Part 322: Four Lions and a Turkey

Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE. Christmas. Four Lions. Turkey. Football. Let’s just get into it…

Christmas

Christmas has a unique ability to make otherwise rational adults behave in ways that would be deeply concerning at any other time of year.  Put the same people in a supermarket in March, and they’re somewhat calm, deliberate, and on the brink of being vaguely competent. Put them in the same supermarket three days before Christmas, and suddenly it’s a cross between The Hunger Games and the hallway scene in Oldboy, but with trolleys and a haunting lack of spatial awareness. People are buying industrial quantities of food as if the nation is about to be sealed in for winter. People who haven’t cooked a roast since last December are now attempting culinary feats that would make a professional kitchen nervous.

Look, I get it. I really do. There’s pressure. Tradition. Expectation. The feeling that Christmas must be done properly, whatever that means.  Sometimes this pressure comes from within, and sometimes from the perceived pressure from what you remember from childhood, and sometimes it’s unfair pressure from toxic family.  

For us, the actual bit that matters, spending time with my parents, is genuinely great. That part isn’t the problem. The problem is everything we pile on top of it. The big shop. The overambitious menu. The pre-clean, the post-clean, the low-level stress hum that runs through the whole thing like background radiation.  If stress were an energy source, there’d be no need for fusion power.

What makes it even more ridiculous is that I know my family would be absolutely fine if we scaled it back. Fewer dishes. Less faff. A shorter day. No one is sitting there with a clipboard marking us down for insufficient roast parsnips. And yet the pressure persists.  Because it’s not coming from them. It’s coming from inside the house.  From habit, from comparison, and from the belief that Christmas is something you perform rather than experience.  I get this on an intellectual level, and as an autistic person, I get that it’s illogical, but there’s still that bullshit pressure.

So we push ourselves into mild burnout in the name of festivity, then act surprised when we’re shattered and slightly irritable by mid-afternoon.

Gifts

Gifts slot neatly into this same category of well-meaning madness.

Somewhere along the line, “thoughtful” became synonymous with “more stuff”. Stuff bought not because it fits someone, but because you can’t not hand over a thing. So you wander the aisles, or scroll endlessly online, looking for something, anything, that will fulfil the social contract.

I once read a line that stuck with me: when you buy something, you should already have a plan for how it leaves your life. I may be mangling the phrasing, but the idea is solid. If the only realistic future for an object is a cupboard, a drawer, or a landfill, perhaps it doesn’t need to be made, and purchased, in the first place.

Christmas is the peak season for objects with no long-term prospects.  I wonder how many gifts are bought, wrapped, unwrapped, stored, and eventually disposed of without being used.  I’m guessing it’s a shocking proportion of presents.  So much useless, unused, shit.

I’m thinking about novelty gifts that are funny once and decorations that live in a box for 51 weeks a year; things that require the recipient to pretend enthusiasm while mentally calculating where on earth they’re going to put it.

One of the most bizarre presents we ever received was a soup bowl each, with a spoon that rests in a groove at the side.  A few weeks before, we’d seen these exact bowls on sale in Poundland.  For £1.  This was one of those times when a gift was an insult, and no gift would have been preferable.  Anyway, those who gave this to Oana and me were awful people for several reasons, and thankfully, we don’t have to interact with them anymore. 

Anyway, none of this is malicious. It’s just momentum. The conveyor belt of Christmas where the goal becomes having done it rather than whether it was worth doing.  It’s performative and unnecessary.  Do what genuinely makes you happy, rather than what you think would make a good social media post.  

We also need to talk about the financial hangover. Spending money you don’t really have to buy things no one truly needs, all to meet expectations that mostly exist in your own head. The decorations come down, the tree goes out, and the credit card statement turns up like an Avatar sequel no one asked for.

It’s a strange outcome for a season supposedly about peace and goodwill.  The irony is that the bits people actually remember aren’t the excess. They’re the conversations. The laughter. The moments where no one is rushing, hosting, performing, or mentally running through a to-do list.

A simpler meal, eaten without stress, beats a culinary marathon fuelled by obligation. A smaller, more deliberate gift beats a pile of stuff that immediately needs managing. A shorter, calmer visit beats enduring something just because the calendar says you should.

