Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE.
Weekly Update
Last Sunday, my grandma had a stroke. It’s not the first one she’s had, but it seems to have knocked her sideways. Strokes are awful. I lost my other grandma to them, and my grandfather on my mom’s side. Strokes are scary because of how quickly they can strike. This most recent one happened whilst she was in the car with my uncle, who was taking her for lunch. Fortunately, an ambulance arrived on the scene quickly, and we have great hospitals in Sheffield.
I’ve been up to see my gran a couple of times this week, and she’s struggling to communicate. I’m not clear whether she’s thinking clearly but unable to communicate, or if there’s a cognitive element at play as well. Like with many stroke patients, I fear my gran will be looking at a new reality moving forward.
Bike Rides
We have been deprived of bike rides this week with the awful weather. We don’t mind going out in the cold, but there’s not a huge amount of fun in cycling in torrential rain. We got out on Friday, though, and did our usual Sheffield to Rotherham and back. The route along the canal was muddy. Very, very muddy. We had a few close calls where our wheels went sliding, but on the whole, it was a decent enough excursion.
On our way back, we stopped off at The Bhaji Shop to pick up some food. We bought two massive bhajis, two samosas, and a tomato, ginger, and chicken curry to take home. We also bought two chicken tandoori wraps for some much-needed fuel. We did the same thing the previous week, and both times the food has been amazing. It’s going to be dangerous having this place along our cycling route.
Also, this week, Oana has put the Christmas Tree up:
And, I received more LEGO:
Biscuits
Let us open the biscuit tin, as it has been opened for generations. A polite clatter, the faint metallic echo of childhood. Inside, arranged with ceremonial randomness, lies the true architecture of British comfort. If you are lucky, it will have two layers.
We begin, inevitably, with the Milk Chocolate Digestive. Its surface gleams with the dull sheen of supermarket chocolate undulating with slight peaks, but when the tea or coffee steam curls upward and you hold the biscuit over your mug, something mystical happens. The chocolate loosens into a soft velvet layer, and the base warms and becomes more yielding. Bite, and you feel a subtle crunch followed by a melt; the precise moment your subconscious sends a small note saying, “everything is alright now.” No other biscuit reassures in the same way. You could have lost your job, your keys, your dignity. One Digestive, and all is softened.
The Dark Chocolate Digestive is a different beast. It’s the biscuit of choice for those who want the Milk Chocolate variety, but feel they need to put forward an air of sophistication. It’s a biscuit for those in denial and who are fighting their more primal urges. In terms of texture, there is much of the same as the Milk Chocolate Digestive, but the taste is grim. It’s like someone replaced chocolate chips in a cookie with some sort of raisin. Utter betrayal.
Nearby, the Chocolate Hobnob waits like its louder, oatier cousin. A Hobnob is not smooth. It is confident and unruly; a kind of agricultural biscuit, like someone took a field, compressed it, dipped one side in chocolate and said, “there. That’ll do.” Hobnobs are charismatic, like that older dude who has clearly seen some shit in his time and can hold a crowd in rapt attention with stories of their past, but they shed crumbs like an abandoned hay bale. You finish eating one and find oat fragments in your lap, your chair, and the cat. The price of joy is having to clean up crumbs for days after.
Shortbread sits in quiet majesty. It does not need chocolate. You do not dunk it. It disintegrates the moment moisture even looks at it. But in its undunked state, that sandy crumble, buttery depth, the doughy memory of Christmases and care homes and tartan boxes, it is perfect. Shortbread does not want applause. It simply invites you to take a moment and remember that life is not entirely chaos. Shortbread asks a question, and that question is, “What if butter?”
Then there are Custard Creams and Bourbons: twin pillars of British domesticity. You rarely buy them deliberately; more often, they appear. Someone visits with a multipack, or they live in the back of the cupboard from the time you had builders in. A Custard Cream is floral sweetness, comforting for those revisiting their childhood, a gentle biscuit that dissolves just before you finish chewing, so you never quite know where it went.
A Bourbon is sterner. Firmer. A biscuit with structural opinions. They are the biscuits of after-school telly, of lunchbox negotiations, of shared plates in break rooms. They also have great dunking resilience.
