Part 276: Recognising Misleading Statistics

Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE.  This week I discuss misleading statistics and how they can impact investors.  There are the usual financial updates, and some more thoughts on customer service.  

Weekly Update

It’s been my first week in my new employment and it’s been mentally exhausting.  The training is detailed and full on.  There’s little downtime and it’s much more enjoyable as a result.  In many previous jobs, the training has been laid back with no real sense of urgency.  Everything about this new business seems much more professional, and everyone seems to be on the same page.  

On Monday I travelled to Milton Keynes.  It was an early start and fortunately, there were no major issues with the trains.  I took one train to Tamworth and then changed for my train to Milton Keynes.  I can’t say much about it other than of all the cities I’ve visited, Milton Keynes was one of them. 

The timing of the trains was a little awkward as I could either get there an hour early or a little late.  I had a wander around the area around the station, bought a coffee, and then requested an Uber to the office.  My driver was great; friendly but not too chatty.

Meeting the team…

The office was small and well looked after compared to many other offices I’ve attended.  It’s always a bit nervy when you start a new job.  I’ve seen a post on social media where it’s likened to being a new character on a TV show that’s already five seasons in.  It’s always easier when you start as part of a group, and I’m glad that’s the situation here.

My fellow new starters are all experienced advisors from the banking world, so we have that shared experience and knowledge base.  Being in a “whole of market” world is different though, and that’s where much of the training is focused.  Rather than just offering mortgages from a specific lender, we are looking at dozens of them.  I’m feeling fired up for the challenge though.  Lloyds were a great employer in general terms, but the job itself was very frustrating.  There was little opportunity to use your initiative, and the advice aspect of it could easily be done by ChatGPT in the majority of cases.  

I know I’ve got a lot to learn, and to unlearn before I can be successful in this new environment, but so far I’m getting good vibes.  I’ve got a few more weeks of training for systems, processes, and policies before I start the job properly.

Did you know you can do this online? (Maybe).

We’ve all been there. You need to update your account, cancel a service, or make a simple change. The website proudly declares:  

“You can do this online!”

“Managing your account has never been easier!”

“Self-service available 24/7!”  

But after clicking through endless menus, getting stuck in a loop, and being told to check the FAQs (which, of course, are useless), you finally hit a dead end:  

“To complete this request, please call our customer service team.”

It’s one of the most frustrating aspects of modern customer service. Companies push online self-service as the ultimate solution, but more often than not, it’s just a smoke screen. They want you to try solving your problem online, knowing full well that in many cases, you can’t.  

It’s made even worse when you call the number and are told, repeatedly, that can complete your request online via their app or their website.

The Worst Offenders: Where “Do It Online” is a Lie

Cancelling a Service  

Want to cancel a subscription? Good luck! Many companies make the “Cancel” button as hard to find as possible – if it even exists at all. Instead, you’re sent on a wild goose chase through menus that always seem to lead you back to the home screen. Some services (looking at you, gym memberships) even require written letters to cancel, despite being able to sign up in seconds online.  

The Good: Netflix

The Bad: Hellofresh

Updating Personal Information

Need to change your email, address, or phone number? Some websites will let you update the minor things but suddenly require a phone call or even a physical visit for anything important. Even banks who claim to be digital-first will sometimes force you into a branch for changes that should take seconds online.  

The Good: Starling

The Bad: Halifax/Lloyds Banking Group

Chatbots Pretending to Be Helpful

Many companies have replaced customer service reps with chatbots that pretend they can help – until they can’t. After five rounds of “I think I can help with that!” followed by generic answers that don’t solve your problem, the bot finally admits defeat:  

“I’m sorry, I can’t help with that. Please call us during business hours.”

Why not just say that from the start?  

The Good: Is there one?

The Bad: Amazon 

Being Forced to Call—Then Being Put on Hold  

After exhausting all online options, you reluctantly call customer service, only to hear:  

“Our call volumes are currently higher than normal. Your wait time is approximately… 45 minutes.”

So not only could you not do it online, but now you’re stuck on hold listening to terrible hold music, regretting every life choice that led you to this moment.  

The Good: Hargreaves Lansdown

The Bad: Virgin Money

Why Companies Do This 

If online self-service were genuinely effective, it would be a win-win: customers get quick solutions, and companies save money on support costs. So why is it often so useless?  

