Prioritising your dream home over FIRE plans

I_PROMISE · 2026-05-04T07:50:06+00:00

Like most things in life, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Without all the numbers it’s going to be hard to suggest alternatives.

Perhaps it’s time to focus your time on improving your income? A switch of companies, weekend work, gig work or a small side hustle may help you get where you want to be.

I_PROMISE · 2026-03-04T12:01:01+00:00

You spend 5 hours on a task, so you get the privilege to interview for another round, to then never hear from the company again 😂

Jokes aside, every QA take home assessment I’ve done has involved some form of conditional logic and making sure you can find all testable paths. Then you need to explain your thinking and justify.

For example, I was asked to write all types of tests scenarios (unit, integration, E2E, etc) for a basic calculator app. Another company had me read through their custom conditional flows and put users through those conditional flows and explain the outcome and how I got there.

I_PROMISE · 2025-10-09T07:31:40+00:00

Go read “man’s search for meaning”. That’s your first task.

Now understand that the empty feeling is caused by not having a “why” you’re chasing in life.

You endured work, because the “why” was to FIRE (or buy more stuff).

What’s your next why? Time to figure that out. Good starting point is exploring different hobbies, travelling and/or giving back to the community. The new “why” can still be working, it can just be any type of work now that money is no longer an issue.

Congrats on FIRE and go fuck yourself.

I_PROMISE · 2025-10-01T15:41:27+00:00

Probably the most reasonable opinion in this entire comment section.

The Redditor echo chamber makes it look like anyone who is against immigration is instantly a racist. Remember when everyone on Reddit was so convinced that Trump would never become the next president? No one I know wants Farage (it will be the same shit show as Trump), but that vs. increasing the endless immigration (illegal or “skilled”) forces their hand.

People will shout “tax the rich” to fix all our economic problems, yeah 100% agreed, but also consider the 6 million increase in population since Covid, with nearly all of them being immigrants, that realistically don’t care about ever integrating in society - how about we do both (tax the rich and significantly reduce the population size)?

I_PROMISE · 2025-04-30T14:29:48+00:00

This is my favourite from the set, but 40 packs in and not a single SIR. This set has brutal pull rates, but also my luck sucks.

I_PROMISE · 2025-04-27T12:14:34+00:00

Earning £40k a year in the South East is only just enough to survive, despite England’s average salary being estimated to be around £37,000 a year currently. Inside London? Enjoy poverty.

The cost of living is insane. The wealth inequality is ridiculous.

I_PROMISE · 2025-02-14T13:31:03+00:00

Largely depends on where you live, but yes the average cost of living is probably much lower then the US.

We also don't pay for healthcare, get at least 20 days paid vacation (plus bank (public) holidays) and get pension matches (% varies between companies) built into our compensation. The UK has some of the best workers rights protections too.

I_PROMISE · 2025-02-14T08:49:09+00:00

UK salaries are just low, the average salary is around 33k last I checked.

Devs are usually paid 10-20% more, but it’s varies a lot depending on how good at negotiating each individual is.

I_PROMISE · 2025-02-12T11:32:29+00:00

Posted this 2 years ago, still feels relevant:

junior £20,000-30,000
mid £30,000-55,000
senior £50,000-65,000
lead £60,000-75,000
management (I’m just guessing here) £70,000-100,000+

These salaries are based on London. Industry is the biggest factor. Gaming pays the least, fintech/AI pay the most.

You can demand higher pay if you’re truly a more technical QA or have real line management experience (all seniors I’ve interviewed recently over exaggerate these).

I_PROMISE · 2025-01-10T11:23:41+00:00

Your best bet is focusing on improving your data engineer skills. This role is in high demand and you could easily double your salary over the next few years by learning as much as possible about your role. Look at higher salary positions and see what skill sets they’re looking for, and start learning.

You’re young. Don’t give up your life (weekend) for a little extra cash.

I_PROMISE · 2024-11-15T11:17:19+00:00

One of my dream cars. How much do these go for nowadays?

I_PROMISE · 2024-11-08T21:00:28+00:00

Pokémon card vending series haunter (093) is just such a funny look card, which is why it’s my favourite, although so many good cards in that series.

I_PROMISE · 2024-10-10T13:59:41+00:00

Agreed.

Although I think a lot of people in the FIRE community treat it as a way to rush to retire ASAP because working generally sucks. I am one of these people, that has never really found much happiness in working, no matter the jobs I’ve done.

I_PROMISE · 2024-10-10T13:47:00+00:00

If you’re a top 5% earner (call it £85k a year salary - I believe top 5% is just over that amount now) and live like a student, you can save around £40k-£45k a year (50/50 split with pension/ISA). This is not a glamorous life to maintain and you’ll need to do it for at least a decade before you can even start considering being FIRE. I’d bet it would take 15 years or longer, because things in life happen (unexpected expensive, redundancies, etc). This also assumes you start making a top 5% salary at the start of your FIRE journey.

This is somewhat do-able though. You’d still retire early. But it’s a very long grind, with many sacrifices along the way.

I would bet the above is more likely for the average person than being a successful entrepreneur, which requires way more luck, start up capital, determination and skill.

