Part 256: Ring Out Your Bells

Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE.  This week I go into more detail about the impact of time on compound growth.  Also, another eventful week…

Weekly Update

This week has gone by in a blur.  I don’t quite know where the time has gone, and it brings me back to something I’ve thought a lot about.  Some people claim they would get bored without a job, and I don’t get it.  You can do so much to occupy your time, such as reading, spending time with friends or family, getting out into nature, or just going down some deep, nerdy, rabbit holes.  Bring on FI, I say.  

I’ve got another week of leave and then I’m back at work for a few more weeks before wrapping up in early December.  Then Oana and I are heading to London to see Kygo again.  

As I’m approaching the end of my Diabetes UK step challenge I’ve been doing a lot of walking to try and get over the 1,000,000 step target.  I should hit the goal but I have to complete around 18,000 steps daily.

The Green City

Oana and I have started having late afternoon and evening walks around the area, and it never ceases to amaze me how much greenery there is in, and around the city centre.  On Sunday we stuck to the Kelham Island area and met many of the neighbourhood cats, which obviously took up a lot of time as we stopped to talk to them.  

On Monday afternoon, after Oana finished work, she went for a bike ride and I took a walk up to Weston Park.  My walk served a couple of purposes; I wanted to get some steps in and see the park, with its squirrels, ducks, geese, and other wildlife.  Also, there was a Too Good To Go offer at Starbucks for their pastries.  For £3.50 I picked up two almond croissants and two pain au chocolat.  There’s some great stuff on TGTG but I’d gone a while without using it, forgetting all about it, until a friend mentioned it in passing.

Pizza

The middle of the week was mostly taken up with walks and a couple of meals out.  We ended up, almost by accident, having dinner at Pizza Express on two consecutive nights.  We are now having a break from pizza for a day or two.

One of the walks we completed was up from Kelham Island, our neighbourhood, to Norfolk Park.  We had a walk around up there and stopped by the monument.  We then thought we would walk over to another park in the area.  This is where things got strange.  

Mandela Effect or Rubbish Memory?

We both distinctly remember an entrance to this park at the same location.  When we arrived there, there was no sign that there was ever a park there.  It was like a glitch in the Matrix, or perhaps an example of the Mandela effect.  We walked around a little trying to work out if we were misremembering but gave up after a while.  This seemed like as good a reason as any to have a meal out, and this accounted for one of the pizza nights.  

In addition to the walks around the various parks, we’ve also been trying to gain access to some of the taller buildings in the city so we can see it from above.  We have had some modest success with this, with buildings that are publicly accessible.  However, some of the taller buildings require a pass to access.

Sheffield is undergoing a massive regeneration, and it’s almost completely changed from the city we returned to in 2010.  It’s mostly for the better but there are still those who complain about every single thing that’s changed.  These people are the ones who look back through rose-tinted glasses to the 70s, 80s, and 90s when the city was often packed with buses and cars belching out fumes, with pavements packed with people shoulder to shoulder.  I fail to see what was good about that. 

Now, we have a city with little traffic in the city centre, with wide open spaces for people to walk and chill.  We also have cafes and restaurants everywhere.  It’s a much better city, and I can’t understand the arguments against this.  

The Bells

In the city centre we have a couple of Cathedrals; the Church of England’s Cathedral and the Roman Catholic Cathedral, called St Marie’s.  Oana arranged for us to have a private tour of the bell tower at St Marie’s and it was cool and interesting.  We were met by Bob and Maggie who are part of the team responsible for the bells.  Now, I’d never realised just how complex the ringing of church bells is.  I’d assumed there were a couple of bells that were mechanically rung to preset tunes.  I was wrong.

St Marie’s has eight bronze bells of different sizes and weights.  Each bell is individually rung by a bell ringer, and the bells can be rung in different sequences and combinations.  In total, there are over 40,000 possible combinations, and to play each in turn would take 22 hours and 30 minutes.  

