Part 265: The Orange Always Win

Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE.  This week I look ahead to my financial goals for 2025.  Also, some potentially positive developments on the job front, and dealing with more bureaucratic incompetence.  

Weekly Update

One thing I love about snow is the change in sound that you experience.  You probably know what I mean.  When there’s heavy snow it’s almost like a calm silence falls over the place.  We had some decent snow this week and Oana and I went for a late-night walk around the area.  We were not alone.  Many other residents had the same idea and it was a nice atmosphere with people having fun and just enjoying the weather.  I do like the snow, but I hate it when it turns to ice and then the following few days are spent sliding all over the pavement.  The one major downside to the cold weather is how difficult it is to keep our apartment warm when it’s all-electric and we have a cat that hates closed doors.

Our heaters are 2kw, which means an hour of being switched on uses 2kw/h.  The cost per kw/h is 28.76p, so each hour of use costs us 57.52p.  An hour a day, over a full month, is an extra £15-£20 on the electric bill.  When we can’t keep the doors closed for long because of Poppy, the heat does not stick around that well.  Compared to the cost of running the heater, it often makes more sense to use tealights.  A pack of 100 tealights is £4, and 20 tealights will heat our living room for the four hours they burn, and a little after, so call it five hours.  If I’ve done my calculation correctly, that’s 16p per hour of heat; much cheaper than running an electric heater.  Something is wrong with how basic utilities are run.

Stereotypes – Medical Secretaries

There are some wholly unfair stereotypes, and there are some that it’s difficult to argue against.  One of the consequences of having poor physical health is that I have to deal with lots of medical secretaries.  I also worked in health insurance for a couple of years which involved a lot of communication with these secretaries.  Whilst there are some excellent ones out there, it seems they are massively outnumbered by the ones that are so bad they’re striving for incompetence, as it would be an improvement on the service they currently offer.  What’s the phrase; delusions of adequacy.

In the summer of 2023, I was in a really bad way with my mental health.  Only a handful of people know how bad it was.  I saw a GP in July of that year and was referred for an emergency appointment with the mental health team.  A few weeks later, once the worst of it had passed, I had a call out of the blue from this mental health team.  Those who are unfortunate enough to have struggled with their mental health know that it’s not always something you are comfortable talking about with no warning.  Sometimes, simply discussing it can feel like opening a wound.  It just so happened that when I took the call I was working and was not in the headspace to discuss it.  I was then referred to speak with a mental health practitioner.  

Urgency? What’s that?

Whilst all this was going on I was paying to see a private therapist in London via video.  She’s been incredible.  I owe her a huge debt and I’ll never forget that.  Weeks became months and I’d still not heard anything about this mental health practitioner.  I mentioned it in a review with my GP and they said they’d look into it.  A few days later I was offered an appointment with this person, and a couple of days later they cancelled the appointment for some unknown reason.  A few weeks went by, and the same thing happened again.  I decided not to chase it up again as I was, for the most part, doing better.

Last week I had a call offering me an appointment for this mental health review, and I figured I’d take it.  My sessions with the private therapist are coming to an end and getting some advice from the NHS couldn’t do any harm, or so I thought.

I was wrong…

On the day of the appointment, which was booked for 15:30 we also had to take Poppy back to the vet for another follow-up after her surgery.  I was feeling stretched and at 10:00 I called the GP to ask if I could reschedule, and I ended up having a frustrating conversation where the following was explained;

• I could not reschedule.
• If I did not attend, it would go down as a mark against me which would limit my ability for future appointments with the GP or this mental health practitioner. 
• I could not have a telephone appointment.

I appreciate cancelling or rescheduling on the day is not ideal, however, I’d been waiting a year and a half for this and they’d already cancelled on me twice.  Forcing me to attend an appointment regarding mental health in person was surely not good from a medical point of view.

The call ended with the appointment being left open.  I managed to get to the surgery at 15:25 to be told that the appointment was cancelled.  However, no one had tried to contact me.  I then ended up arguing with three receptionists at the same time as to why it was cancelled without anyone telling me.  They stated could still be seen but I’d have to wait a bit, almost like they were doing me a favour. I was not impressed seeing as though I didn’t want the appointment and had tried to cancel, and here I was already stressed out and not feeling in the headspace to discuss my mental health.

Rubbing salt in the wound

The practitioner came out and said he could spare a few minutes but I was done at this point.  I had a chat with the practice manager who listened to the call recording and explained the person I spoke with on the phone got it wrong.  I explained my side but I don’t think it will change anything.  These people need to do better.  This isn’t like turning up to a restaurant to find your table has been cancelled.  They’re dealing with the health of people who are already going through a tough time.  Their mistakes have real consequences.