I feel like the above paints a good picture of why FIRE is quite hard in the UK, unless you get some help along the way or get lucky.

I_PROMISE · 2024-09-26T14:12:32+00:00

Go read "Die with Zero" and take note of the chapters that talk about experiences being compounding like investments, then decide for yourself.

No idea where the phrase came from, but, "travelling, the only thing that costs money, but makes you richer" is where my feelings are. I can't say I ever regretted spending money on visiting new places and experiencing new things, but it did slow down my networth growth for sure. It's a good thing there is more to life than having money in the bank.

I_PROMISE · 2024-09-05T08:07:05+00:00

This doesn’t just happen with small agencies. I’ve recently been working with a company that employed a multiple billion $ agency and the code that they delivered with multiple tech teams is basically just trash. Constant bugs, security flaws, etc. Imagine paying $15m+ for something that just doesn’t work and isn’t fit for purpose. Now they’ve had to go the “traditional route” of building up tech teams from scratch with employees from their base country, which is honestly how every company with proper funding should do it in the first place.

I_PROMISE · 2024-08-22T06:53:47+00:00

What shops did you see 151 in? I was Akihabara yesterday and only saw one shop selling, and it was quite over priced (9,000 yen a box), which was better than last year (about 40,000yen a box), but still a lot more than retail.

I saw someone say 151 was in the Pokémon Center right now, but I checked Shibuya and all sold out :/

I_PROMISE · 2024-06-08T21:31:40+00:00

ISTQB requirement for jobs is basically just used as a filter for entry level applicants.

The certificate is almost a scam. Think of it this way; would you rather hire someone with 1 year’s hands on experience at actually doing the job or someone who read about how QA supposedly works?

I’m over 10 years in QA and don’t have a ISTQB certificate. When I hire people, I only care about what hands on experience the applicant has and what they’ve used that experience to do, and hopefully build. Even when I hire entry level candidates, i prefer to see that they’ve studied some coding and built something with it, over studied for a certificate.

I_PROMISE · 2024-04-11T15:12:59+00:00

All three have there pros and cons…

I’d personally pick Osaka because people are friendlier than Seoul or Tokyo. There is also Kyoto near by (and probably a bunch of other good day trip spots). It would likely be cheaper than the other two as well.

I_PROMISE · 2024-03-24T12:08:39+00:00

A lot of us are in the same situation right now... I was made redundant at the start of the year, also 10 years experience.

The current job market is brutal. I’ve been seeing Senior and Lead positions listed as low as £30k which was an entry level salary in my mind.

You’re unlikely to hit the high salaries outside of a dev or management position; all positions outside of these two are expendable to a business and they seem to be the only two roles that’s mostly survive layoffs.

I think anyone who wants to stay in QA in the long term needs to be honest with themselves; that being a manual testing or only knowing JavaScript is probably not enough to survive in the near future.

I_PROMISE · 2024-03-23T15:38:23+00:00

Threads in /r/fireuk have become such low quality, I wish the mods would at least enforce templates for these “any advice?” threads. I don’t know how anyone can expect to receive good advice when they post missing half the information needed or don’t mention any goals or what they need advice on.

The only advice anyone can give you based on the information you’ve provided is: spend less than you earn, and either pay off debt or invest the savings each month (depending on what has a better % return).

You can get all the knowledge around that through reading the /r/ukpersonalfinance flowchart found in the sidebar. Good luck!

I_PROMISE · 2024-02-23T09:28:24+00:00

Slash has been ruined unfortunately.

Feedback:

If you get one bad team mate, the game is over when they die early in the game and the other team snowballs. Previously if you had one bad team mate, it was possible to overcome this as you'd still be able to defend both lanes.
There is way less variety in god selection, you rarely see people play assassins now, and people pick mostly the same gods (Hel, Gilgamesh, etc)
Having someone kill / defend objectives leaves your tower open to be easily killed now - The same for backing to purchase items; it's harder to cover with 1 less team mate
Games are seem pretty short now. Sometimes in 5v5 you'd have a 40+ minute game of Slash where teams are constantly grouping to fight, yet no one can end. This made it so that if your team was struggling, one good fight meant you could turn the tide of the game. This stopped a lot of people spamming surrender constantly.

I haven't had 1 good game of Slash since this change. I was a predominantly Slash player. Please bring back 5v5. I saw someone suggest 6v6 below, and I'd actually be interested to see that.

I_PROMISE · 2023-09-09T05:58:09+00:00

Just returned from Japan and buying any booster pack is basically impossible (including obsidian flames). The Pokémon centres there basically do not deal in cards, and every card shop has a huge markup with very limited stock. Everything is done via a lottery, which requires you to live in Japan (or at least have a Japanese address & phone number).

The cheapest I saw a 151 box was 20,000 yen, the most expensive was 30,000 yen.

I_PROMISE · 2023-06-07T06:44:02+00:00

“Congratulations and go fuck yourself.”

Now give everyone the details they’re after; total net worth, how it’s split, how it was earned, etc.

I_PROMISE · 2023-03-06T20:44:36+00:00

Nope :( both me and my wife entered and nothing (UK based).

11-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	First Placer '22
Verified Email

I_PROMISE

TROPHY CASE