Up, up, up, up the stairs we go…

We were led up a narrow spiral stone staircase to the midlevel where the bells are rung from.  We were advised to avoid the ropes as the bells were currently in the “up” position.  Another point I was not aware of is how the bells can be stored up or down, i.e. upside down or in a normal upright position.  

Bob then talked us through the history of the bells and how they are played, with a demonstration on the ropes.  We were then invited to climb more stairs, which then led to a series of wooden ladders.  We climbed up to the wooden ledge with just one more ladder ahead of us, but the dust and cramped space made it difficult to progress.  My elbow is still causing problems and I didn’t want to worsen the injury, but it was fascinating getting up close to all this history.

Oana and I are in no way religious but the history is something we care deeply about.  This is one of those things that we would all be diminished by if the knowledge was lost.  Bob and Maggie, and their colleagues, deserve a lot of respect and gratitude for the work they put in.  We did not have to pay for this tour, and they did it out of their own free time.  We left a donation to the bell fund and thanked them. It was a fascinating experience.

Here’s a recent story on BBC News about the bells…

Food

If you want to sign up for Gousto, which we’ve been using, please use my link and you’ll receive a discount.

One thing I’ve come to realise is that when a recipe calls for garlic, it’s bullshitting you about how much to use.  I’ve since coined the Garlic Rule; when a recipe states how much garlic to use, simply convert cloves to bulbs and you’ll have a more accurate, and tastier, plate of food.

Health

I’ve been monitoring my blood sugar more closely in the last couple of months and it’s coincided with some decent weight loss.  I’ve dropped almost 10kg since my peak weight earlier in the year.  This is due to a combination of more physical activity with my step challenge but also being more mindful about what I’m eating.  I think the Gousto boxes have helped with this, as they control portion size.  Also, tracking my blood sugar and avoiding eating when the levels are too high is having an impact.  

Diabetes UK Step Challenge

From July 1st until September 30th Diabetes UK is running a step challenge to raise money for their cause.  There are three step targets to choose from; 500k, 1m, or 1.7m.  I had originally gone for the 1.7m steps, but it’s become clear I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.  I’m now aiming for the 1m target.  

If you’d like to follow my progress or make a donation, it can be done here.

Letters to Oana

Part 2 of the series Letters to Oana is now live.

Looking Back

Part 15 of the Looking Back series is also live.

What I’m Doing

Listening: Good Boys: The Lost Tribe by Jeremy Robinson.

Watching: Dumb Money (Prime).

Dumb Money is based on true events, specifically the Gamestop saga from a couple of years ago. You may remember it vaguely, where a bunch of people got together via Reddit to pump the Gamestop stock.  This was in response to several large hedge funds shorting the stock, which means they are betting that the stock will crash.  Instead, the price of the stock surged and this cost the hedge funds an eyewatering amount of money.  

As entertaining as the movie was, and as funny as the real life events were, it’s important to remember that this was essentially a gamble and was based on the Greater Fool Theory.  There are people who made lots of money out of the Gamestop short squeeze, but it all depended on those people selling their stock at massively inflated prices to people who didn’t want to miss out and, I should note I’m speculating here, probably didn’t understand what they were doing.  This is the GFT; you are relying on someone more foolish to pay more for the investment than you did.  

Another lesson from all this is how values can mean little until you cash out.  If you’ve invested in a global fund which is made up of hundreds of stocks, you can be more confident of the value of the units.  However, with all your money on one stock you can never be sure what is going on in the background that can pull the rug from under you and cause the stock to crash.  There’s the possibility that the stock will explode and increase in value many times over, but again it’s only real if someone else will pay that price for it.  

Morality?