There is no Christmas tribunal. No prizes for exhaustion. No moral victory in debt, burnout, or emotional self-harm wrapped in tinsel.

Most of the pressure is self-inflicted. Which is both the bad news and the good news.  You can decide what enough looks like, in food, gifts, money, time, and emotional labour, and stop there. You can choose presence over performance. Intention over inertia. Sanity over spectacle.

And if that means a quieter, cheaper, less traditionally impressive Christmas?

Honestly, that sounds like bliss.

Our Christmas: Grief, and Tradition

It was always going to be a strange one for us this year, having just lost my Nan on December 12th.  She leaves a massive hole at the heart of the family on my Mom’s side.  She would have wanted everyone to have a good time still, but grief doesn’t obey logic.  We still miss her, and still worry about the impact it’s having on those who were closer to her.  I used to be very close to my Gran, but since I moved away for university, I didn’t see her as much.  Then, adulting and all the obligations that come with it get in the way.  She wasn’t alone, though.  She had seven adult children, each with their own partners, and children, and their children in turn.  Between her kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids, we’re talking dozens and dozens of people, and she did have multiple people visiting her each day.  

But yeah, I do feel guilty for not spending more time with her recently.

When I was much younger, I had a tradition with my Mom that we would meet on Christmas Eve and go for something to eat.  This tradition was paused for a while when I was at university, and when I started working and occasionally was scheduled for the 24th December.  This year, we picked that tradition up again, but on the 23rd instead.  It was nice resuming this again.

Another tradition for Oana and me is that we watch Four Lions on Christmas Day.  We’ve done this for years now.  I’m not quite sure how it became a tradition, but it has.  I think part of it is because it was filmed in Sheffield, and we know most of the locations.  It’s funny, and a little jarring, when you see characters walking down one street and turning a corner, only to find themselves on a street at the other side of the city.  This was more so in the latter part of the film, which is set in London, but filmed no more than a kilometre from where we live.  

Our Christmas Lunch

Is it Christmas Lunch or Christmas Dinner?  The only correct answer is lunch.  We tried to make ours as simple as possible to reduce stress, but it still ended up being a full-on production.  We had a turkey joint from M&S that was wrapped in bacon and came with pork and chestnut stuffing.  It was amazing.  We made some roast potatoes and some mash.  There’s a green veggie mixture I make as well, which always goes down well.  I use a saute pan and melt some butter before adding sliced leek, garden peas, and some cabbage.  Add some salt, pepper, and veggie stock, and just cook it down.  It’s amazing.  We had that with some Yorkshire puddings and gravy.

On Boxing Day we made some sandwiches which were layered from bottom to top as follows; bread, gravy, turkey, cranberry sauce, leftover veg mixture, crushed roast potatoes, mint sauce, gravy, bread.  These were the greatest sandwiches ever made.

We also made a cheesecake using a mix of gingernut and digestive biscuits for the base.  We had whipped mascarpone with fresh orange juice and orange zest, and the whole thing was topped with fresh raspberries.  This also went down well.  

Did you have anything out of the ordinary for lunch? Any disasters or triumphs? Let me know in the comments.

Monopoly

As we had my Dad over on Christmas and Boxing Day, a good amount of time was spent playing Monopoly, specifically the Norwegian version we bought when the three of us were there in the summer. It does mean we have to translate the chance and community chest cards, but it’s all good fun.

The biggest laughs, though, were when I had to remind my Dad when we were negotiating a trade that I would be the one choosing his nursing home. Later, he returned the favour by reminding me he could always rewrite his will.

Weekly Update

It’s difficult to think about a weekly update at this time because the gap between Christmas and New Year is just bizarre.  Time has no meaning, and all normal behaviour goes out of the window.  If you want a cup of coffee at 9pm, go for it.  A bar of chocolate for breakfast is perfectly acceptable, and eating an entire cheesecake just because it’s there is practically expected.  

We had a good bike ride in the evening on Boxing Day.  It was from the Sheffield Critical Mass bike ride group, and it’s always fun riding around with the lights and music blasting out.  

