid on the cloth. Small gold rings, chains, bangles. Each one something he had carried and handled and sold to make his way in the world. I thought about what it cost him to stand here and do this and I felt a fury I had nowhere to put.

I finally looked up at him.

His eyes were full of tears.

Not spilling. Held. The way you hold something when you refuse to let it go but you are losing the fight.

And I knew. I had thought I knew but now I knew. It was the same. Whatever this was, it lived in him the same way it lived in me, quiet and impossible and without any hope of resolution. He had been carrying it the same way I had. All this time.

The room was very still.

I pointed to a ring. Small, plain, a thin band of gold.

He picked it up. He reached across and placed it on my finger, slowly, the way you do something you will only do once. Then he closed his case, nodded to my mother, and walked out of the room. He left the ring. He didn’t ask for money. He didn’t look back.

And I understood what he had done. He had refused to be a transaction. He had refused to stand there while my mother drew the borders of his life around him. He had said the only thing left to say, with the only gesture that couldn’t be argued with or explained away, and then he had walked out and left the rest entirely to me.

My mother was still holding her purse. My friends were very quiet.

I looked down at the ring on my finger. That thin, plain band placed there without asking for anything in return, not money, not an answer, not even a look. Just the truth, set gently on my hand, and then the space to decide.

The room was waiting. I could feel everyone in it holding their breath, watching, ready to interpret whatever came next.

And something loosened in my chest. Quietly, without drama, like a knot that had been there so long I had forgotten it wasn’t part of me.

I looked at the ring and I smiled.

Not the polite smile I had been wearing all summer. Not the careful smile of someone managing a room. It came from somewhere deeper and older than all of that, and once it started I couldn’t have stopped it even if I had wanted to. I didn’t want to.

My mother saw it. My friends saw it.

Let them see it.

The smile meant I was done being the geometry of someone else’s situation. It meant the walls of the house, solid and ancient as they were, had just discovered they couldn’t hold everything. It meant that a man who had walked out of a room without asking for anything had somehow given me the only thing I hadn’t known I was waiting for.

The smile meant I knew what I was going to do.

The smile meant I was free.

The Ring

The summer I turned twenty-three, I learned that some things are understood without ever being said.

He sold gold jewellery from a worn leather case that he carried everywhere, the brass clasps dulled from handling. I had bought a pair of earrings from him once, small hoops with a twist of filigree, more because I wanted a reason to stand near him than because I needed them. He had wrapped them in tissue paper with a seriousness that made me smile when I was alone later.

We were part of the same loose circle of friends, the kind that forms in your twenties and feels permanent and then quietly dissolves. In that circle we were careful with each other. Courteous. We laughed at the same things. Occasionally our eyes met a moment longer than necessary and then we both looked away, as if we had touched something hot.

I knew it was impossible. I had always known. My family was traditional in the way that doesn’t announce itself but simply exists, like the walls of a house. There were things that were done and things that were not done and everyone understood the difference without it ever being written down. He was kind and clever and beautiful and he sold jewellery from a case and that was the entire geometry of the situation.

So we didn’t speak of it. Neither of us. And there was a strange grace in that, a kind of dignity we had agreed to without negotiating. We would feel what we felt. We would not act on it. We would not insult each other by pretending it wasn’t there. That was the arrangement.

My friends, I think, suspected. The way friends do — reading the silences, noticing who you don’t look at. That summer when I went home, they came with me. He came too. I told myself it was simply how it happened.

My mother welcomed everyone warmly. She was good at that, at making a home feel generous. We ate and talked and the house was full of noise and I was almost relaxed, almost fooled into thinking this was just a summer, just friends, just ordinary life.

Then my mother turned to him.

‘I hear you sell gold,’ she said pleasantly. ‘We’re planning my daughter’s wedding. Would you show us some pieces?’

The room didn’t change. The light was the same. Everyone’s face was the same. But something shifted, the way pressure shifts before a storm, and I felt it move through me like cold water.

He nodded and opened his case.

I understood what she was doing. Perhaps she didn’t know she was doing it, perhaps it was simply practical, perhaps I was wrong. But I didn’t think I was wrong. This is what you are, the gesture said. A salesman. I buy from you. My daughter marries someone else. There is no confusion here.

I stared at the floor. I could feel my friends watching me with a careful neutrality that meant they were watching me very closely indeed. My mother was asking me to come and look, to choose something I liked, and I could not move. There was a pressure behind my eyes that I was fighting with everything I had because I would not cry, I would not, I would not give everyone in that room the satisfaction of seeing me shatter over a jewellery case.

‘Why don’t you choose something,’ my mother said again, gently, and in her gentleness I heard the whole architecture of my future.

I made myself walk over. I made myself look down at the pieces laid on the cloth. Small gold rings, chains, bangles. Each one something he had carried and handled and sold to make his way in the world. I thought about what it cost him to stand here and do this and I felt a fury I had nowhere to put.

I finally looked up at him.

His eyes were full of tears.

Not spilling. Held. The way you hold something when you refuse to let it go but you are losing the fight.

And I knew. I had thought I knew but now I knew. It was the same. Whatever this was, it lived in him the same way it lived in me, quiet and impossible and without any hope of resolution. He had been carrying it the same way I had. All this time.

The room was very still.

I pointed to a ring. Small, plain, a thin band of gold.

He picked it up. He reached across and placed it on my finger, slowly, the way you do something you will only do once. Then he closed his case, nodded to my mother, and walked out of the room. He left the ring. He didn’t ask for money. He didn’t look back.

And I understood what he had done. He had refused to be a transaction. He had refused to stand there while my mother drew the borders of his life around him. He had said the only thing left to say, with the only gesture that couldn’t be argued with or explained away, and then he had walked out and left the rest entirely to me.

