Ankita Kaur, a 27-year-old management consultant, has built £157,000 in investments by contributing more than half of her salary to her workplace pension, alongside stocks, ETFs and a stocks and shares ISA, with the goal of making work in her 40s optional.
Kaur began investing after discovering the FIRE movement, which encourages people to save and invest aggressively to achieve financial independence and retire earlier than the traditional retirement age.
She said: "I don't want to retire - I want to be work optional. I want the freedom to know if I was stuck in a bad job, I could walk away from the situation. It doesn't mean I'm trapped."
Building an investment portfolio
Kaur started investing in 2021 after seeing online content about how investing can 'make you rich'. Working as a private tutor at the time, she would typically invest a few hundred pounds each month sporadically into a general investment account. She later moved to a stocks and shares ISA to avoid capital gains tax.
She has been in her full-time role since 2022 and has gradually built up her investment knowledge by reading online and educating herself about financial terminology. As she progressed, she salary sacrificed into her pension, keeping her yearly take-home salary at £50,000 and avoiding higher-rate tax on part of her income.
She said: "Once my salary got past £50,000, I was going into the higher tax bracket. I was speaking to my husband and we realised if I contribute more into my pension, I won't need to pay 40% tax. I also invest whatever I have left at the end of each month, into a stocks and shares ISA."
Reaching coast FIRE
Now earning nearly six figures, she contributes over half of her salary into her workplace pension. In four years, this has grown to £126,000, due to large contributions from her and her employer and investment growth. She also has £25,000 in a stocks and shares ISA and £6,000 in a general investment account invested in individual stocks and ETFs.
Kaur realised that if her investments continue to grow, she will be able to 'coast FIRE'. This is a plan to front-load savings, building a pension pot early so that compound interest and investment growth can take over, meaning you can work less.
She said: "I think I always knew putting money into a pension was a good idea. I saw the headlines saying 'I retired at 30', and I was curious about how it was possible. People would put out their stories on Reddit and YouTube about how they were investing heavily so they could retire between 30 and 45. I started reading a lot, seeing what people's experiences were."
Investment strategy and future plans
As Kaur grew more confident, she made riskier investments based on what she learnt online. She has placed her workplace pension into a riskier equity-heavy world ETF tracker to match the market's returns. She has a mortgage on a house in Rickmansworth with her husband, Kiran, though the pair do not live a lavish lifestyle.
She said: "I don't think I live super frugally. I think it helped that when I started earning more I didn't get lifestyle creep. I feel more financially comfortable now I've hit coast FIRE, and I have a large emergency fund."
She currently has £157,000 invested in total. Assuming a real return rate of 5%, she projects £296,047 by age 40, rising to £781,595 by age 60.
She said: "I didn't realise I'd hit coast FIRE. I started to see videos of people reaching it and when they mentioned their pension pot number and I realised that's what I also have. I didn't set out to reach coast FIRE, I just wanted to lower the age I could choose to retire at. I'm now covered past traditional retirement age."
Kaur will not be able to access her pension until she is 55 at the earliest, so she plans to save more into her ISA to bridge the gap between her forties and pension access age. She needs to invest £36,000 every year until she is 40 to create an ISA bridge from 40 to 60. Her goal is to have the option to retire on £50,000 a year around age 40.
She said: "The early access age for my pension is set at 55. I calculated by the time I get there, the access age will probably be closer to 60. Before I was pretty sure I was going to keep contributing into my pension, but I did the maths and realised, with coast FIRE, I can stop contributing as much. I will now be matching my employer's contribution and instead put more into my Stocks and Shares ISA. I'm now building the bridge to tide me over until I can access my pension."
Kaur is aiming to be work-optional by 40, but is likely to continue working on her own terms to become financially free. She is also sharing her investment journey on her TikTok @consultinganks.