Had this happened to someone in a terrible place, it could have been the tipping point.  This wasn’t just a single mistake.  Had they been able to arrange a phone call, which the practice manager later confirmed was an option, none of this would have gone down in such a shambolic way.  The first mistake was the incorrect information on the phone call, the second mistake was cancelling the appointment without telling me, and the third was how this was handled in the surgery with multiple secretaries shouting over each other and across the waiting area whilst discussing the issue as other patients were waiting in line.

They need to do better.

Poppy

Poppy has now been discharged from the vet and seems to have made a good recovery.  Hopefully, we don’t have to take her back for a long time.  A couple of times this week she’s panicked thinking we were getting ready to take her again, and she’s gone hiding under the sofa.  We feel awful having to stress her out with the vet, but it’s for her own good.  It would just be nice to be able to communicate that in a way she would understand.  

Job Search

I received a reply from the high street lender I was negotiating with that they could not meet my demands, so I formally withdrew from the process.  To be fair, I was not fully sold on the job anyway, so it’s no great loss.  

I did take a call from a recruiter about an employed mortgage advisor role and it sounds interesting.  She went back and forth between the company and me a few times, and they want to speak to me directly.  I’m just waiting for them to make contact.  

Also, I had a second chat with another business about a similar-sounding role.  I’ve now spoken with their area manager and the person who would be my line manager.  It sounds like an exciting opportunity and I’m hoping to hear positive news about this role next week.  

If I could have another job lined up for the new year it would be amazing and would take a lot of pressure off.

Applying for jobs now seems like much more hard work than it was when I got my current job back in 2011.  There are so many scams out there and you have to remain vigilant.  I was telling Oana about how I got my last job before going to university, and it was off the back of a newspaper advert.  An actual printed advert in a newspaper.  This was back in the day when Netflix came in the post and people used to buy ringtones for their phones.  

An unexpected benefit of being a mortgage advisor…

…is that you wipe the floor with people at Monopoly.  Yes, this week I’ve been challenged by Oana to two games of Monopoly and both times I won without breaking a sweat.  It’s almost as though my brain has been rewired to assess the variables instantly to know what deals to strike.  Either that or I’m just really lucky with the dice!

Here are my top tips for Monopoly.

1. Avoid the yellow and red sets; they are too expensive and you get little reward from them.
2. The orange set is the best in the game with a good combination of price and reward.
3. The railway sets are undervalued.
4. The utilities are worthless and will almost certainly run at a loss.  If you think about the maximum value of a roll of the dice, and how the rent is calculated compared to the cost of the property, you can see how it takes multiple instances of opponents landing on them to make any money.
5. Taunting your opponents can get them to make silly mistakes.  Learn how best to wind them up and exploit those weaknesses.
6. In the late game, jail is your friend.  

Spam Comments

For those who don’t know, part of the dashboard with my website host relates to comments people leave.  Anyone who hasn’t commented before has to have their comment approved before it’s published, as do many posts that contain certain words or phrases.  I’ve got to give credit where it’s due as the filters are great at stopping 99.9% of the rubbish that comes my way.

On any given day I receive multiple spam comments and they’re not even subtle.  I don’t understand what the sender, or creator, of these comments hopes to achieve.  Most of the comments are word-for-word the same and follow one of a few set templates.  See the pics below.  I normally delete the comments as they come through, but I thought I’d let a few build up in the spam folder to show you the sort of rubbish that is being sent in.

I do enjoy getting real feedback from readers though, so if you have any thoughts on the blog, please do get in touch.  

Another recipe…

A few people have enjoyed reading my recipes recently.  I made another great meal a couple of days ago that I’ll share below.  It’s for mushroom gnocchi.

Ingredients

Flat mushrooms, shallot, garlic, fresh parsley, gnocchi, creme fraiche, parmesan, chicken stock, butter, salt, and pepper.

Process

Finely chop the shallot and garlic and sweat them down in a little butter.  Once they’ve softened, add the chopped mushrooms and season with salt and pepper.  You want to cook down the mushrooms quite a bit and then add the chopped parsley, and roughly 300ml of creme fraiche.  Also, add roughly 200ml of chicken stock.  Let the mixture reduce.  

Get the gnocchi in a pot of boiling water.  Once it’s cooked, drain and then stir the gnocchi through the sauce.  Once the gnocchi is all coated, add grated parmesan to the mixture and stir through.  Serve with extra parmesan on top, and with garlic bread if you like.  

It was amazing.