On Saturday we went for a ride out to Forge Dam and witnessed a nasty accident.  A guy came off his bike and fell down a steep embankment into a stream.  It was a good seven or eight meter drop and he wasn’t wearing a helmet.  Luckily he avoided a head injury, but he did something to his leg.  A group of us stopped to assist, and I offered to call an ambulance, but he insisted on no ambulance.  I suspect when the adrenaline wears off, he will be in some pain and probably need a visit to A&E.  He was riding with a friend at least, so he had someone to help him home.  

What I’m Doing

Listening: Callsign: King – Chess Team Book 3.5: by Jeremy Robinson and Sean Ellis.

Watching: Amber Alert (Netflix), Four Lions (Bluray). 

Reading: nothing at the moment. 

Financial Update

Assets

Premium Bonds: £23,000.00.

Stocks and Shares ISA: £126,980.57.

Fuck It Fund: £1.61.

Pensions: £110,930.83.

Residential Property Value: £243,430.00. 

Total Assets: £504,343.01.

Debts

Residential Mortgage: £174,874.05. 

Total Debts: £174,874.05.

Total Wealth: £329,468.96.

2025 Financial Update

Below is a table showing the difference in my finances from the first post of 2025 to this, the last post of 2025.

Outside of the £20k I deposited into my ISA, it grew a further £16k on top of that.  All in all my total wealth increased by over £50k, which is an 18.8% increase.  A similar increase in 2026 would see my total wealth stand at almost £400,000.  

2026 Goals

At some point, setting goals stops being aspirational and starts being confrontational.

Once you strip away the decorations, the planners, the colour-coded apps, and the reassuring sense that thinking about change counts as progress, you’re left with a much simpler question:

Am I actually prepared to behave differently?

For 2026, I’m done pretending the answer is “probably” or “in theory”.

Let’s start with the most obvious one; the one that doesn’t benefit from clever framing.

I’m about 116.5kg. By the end of 2026, I want to be 100kg.

This is not a mystery. There is no plot twist coming. I don’t need a new diet, a wearable device, or a revolutionary insight about metabolism. I need fewer calories going in than coming out, repeatedly, for a long time.

Sixteen and a half kilos in a year is not dramatic. It’s not a Rocky montage. It’s just enough restraint, often enough, to stop pretending that stress eating is self-care and that movement only counts if it’s optimised.

If I’m still the same weight next December, it won’t be because the goal was unreasonable. It’ll be because I kept choosing short-term comfort and then acting surprised by the long-term outcome.

Which brings me neatly to money, because the psychology is identical.

The ISA goal for 2026 is £20,000. Fully subscribed. No excuses. No “I’ll catch up later”.

ISAs don’t fill themselves. They require boring, grown-up decisions made consistently, even when a new set of coloured plastic building blocks from a small town in Denmark is available. They require resisting the urge to treat spare cash like a reward for surviving the week.

The real enemy here isn’t lack of income. It’s drift. That quiet, deadly assumption that there’s loads of time left, so today doesn’t really matter.

It does. Annoyingly so.

And yes, this goal is directly dependent on making a success of my new self-employed venture starting in late January. Which means there’s nowhere to hide. No employer to blame. No guaranteed baseline. Just output, consistency, and whether I take the work seriously enough to deserve the outcome.

Closely linked to that is the bigger, rounder, more psychologically loaded number: £400,000 total wealth.

I’m under no illusion that this number has magical properties. It won’t unlock a new personality or cause a choir of angels to appear. It’s arbitrary, but it’s useful as a psychological boost.

It tells me whether I’m building momentum or just maintaining the illusion of progress while telling myself I’m “doing fine”. It tells me whether compounding is actually being fed, or whether I’m quietly hoping markets and luck will compensate for half-hearted execution.

If I don’t hit it, it won’t be because the world conspired against me. It’ll be because I didn’t push hard enough on the few levers that actually matter.

And then there’s the book…

The thing that keeps getting edged out by admin, mood, timing, and the seductive lie that I’ll write better later.  So here’s the rule: 3,500 words per week.

That’s it.  The only way to write a book is to actually do the writing.

3,500 words.  Per week.  Every week.

That’s about 500 words a day, which is deeply unromantic and precisely the point. Writing is not a mood. It’s not a performance. It’s a practice.

Some weeks, the words will be good. Some weeks they’ll be serviceable. Some weeks they’ll be absolute rubbish. All of them count.