Cost-cutting (but not really) – Companies want to reduce customer service costs, but they don’t want to invest in actually making online systems work well. Instead, they push you toward a half-baked self-service system that just frustrates you.  So many businesses have systems that are held together by patches and workarounds, where upgrades are just new skins over an existing set of software.    

Retention Tricks – The harder they make it to cancel or change your service, the more likely you are to stay. It’s almost as though some companies even deliberately remove online cancellation options to force you into a sales call where they try to talk you out of leaving.  

Pretending to Be Modern – They market themselves as “tech-savvy” and “customer-focused” with sleek websites, chatbots, and apps. But behind the scenes, their systems are outdated, and they still rely on phone-based customer service for anything important.  

How to Fight Back 

Go Straight to the Phone

Sometimes, skipping the website circus is the best option. If you know from experience that a company’s online system is useless, save yourself the headache and just call directly.  It’s not ideal having to wait all that time in a queue, but if you’ll only end up having to do that anyway you may as well cut out the middleman and ignore the website altogether.  

Social Media Complaints 

Many companies will ignore you when you call or email, but a public complaint on Twitter (I am not calling it X) or Facebook? That gets their attention. Nobody wants bad PR, so customer service teams often respond much faster to public posts.  It’s a pain that it comes to this, but sometimes it’s the only way.  For some reason, I find the standard reply of “DM us with your details” annoying though.

Vote with Your Wallet

If a company makes it hard to manage your account, maybe it’s time to take your business elsewhere. Companies that truly care about customers will make self-service easy and efficient, not an obstacle course.  I resisted switching from Hargreaves Lansdown for a long time because I liked their app and website.  Sadly, the costs were too much to continue with them, when a competitor was much cheaper.

Final Thought: If You Offer It, Make It Work

Self-service should make life easier, not harder. If a company loudly advertises that you can manage everything online, they should follow through. Otherwise, it’s just another frustrating case of:  You can do this online!” (Except when you try to.)

Peddler Market

On Friday evening Oana and I went to Peddler Market because our favourite food truck was there; Kebab Cartel.  We went for the usual; an Escobar bowl each.  As expected the food was great and we had a little chat with the guys after.  They recognise us as we’ve been eating with them for years.  Their food is very good and if you ever see them at an event, you should definitely give them a try.  

The market was smaller than usual and there wasn’t much else grabbing us.  We decided to try an Indian stall as the staff were friendly and we had a good laugh with them.  Sadly, the chicken naan was not good.  It all tasted a bit cheesy, and not in a pleasant way.  It reminded me of some awful pancakes we had in London a couple of years ago.  We binned most of it and felt bad because the people working there were really nice.  

What I’m Doing

Listening: Apostles of Mercy by Lindsay Ellis.

Watching: Rings of Power (Amazon).

The second season of Rings of Power isn’t that bad.  The first season was rubbish, and the second season is a definite improvement.  It’s still not great but it’s watchable at least.

I finished the third book in the series by Lindsay Ellis, Apostles of Mercy.  I enjoyed the series and it’s left the door open for a fourth book, which I think the author is working on.

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Financial Update

Assets

Premium Bonds: £30,000.00.

Stocks and Shares ISA: £92,428.17.

Fuck It Fund: £6,566.54.

Pensions: £94,522.30.

Residential Property Value: £237,228.00. 

Total Assets: £460,745.01.

Debts

Residential Mortgage: £184,200.23. 

Total Debts: £184,200.23.

Total Wealth: £276,544.78.

I used some of the money in my Fuck It fund to pay for a couple of things, but I shouldn’t need to use any more savings to pay for our daily cost of living.  I’ll get my first pay from this new job later this month and it will be almost a full month’s pay.  I was always going to have to use some savings and it could have been much worse.  As it stands, I’ll have only used a small proportion of my redundancy pay from Lloyds.  

It’s time for another look at stats and why you should always be careful when looking at trends…

Tracking the growth of your ISA can be exciting, especially in the early days when the percentage gains seem huge. But here’s the catch – those early growth figures can be misleading, and if you’re not careful, they can lead to unrealistic expectations about the future.  

Let’s say you start with £1,000 in your ISA and add £200. That’s a 20% increase before the market has done anything. Throw in a bit of market growth, and you might see a 25-30% rise in your total balance. Sounds great, right? But the reality is that this “growth” is largely driven by your own contributions, not compounding returns.  