Anyway, if I’m going to have a regular section about food it needs to have a name.  I suggested, A Song of Food and FIRE to Oana and she was so impressed she couldn’t bring herself to talk to me for an hour.  My genius has that effect on people.  It will only mean something to those familiar with Game of Thrones though.  

Other options include Cooking with FIRE, or maybe Cooking on FIRE.  

If you have a suggestion, please let me know.

Letters to Oana

Part 2 of the series Letters to Oana is now live, and Part 3 is in progress.  

Looking Back

Part 17 of the Looking Back series is also live.

What I’m Doing

Listening: The Hidden Space: The Glass Book Two by Nathan Hystad.

Watching: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine; MasterChef: The Professionals.

Whenever I finish an excellent series of books there’s always a hangover of sorts.  It’s almost like a form of grieving, where you say goodbye to those characters and that world.  It can be difficult to find something new after because you’re still in that other world. 

Another way of describing this would be to use an example from food.  In some restaurants, the courses are structured so that their palate cleansers are offered between dishes that have strong or distinct flavours.  When I finish a great story, I need a palate cleanser for my brain.

Nathan Hystad is one of those authors whose work I enjoy listening to, but also find disposable.  There are some books where, even years later, I can remember characters and scenes, and there are others where I finish the last book and a few days later it’s already in the mental trash folder.  

The new series that I’ve started concerns a series of invisible barriers that emerge all around the world, and involves concepts such as time travel, alternate realities, aliens, and so on.  It’s entertaining enough but nothing I’m massively excited about.  

If anyone reading this has suggestions for good sci-fi I’d love to hear from you.

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Financial Update

Assets

Premium Bonds: £15,200.00.

Stocks and Shares ISA: £90,310.64.

Fuck It Fund: £34.94.

Pensions: £87,582.26.

Residential Property Value: £237,447.00. 

Total Assets: £430,574.84.

Debts

Residential Mortgage: £185,094.90. 

Total Debts: £185,094.90.

Total Wealth: £245,479.94.

It was pointed out by some readers that my Fuck It Fund dropped last week and I didn’t mention it.  This was an oversight on my part, as I had meant to mention it.  I had to use some of those funds to pay for Poppy’s surgery and related expenses.  Having older pets is not cheap, but they’re worth every penny.  

I’ve not been able to invest much of my salary this month as I’m paying for our combined cost of living until Oana starts her new job in the new year.  Once we both have some stability with work, it will be good to start chipping away a bit at the mortgage debt.

Goals for 2025

It’s getting to that point in the year when I start thinking about what I want to achieve in the new year.  2024 has been a bit transitional for me, with the end of my current employment looming.  I’ll have been working in this job for a third of my life, and most of my adult life.  I think 2025 is going to be a time to build new foundations so that I can hopefully move forward with more energy and determination.  

The roles I’m in contention for may come with a lower basic salary but higher earning potential overall once the commission is factored in.  If I’m in a position where I can see a more direct link between effort and reward, I fully expect I’ll step up my game accordingly.

The most important goal for 2025 has to be, like for most FI followers, maxing out my ISA allowance for the year.  Once this is achieved, I think it will then be a matter of chipping away at the mortgage.

Normally, I’d not be too concerned about the mortgage but in a couple of years, we’ll need to get a new deal.  Rates are much higher than when I started this project, and my mortgage payments have roughly doubled over the last few years.  This eats up a significant proportion of our income, and getting that down will reduce our future cost of living when it comes to retirement.  

If I can max out my ISA allowance, and then max out my 10% overpayment allowance on the mortgage, I’d be happy with that.  This would need approximately £38,000 which isn’t unrealistic.

Patience

I’m at that stage where there aren’t, seemingly, any shortcuts.  It’s just like the old trains where you keep shovelling coal to keep the engine going.  The formula for FI is so simple; money invested + time = FI.  If I keep investing and let compound growth work its magic I will get there eventually.

What can be frustrating in the middle/late-middle part of this timeline is that each contribution you make to your investment pot can feel like a drop in the bucket.  When you first start, investing £500 on top of a current balance of £500 is huge as you double your investment.  Now, when looking at an overall pot of a quarter of a million, throwing a few hundred into the mix can feel futile. 

When these feelings appear, it’s vital to remember that every unit of a fund that’s purchased is like a new soldier in your army that’s working tirelessly to earn you even more money.  Adding one soldier at a time might not seem like much, but much like gravity, compound growth is relentless.  It’s just a matter of being patient.

That’s all for this week.  Thank you for reading, and I hope you have a great week ahead.

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:

StepChange

MoneyHelper

Biolink 

You can now find all my social media pages by checking out my Biolink:

bio.link/davidscothern.