Because the only version of this book that definitely never gets finished is the one that waits for optimal conditions.

What ties all of this together; the weight, money, wealth, writing, is the same uncomfortable truth:

None of these goals are blocked by knowledge. They’re blocked by behaviour.

I know what to eat.  I know how ISAs work.  I know how wealth accumulates.  I know how to write 500 words a day.

The gap isn’t understanding. It’s execution.

And execution is dull. It’s repetitive. It’s doing the thing on days where there’s no emotional payoff and no immediate feedback, just the quiet knowledge that skipping it makes future-me’s life harder.  It’s investing in the process rather than just hoping for the result.

So 2026 isn’t about reinvention. It’s about closing the gap between what I say I want and what my daily choices actually support.

Sheffield Wednesday Football Club

There’s a familiar response that pops up any time I express discomfort about the direction Sheffield Wednesday FC might be heading.

“You’re just looking for excuses not to go.”
“Football’s changed, get over it.”
“If you cared, you’d still turn up.”

Which is interesting, because it manages to be wrong, lazy, and revealing all at once.

I don’t avoid Wednesday because I don’t care. I’m cautious because I care. Deeply. Probably more than is healthy, if we’re being honest.

If I didn’t care, this would all be very easy. I’d shrug, say “that’s modern football”, and let the club drift into whatever glossy, soulless shape was most convenient. Detachment is effortless. Indifference is relaxing.

The rumours doing the rounds, that James Bord is fronting the preferred bidder consortium, have understandably sparked a bit of hope. God knows we’re all traumatised enough at this point that any sign of change feels like oxygen.

And to be clear, I don’t have a particular issue with Bord himself. This isn’t about personalities or LinkedIn vibes. It’s not even about whether he’s “the right man”.  It’s about the money.  It’s always about the money, because football ownership doesn’t work on good intentions and nice interviews. It works on capital. And where that capital comes from matters, whether people like that conversation or not.

This idea that asking questions about funding sources is somehow disloyal is one of the more bizarre pieces of fan logic to emerge in recent years. As if blind acceptance is the purest form of love.  It isn’t. It’s just easier.

We’re at a genuine crossroads with Wednesday now. Not a footballing one as we’ve had plenty of those and usually chosen the wrong turning, but an existential one.

It’s not enough to say “well, at least it’s not Chansiri”.  Yes, Dejphon Chansiri needs to go. That’s a given. But replacing him with another opaque ownership structure, backed by money we’re apparently not supposed to ask about, isn’t a moral upgrade. It’s just a change of wallpaper.

If this consortium’s funding traces back to countries with appalling human rights records, like regimes where exploitation, repression, or outright brutality are brushed aside as cultural quirks, then that matters. To me, and to plenty of others who just don’t always shout about it.

And no, this isn’t about being sanctimonious. It’s about lines.  Everyone has them, whether they admit it or not. Mine just happens to be before I start excusing things I’d otherwise condemn, simply because the badge on the shirt happens to be my club.

The Soul of Wednesday Matters.

That phrase seems to irritate some people, which probably tells you everything you need to know. This club isn’t just a weekend distraction or a line on a balance sheet. It’s history, community, and inheritance. It’s something people pass down, not flip for profit.

If safeguarding that makes me inconvenient or unpopular, so be it.  I don’t want a club that wins while I’m quietly doing mental gymnastics to justify who’s paying for it. I don’t want success that comes bundled with a requirement to look the other way.  And I certainly don’t want to be told that caring about ethics is the same thing as not caring about football.

If anything, it’s the opposite.

If I didn’t love this club, I wouldn’t bother asking hard questions. I wouldn’t worry about where it’s heading. I wouldn’t be prepared to step back, even temporarily, if the cost of involvement was complicity in something I fundamentally disagree with.

This isn’t about excuses, it’s about standards.  It’s about how much you are willing to sacrifice for your beliefs.

Getting rid of the current owner is only half the job. The harder, braver part is making sure what replaces him is something we can stand behind without flinching.

In the long run, league positions blur. Owners change. Eras pass, but once you sell the soul of a club, it’s remarkably difficult to buy it back, and I’d quite like to still recognise Wednesday when all this dust settles.

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

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