My mother was still holding her purse. My friends were very quiet.

I looked down at the ring on my finger. That thin, plain band placed there without asking for anything in return, not money, not an answer, not even a look. Just the truth, set gently on my hand, and then the space to decide.

The room was waiting. I could feel everyone in it holding their breath, watching, ready to interpret whatever came next.

And something loosened in my chest. Quietly, without drama, like a knot that had been there so long I had forgotten it wasn’t part of me.

I looked at the ring and I smiled.

Not the polite smile I had been wearing all summer. Not the careful smile of someone managing a room. It came from somewhere deeper and older than all of that, and once it started I couldn’t have stopped it even if I had wanted to. I didn’t want to.

My mother saw it. My friends saw it.

Let them see it.

The smile meant I was done being the geometry of someone else’s situation. It meant the walls of the house, solid and ancient as they were, had just discovered they couldn’t hold everything. It meant that a man who had walked out of a room without asking for anything had somehow given me the only thing I hadn’t known I was waiting for.

The smile meant I knew what I was going to do.

The smile meant I was free.

The Ring

The summer I turned twenty-three, I learned that some things are understood without ever being said.

He sold gold jewellery from a worn leather case that he carried everywhere, the brass clasps dulled from handling. I had bought a pair of earrings from him once, small hoops with a twist of filigree, more because I wanted a reason to stand near him than because I needed them. He had wrapped them in tissue paper with a seriousness that made me smile when I was alone later.

We were part of the same loose circle of friends, the kind that forms in your twenties and feels permanent and then quietly dissolves. In that circle we were careful with each other. Courteous. We laughed at the same things. Occasionally our eyes met a moment longer than necessary and then we both looked away, as if we had touched something hot.

I knew it was impossible. I had always known. My family was traditional in the way that doesn’t announce itself but simply exists, like the walls of a house. There were things that were done and things that were not done and everyone understood the difference without it ever being written down. He was kind and clever and beautiful and he sold jewellery from a case and that was the entire geometry of the situation.

So we didn’t speak of it. Neither of us. And there was a strange grace in that, a kind of dignity we had agreed to without negotiating. We would feel what we felt. We would not act on it. We would not insult each other by pretending it wasn’t there. That was the arrangement.

My friends, I think, suspected. The way friends do — reading the silences, noticing who you don’t look at. That summer when I went home, they came with me. He came too. I told myself it was simply how it happened.

My mother welcomed everyone warmly. She was good at that, at making a home feel generous. We ate and talked and the house was full of noise and I was almost relaxed, almost fooled into thinking this was just a summer, just friends, just ordinary life.

Then my mother turned to him.

‘I hear you sell gold,’ she said pleasantly. ‘We’re planning my daughter’s wedding. Would you show us some pieces?’

The room didn’t change. The light was the same. Everyone’s face was the same. But something shifted, the way pressure shifts before a storm, and I felt it move through me like cold water.

He nodded and opened his case.

I understood what she was doing. Perhaps she didn’t know she was doing it, perhaps it was simply practical, perhaps I was wrong. But I didn’t think I was wrong. This is what you are, the gesture said. A salesman. I buy from you. My daughter marries someone else. There is no confusion here.

I stared at the floor. I could feel my friends watching me with a careful neutrality that meant they were watching me very closely indeed. My mother was asking me to come and look, to choose something I liked, and I could not move. There was a pressure behind my eyes that I was fighting with everything I had because I would not cry, I would not, I would not give everyone in that room the satisfaction of seeing me shatter over a jewellery case.

‘Why don’t you choose something,’ my mother said again, gently, and in her gentleness I heard the whole architecture of my future.

I made myself walk over. I made myself look down at the pieces laid on the cloth. Small gold rings, chains, bangles. Each one something he had carried and handled and sold to make his way in the world. I thought about what it cost him to stand here and do this and I felt a fury I had nowhere to put.

I finally looked up at him.

His eyes were full of tears.

Not spilling. Held. The way you hold something when you refuse to let it go but you are losing the fight.

And I knew. I had thought I knew but now I knew. It was the same. Whatever this was, it lived in him the same way it lived in me, quiet and impossible and without any hope of resolution. He had been carrying it the same way I had. All this time.

The room was very still.

I pointed to a ring. Small, plain, a thin band of gold.

He picked it up. He reached across and placed it on my finger, slowly, the way you do something you will only do once. Then he closed his case, nodded to my mother, and walked out of the room. He left the ring. He didn’t ask for money. He didn’t look back.

And I understood what he had done. He had refused to be a transaction. He had refused to stand there while my mother drew the borders of his life around him. He had said the only thing left to say, with the only gesture that couldn’t be argued with or explained away, and then he had walked out and left the rest entirely to me.

My mother was still holding her purse. My friends were very quiet.

I looked down at the ring on my finger. That thin, plain band placed there without asking for anything in return, not money, not an answer, not even a look. Just the truth, set gently on my hand, and then the space to decide.

The room was waiting. I could feel everyone in it holding their breath, watching, ready to interpret whatever came next.

And something loosened in my chest. Quietly, without drama, like a knot that had been there so long I had forgotten it wasn’t part of me.

I looked at the ring and I smiled.

Not the polite smile I had been wearing all summer. Not the careful smile of someone managing a room. It came from somewhere deeper and older than all of that, and once it started I couldn’t have stopped it even if I had wanted to. I didn’t want to.

My mother saw it. My friends saw it.

Let them see it.

The smile meant I was done being the geometry of someone else’s situation. It meant the walls of the house, solid and ancient as they were, had just discovered they couldn’t hold everything. It meant that a man who had walked out of a room without asking for anything had somehow given me the only thing I hadn’t known I was waiting for.

The smile meant I knew what I was going to do.

The smile meant I was free.