Some biscuits are not biscuits so much as psychological flashbacks. Party Rings, for instance, still carry the tactile memory of sticky-fingered birthday chaos. Jammy Dodgers crumble like old sandstone but provide that surprising moment of chew, as though someone inserted a sugary tendon into the centre. You know what I’m talking about. The appearance does not match the experience.
Florentines don’t belong in this story. They belong on plates presented by posh relatives who pronounce “pecan” incorrectly. They are less biscuits, more edible mosaics. I’m willing to bet that most Florentines up and down the land that are in people’s homes are probably out of date. I mean, who’s buying this stuff and actually eating it?
Rich Tea, though, that is not a treat. That is a ration. If ever a biscuit identified as a decade, this would be the 1940s. The Rich Tea is astonishingly sturdy, a kind of baked plywood, destined to be dunked rather than enjoyed. Nobody bites a Rich Tea dry unless they have lost a bet. But dunked, properly dunked as if you are trying to coax secrets from a prisoner at a blacksite, it becomes something between sponge, sustenance, and ceremonial wafer.
And then there are Oreos. Imported. Extravagant in advertising, chalky in reality. Their presence is tolerated, but the tea does not accept them. The tea rejects them. They dissolve prematurely, like dissolving tablets. No, Oreos have one friend, and that friend is milk.
Biscoff hovers at the edge, a continental diplomat. Spiced caramel, built for coffee rather than tea. We know they are good, but we also know they are not from here. The problem with Biscoff is that it’s a victim of its own success. Some characters are great in the background, but when they become the focus, they start to become irritating. No, Biscoff is an example of how you can have too much of a good thing. Biscuits are fine, but that should be where it ends. No spreads, ice cream, cheesecakes, or sauces.
And so we look back over this soft battlefield of crumbs. In the end, one biscuit stands not above the others, but at the heart of them. The Milk Chocolate Digestive is not dramatic. It does not perform tricks. It simply understands the situation; the mood, the mug, the moment, and it behaves exactly as it should. But, *Yoda voice* there is another…
The Chocolate Hobnob is the power behind the throne. It’s like a Milk Chocolate Digestive, but turned up to eleven. The Milk Chocolate Digestive is the public face of the idealised biscuit. It also has a secret ability. If you take two of them and press them together so the chocolate layers are touching, you have a biscuit sandwich of sorts. When you dunk this into a hot mug of coffee and then consume it, you taste food fit for a king.
A word of caution, however. One can double up Milk Chocolate Digestives, but this cannot be done with Chocolate Hobnobs. Many have tried this, but no mere mortal can wield this level of power. No, the Chocolate Hobnob is experienced one at a time.
Some biscuits are exciting, some nostalgic, some purely functional. But the Digestive, chocolate-capped and unapologetically circular, feels like the biscuit equivalent of someone putting the kettle on without asking. Steady. Familiar. Benchmark comfortable.
A warm mug. A quiet, rainy afternoon. And a biscuit that never lets you down. It’s the stuff dreams are made of.
Final Standings
I asked people to list their top ten biscuits from the following list:
Custard Cream
Bourbon
Jammy Dodger
Plain Digestive
Milk Chocolate Digestive
Dark Chocolate Digestive
Hobnob (Plain)
Hobnob (Chocolate)
Rich Tea
Nice Biscuit
Shortbread
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Chocolate Fingers
Malted Milk
Garibaldi
Party Rings
Gingernuts
Ginger Snaps
Ginger Creams
Viennese Fingers
Chocolatey Rounds
Premium Chunky Cookies
Florentine
Chocolate Shortcake
Belvita-style Breakfast Biscuits
Oreos
Biscoff
Here are the final results:
- Milk Chocolate Hobnob
- Milk Chocolate Digestive
- Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Ginger Nuts
- Plain Digestive
- Bourbon
- Shortbread
- Oreos
- Malted Milk
- Nice
I also asked a friend, and fellow biscuit enthusiast, to give their top ten with a brief write-up. Here it is:
1. Chocolate hobnobs. The biscuit that does it all. Sweet, savoury, at a stretch you could call it a breakfast. The best of all. One of the few, if not the only, biscuits I’d buy even if they weren’t on offer.