This becomes a problem when people project those early gains forward. If you assume your portfolio will keep growing at 20-30% per year, you’re in for a reality check. As your balance grows, percentage gains naturally slow down because new contributions become a smaller part of the total. Over time, real growth comes from investment returns, not from topping up your account.  

Investing is a long game. In the early days, it’s your own contributions doing the heavy lifting. Later on, compounding takes over. The key is to stay consistent, manage expectations, and let time do the work.  

Intentionally misleading…

If there’s one thing that is guaranteed to get my back up, it’s when misleading stats are cherry-picked to try and make a point.  I remember getting into an argument with someone who was an anti-vaxxer.  They just didn’t understand, well, anything.  I made a comment to test how well they could pick apart dubious claims and it was like banging my head against a brick wall.  I stated the following;

“Everyone who has a covid vaccine will die.”

In isolation, that statement is true, just like how everyone who is born will die.  Some people look at the statement above and process it as though I’ve said this instead;

“Everyone who has a covid vaccine will die because of the vaccine.”

Another one that is doing the rounds and makes me facepalm relates to autism.  There are people out there who are incredulous that more and more people are being identified as autistic.  They put this down to everything from vaccines to 5G signals.  Here’s the thing; it’s not that there are more autistic people as a proportion of the population.  It’s simply that we are getting better at identifying them.

Or as Trump would argue, there were only more positive covid tests because we tested more people.  If you don’t test people, the number of positive cases drops.  The missing point is that the cases are still there, they’re just not identified.  

Some stats are propagated in an intentional attempt to shape the narrative for ideological agendas.  Some of them spread because people just don’t understand.  It’s frustrating because you often can’t reason someone out of an unreasonable belief.  

Coming back to statistics and investing, here are five examples of mistakes that are made:

1. The “100% Growth” Illusion

Example: You start with £500 in your ISA and add £500. Suddenly, your balance has doubled – 100% growth! But that’s not market performance; it’s just your own contribution. If you expect that kind of growth every year, you’re in for a disappointment.

2. Monthly Returns That Look Huge

Example: Your ISA starts with £2,000, and the market gives you a £100 return in a month. That’s a 5% gain, which annualised would be a staggering 60% return! But markets don’t work like that – short-term percentage gains don’t always scale up neatly over a year.

3. Focusing Only on “Best Year” Performance

Example: You check your portfolio after a strong year where it grew by 20%. You then assume, “If I get 20% per year, I’ll be a millionaire in no time!” But markets don’t deliver linear returns – some years will be down, and some will be flat. A single good year doesn’t mean the same performance will continue indefinitely.

4. “Look at My Amazing Percentage Gains!” (on a Small Portfolio)

Example: A beginner investor with £1,000 sees a £200 return and proudly announces a 20% growth rate. Meanwhile, an experienced investor with £500,000 makes £25,000, which is just a 5% growth rate – but the second investor actually made way more money. Percentage growth looks exciting on small balances but matters less as your portfolio scales.

5. The “Perfectly Predictable Growth” Trap

Example: You see an online calculator that shows if you invest £500 per month with a 7% annual return, you’ll have £1 million in 30 years. Sounds great! But the market doesn’t return 7% neatly each year—it fluctuates wildly. Some years might be +20%, others -10%, and smooth averages don’t reflect real investment journeys.

Another example of why the gambling industry is evil…

An article published in The Guardian this week reports on how many betting companies are tracking users who visit their websites, before sharing that data with Meta, the company that owns Facebook.  This then leads to users seeing adverts for betting sites, and if proven, would demonstrate a clear breach of data protection laws.  The users here are not given a choice of opting in or out before the data is shared.  

Gambling addiction is a very serious problem, with addicts much more likely to take their own lives when compared to those fighting other addictions.  Problem gambling is almost an invisible addiction.  After all, you can tell when someone has been drinking to excess, or when someone is a heavy user of hard drugs.  Someone who is in a serious gambling addiction may not show any outward signs; all they need is a smartphone and internet connection and they can lose thousands in seconds.  

Make no mistake, the gambling industry is not about fun.  It’s about greed; greed at the expense of human lives.  

That’s all for this week.  Thank you for reading, and if you have any thoughts on this week’s post please leave a comment.  

DISCLAIMER

The views and opinions in this blog are my own, and do not represent the views or opinions of my former, current, or future employers, 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 

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