Hi all,

Hope this question is on the right board...

First context... I'm sorry but this will be longish, but in other threads I've often read that more context is needed.

I'm hoping to retire in 10 years from now when I'm 55 (although it is very possible I'll want to/have to go the full stretch and work until I'm 65).

Whenever I take "financial risk tolerance" tests, and I've tried a few, they put me in the top 5% of all risk takers which is strange as I don't feel like a risk taker!

When I retire I plan to have a significant percentage of my income come from a HYP - potentially 30 to 50% of my total net worth will be invested in the HYP.

I'm currently investing in a passive indexing style not far from that recommended by Tim Hale. I have about 30% of my equities in a UK allocation (all in a simple/cheap FTSE All-share tracker).

I'm CONSIDERING splitting my UK allocation so that 25% is in a FTSE 250 tracker and 75% is in a FTSE 100 only HYP. The idea is to start building my HYP now; to get a feel for how the income will work and how much maintenance will be required in real life. I expect to hold 10 companies in my HYP at this stage - maybe expanding to 20 when I retire and have more money to invest in this strategy. (My idea is the potential lower capital gains from the HYP are offset by over-weighting the smaller companies in the 250)

Q1) Do you think that starting the HYP pre-retirement is good idea? Or is it more sensible to just wait until that happy day?

Q2) Assuming that I do start now, should I pick a date and buy the entire 10 company HYP on that day? Or should I buy my HYP one company at a time (draw up a short list and wait for the targets to become "cheap")? If the second option then how do I measure "cheap"? (Maybe a target P/E for example?)

Q3) How have others approached this and what would they do differently if they had their time again?

Thanks in advance for any help...

Simon