2. Chocolate digestives. Like the hobnob, it’s a biscuit for all occasions. The oatiness edges the wheat base, though, to the top spot. Plus point for this over the chocolate hobnob is the price point due to quality own-brand versions.
3. Custard creams. Any biscuit that is two biscuits rammed together is a positive in my mind. Often coming side by side in a packet, it’s a nice excuse to eat an even number of them so the packet folds flat.
4. Bourbons. Has the same benefits as the custard cream, but I personally prefer the creaminess of the custard to the chocolate style of the bourbon.
5. Plain hobnob. An incredible biscuit, and would likely be my top if they hadn’t made a chocolate one. But if I have a plain one, there’s always that thought of “I should have bought a chocolate one”.
6. Chocolate chip cookies. Moreish and tasty, often crumbly and easy to pop in whole. A very nice biscuit that can be eaten on any occasion.
7. Biscoff. Always have that feeling of being in a posh hotel, and leave you fancying more. The custard cream style version is a great invention, too.
8. Oreo. I’m not a ‘split it and dunk it’ kind of person, but another that does the job of hitting that sweet spot. The golden version would be my favourite variation, but the standard would be 8th for me.
9. Viennese finger. Had that similar posh feeling about it that a Biscoff does. Light, delicate and moreish. As someone who prefers more ‘bite’ to my biscuit, this doesn’t hit that mark, but it does on the sweetness.
10. Ginger nut. Sometimes they can be a bit hard, but they’re a fantastic biscuit once the packet has been open for a couple of days and they soften. Versatile, makes a brilliant base to a cheesecake and can easily be munched whilst watching TV. A solid top 10 biscuit without ever truly challenging the top tier, in my opinion.
Worst. Rich tea. If someone took a digestive biscuit but made it out of cardboard, they’d have made a rich tea. Of every biscuit on the list, this is the only one I wouldn’t want more than one of. I probably wouldn’t even want one. How someone taste-tested that recipe and said “nailed it” beggars belief.
So that’s what my buddy says. What about you? What is your favourite biscuit? Let me know in the comments.
What I’m Doing
Listening: Prime: Chess Team Book 0 (A Prequel) by Jeremy Robinson.
Watching: Troll 2 (Netflix).
Reading: nothing at the moment.
This Week’s Hill To Die On
You don’t owe random strangers your time. If you see someone having an accident or someone in distress, the right thing to do is help in any way you can. It might be through contacting emergency services or something more immediate and practical. You don’t owe these people your time, but it’s the right thing to do.
No, I’m talking about people approaching you on the street for all sorts of various causes, or cold callers. They are not entitled to your time. You don’t have to stop for them. “No” is a complete sentence.
Financial Update
Assets
Premium Bonds: £23,000.00.
Stocks and Shares ISA: £126,455.71.
Fuck It Fund: £1.61.
Pensions: £109,798.40.
Residential Property Value: £243,430.00.
Total Assets: £502,685.72.
Debts
Residential Mortgage: £174,874.05.
Total Debts: £174,874.05.
Total Wealth: £327,811.67.
The Not-Quite-Absurd Appeal of LEGO Churn
Every so often, I catch myself researching something that, on any sensible reading, really shouldn’t make sense. Someone mentions an idea in passing, I dismiss it immediately, and then an hour later I’ve gone full detective mode, searching forums, doing rough maths on scrap paper and wondering whether I’ve stumbled into an overlooked financial loophole.
This week’s obsession is LEGO churn. I don’t know if that’s what it’s actually called, or even if it has a specific name, but it’s what I’m calling it.
LEGO Churn is, in short, the act of buying LEGO purely to sell it again, not because you want the LEGO, but because of everything that comes with it: points, cashback, travel rewards, gifts-with-purchase, and general financial weirdness.
It feels like monetising childhood, but in a detached, entirely grown-up, entirely FI-adjacent way.
Before I explain the premise, I need to first explain a couple of other things: Insider Points and Avios.
Insider Points
When you buy LEGO, you can register your set for Insider Points, 20 per set. It’s not a huge amount, but it adds up. The real way to earn these points is by buying them directly from LEGO. You earn 8 points per £1 spent, and 800 points can then be redeemed for £5 credit. It works out as a 5% reward.