There’s also a question of morality.  If you buy a stock that has typically been trading at 10p, and there’s a campaign to pump the stock and it rises to £100, and you then cash in, you are selling those units to someone.  It may be a market maker acting as a middleman, but there will be someone buying those shares at the other side.  When the stock drops back to 10p a share, someone is caught with their pants down.  The only way to not be complicit in this is to not play that game.  Yes, sticking it to Wall Street is funny, and there’s truth that “a fool and his money are easily parted” but I just don’t feel comfortable being the one taking that money.

Good Boys: The Lost Tribe

It can’t be a secret to regular readers that I’m a big fan of author Jeremy Robinson.  His latest book was absolute insanity and I loved every minute of it.

The premise is that dogs are descended from aliens.  Yes, dogs are alien space dogs.  The ones on Earth are descendants of a stranded group tens of thousands of years ago.  Now, in the present day, a group of space dogs come looking for this mythical lost tribe.

There’s a cast of different dogs, an ex-Army Ranger, a stoner, and a good boy Golden Retriever called Grover that round out the cast.  It was hilarious and action-packed, just like his usual stuff.  

My new favourite bromance is Chirk, a small yapping member of the doggo special forces, and Sean, a stoner who just rolls with the idea of walking, talking, space dogs.

Website Stuff

It’s getting to that time of year when I need to pay to renew my domain and plan with my site host.  I will probably never make money from this blog but I would like to reduce what it costs me to run.  There are a couple of ways you can help and it will not cost you anything.

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Financial Update

Assets

Premium Bonds: £15,100.00.

Stocks and Shares ISA: £92,339.26.

Fuck It Fund: £1,716.35.

Pensions: £83,428.64.

Residential Property Value: £234,044.00. 

Total Assets: £426,628.25.

Debts

Residential Mortgage: £185,693.35. 

Total Debts: £185,693.35.

Total Wealth: £240,934.90.

I’m almost done moving money around in the wake of selling our BTL.  With limits on how much can be transferred between accounts it’s taken a little time to get all the funds where I want them. My ISA is maxed out until the new financial year, so the only changes to that balance will be from market movements and the reinvesting of income received.  Which brings me to a topic I covered slightly last week, and that was expanded upon in the comments by one of my regular readers, MaximTsigalko.

Nothing Fucks You Harder Than Time…

Forgive the colourful language but I love this quote.  It’s from Ser Davos, a character in Game of Thrones.  It can be interpreted in several ways, and one way to look at the quote is as an explanation of just how powerful time is compared to other factors.

Imagine you have a large rock and you have thousands of litres of water positioned above it.  You release the water and it crashes down on the rock, but after the water has dried, the rock will look the same.  Now, imagine the same rock being subjected to a constant, smaller, drip-drip of water.  Over time, maybe thousands of years, the rock will wear away.  This is how time can boost your investments.

Let’s look at some examples to better explain this idea…

Mr is 40 years old and invests £200 each month.  For the sake of simplicity we’ll assume this is in a fund that grows 6% a year, ignoring fees, inflation, etc as these will be assumed the same in all examples.  

After 25 years, the numbers are as follows;

• Total amount invested £60,000
• Value of investment pot at end of investment period £138,598
• Interest earned £78,598

Compare the above to Mrs who invests £100 each month for 50 years…

• Total amount invested £60,000
• Value of investment pot at end of investment period £378,719
• Interest earned £318,719

There really is no substitute for time in the market.  Even if you are only in a position to invest small amounts in the beginning, those amounts can be the building blocks, or foundations, of your financial future.

As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, and the next best time is today.

Lego Titanic

I’ll wrap up this week’s post with an update on my Lego Titanic.  I’ve started building it and it’s great fun so far.  Here are some pictures of my progress.

I hope you have a great week ahead and remember to please leave a comment, and to like, share, and subscribe.  

DISCLAIMER

The views and opinions in this blog are my own, and do not represent the views or opinions of my employer, nor should they be considered advice.  

If you want personalised financial advice, seek an appropriate professional.  If you are in financial difficulty, seek advice via the resources below:

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