Avios
Avios is the air miles reward scheme with British Airways, but the points can be used for all sorts of things, from hotels to flights, to days out, and more. If you use the BA e-shopping portal, you can log in to the LEGO site from there and earn Avios on your purchase.
If you spend £150.00 or more at the LEGO website, you earn 10 Avios per £1 spent. Ok, but what is the spending power of Avios?
On the Avios site right now is an advert stating you can get a return, off-peak, flight to Dubrovnik for 23,500 Avios, plus associated taxes and fees. So if you spend £300 on LEGO, you get 3,000 Avios and 2,400 Insider Points. Over time, these transactions start to really build up. As of now, we have over 270,000 Avios points.
As I stated before, it’s not just flights you can get with your Avios. You can redeem your points for things like Pizza Express vouchers. A £30 voucher costs 5,985 Avios.
So, back to LEGO Churn…
The premise is that you buy a desirable LEGO set when there’s a decent promotion running, like a double points event, or one of those times when LEGO throws in something “exclusive” with qualifying purchases, and before the delivery driver has even closed their van door, you’ve already listed the set online for resale. Someone buys it, hopefully for close to what you paid, and you keep all the incentives.
That’s it. That’s the whole play.
Nothing gets built.
Nothing gets kept.
The LEGO never fulfils its destiny.
It’s a little tragic for the bricks, if one thinks about it too deeply.
But the potential logic is hard to ignore. LEGO Insider points convert back into store credit quite easily and, during double points events, the return is actually quite compelling. Then there’s the gift-with-purchase items; the small sets you can’t buy outright, that exist only during a promotional window and suddenly have resale value because collectors become irrationally sentimental about scarcity. These little sets routinely go for £20–£60 on the resale market, despite effectively costing nothing. With my recent Enterprise set the GWP is selling for £80+ at the moment.
That alone creates an interesting equation. If you sell the main set at, say, £5–£10 below retail, and then sell the promotional freebie for £30 or more, you’ve made a net positive return before even factoring in points, cashback portals, Avios conversions, or any other stacking opportunities. So you’re buying something, selling it, not using it, not keeping it, and ending up ahead. Almost alchemical.
Part of my amusement is how seriously some people take the condition of the box. I’ve browsed listings where someone has photographed corners individually, as if they were cataloguing archaeological fragments. These buyers worry about dents the way mortgage underwriters worry about payday loans. Perfection seems mandatory.
Funny tangent about Amazon being stupid AF. We bought some packing wrap, you know, that stuff that some people insist on wrapping around their suitcases for some bizarre reason. Anyway, we’ve wrapped up some of our LEGO sets that we’re storing for sale later down the line. But anyway, before my tangent goes on a tangent of its own, Amazon delivered this wrap, which was itself wrapped in plastic, inside a cardboard box that had protective packing paper inside. What in the fuckmothering shit does plastic packing wrap need protecting from?
Anyway, back to our regular scheduled programming…
I just find the whole concept of LEGO Churn funny.
I haven’t done any of this yet, but I keep circling it in my mind. There’s a version of events where I try it once, make a small profit, and decide it was worth the experiment. There’s also another version, far more realistic, where I end up with several unopened LEGO sets quietly judging me from the corner of a room, slowly depreciating while I promise I’ll list them “at the weekend”.
Schrödinger’s LEGO
The idea of deliberately refusing to open a LEGO box feels faintly philosophical. You’re buying something designed for creativity and play, but you’re explicitly denying yourself the playful part. You could build a spaceship, a city, a botanical garden, but instead you’re harvesting the cashback equivalent of adult joy. There’s something both sensible and sad about that.
Yet the underlying logic remains seductive. If the net outcome is discounted flights, or covering a hotel night, or simply shaving a little cost off life’s occasional luxuries, then maybe it’s worth leaning into the absurdity. It’s essentially a way of extracting value from consumer behaviour without actually consuming anything. A kind of financial aikido.
I suspect at some point I’ll cave and try it. And if it goes wrong, and I end up surrounded by untouched LEGO sets, then perhaps I’ll finally give in, build one, and remind myself that not everything has to be optimised.
But for now, the idea is just sitting there quietly tempting, quietly ridiculous, and oddly rational if you squint at it long enough.
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:
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Great blog again. Milk chocolate Hob nobs, baby!
Had to stop myself buying some today!