Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE.
Weekly Update
Another week down, another week closer to FI. Work is ramping up even more, and I’m learning a lot about time management. It’s easy to manage time when you’re on a salary, and you know you’ll get paid anyway, but when you are putting the time in without that guarantee, it can lead to some frustrating situations.
It’s at times like these that I’m reminded of the 62nd Rule of Acquisition;
“The riskier the road, the greater the profit.”
I’m enjoying much of the new work situation, with being able to manage my time and work with much more autonomy. I just need the money to start coming in.
On Saturday, I went for my first solo bike ride in a long time. I covered over 40km, and it was mostly an enjoyable experience. What never ceases to infuriate me is how many people just walk four or five abreast on a dedicated cycle lane. At one point, I was cycling along such a lane, which also has a pedestrian lane alongside. A group of lads, maybe 18 years old, were walking towards me on the cycle lane. The rest of the path was empty. As I approached them, I refused to slow or veer off the cycle lane. They saw me coming but acted as though I’d insulted their ancestors.
On that same stretch, someone was walking in the same direction as me, but maybe fifty meters ahead. Suddenly, for no reason, with their head in their phone, they stepped into the cycle lane. Had I been a second further along, I would have flattened them.
Moving on to a completely different subject, I’ve started becoming aware of some verbal tics that I need to stamp out in this new venture. As I’m working as a broker, I’m dealing with cases that are generally more complex than the vanilla cases I would get at Lloyds. I really need to stop saying things like;
“It’ll be straightforward.”
“I don’t see any problems.”
“We’ll get this done quickly.”
“Leave it with me.”
I need to stop promising outcomes and start promising actions, i.e. effort, attention, and transparency.
We all use these phrases, though, and I’ve noticed myself using them a little more than usual recently. It feels decisive. It feels reassuring. It feels like leadership. It’s something else, though; It’s borrowing from your future self with interest.
Overpromising is a short-term loan taken out against tomorrow’s performance. You get an immediate hit of approval. The other person relaxes. You look capable. The room feels lighter. You’ve bought goodwill instantly.
But like any loan, the repayment date is already scheduled, and the interest rate is rarely attractive. The moment you overpromise, you create a fixed expectation. Not a flexible one. Not a “we’ll see how this develops.” You’ve locked in an outcome in someone else’s mind. You’ve effectively said, “Future Me has this covered.”
Morgan Freeman voice: “Future him did not have this covered.”
Future You has to deal with reality. Future You has to deal with missing documents, slow third parties, regulatory friction, unexpected complications, human unpredictability, shifting criteria, delayed responses, and the thousand tiny variables that don’t care how confident you sounded last week.
When performance fails to perfectly match the promise, the interest starts compounding.
You don’t just have to deliver the work. You have to explain the gap, soften disappointment, and manage emotion. You have to try to defend your past self whilst protecting your future self. You’re paying twice; once in effort and once in credibility. That’s the hidden interest.
What makes overpromising so seductive is that the cost is delayed. The reward is immediate. Humans are wired to prefer immediate reward over future stability. It’s the same impulse that drives lifestyle inflation, bad debt, and “I’ll deal with it later” decision-making.
You feel powerful today. And the more often you do it, the more leveraged your reputation becomes. Credibility works like capital, where each promise is a liability, and each delivery is a payment.
If your liabilities consistently exceed your capacity to perform, you become overleveraged. And once trust begins to wobble, it wobbles quickly.
The phrase “But you said…” is the professional equivalent of a bank calling in a loan.
Underpromising, by contrast, is the opposite strategy. It’s refusing to take on unnecessary debt.
It’s saying, “There may be hurdles”, “I’ll confirm once I’ve reviewed everything”, or “I can’t guarantee the outcome, but I’ll guarantee transparency and effort.”
What you’re doing is protecting future you. You’re creating a margin for delays and things that just… happen.
The bonus arrives when things go well, as they often do when managed properly, you end up delivering beyond expectation rather than scrambling to meet an inflated one.
Professionalism rather than pessimism…
There’s also a deeper link between this and respect. Professionalism isn’t about being friends. It isn’t about liking everyone you interact with. It isn’t about personality chemistry.
It’s about restraint. It’s about not letting ego push you into declarations you can’t control. It’s about not speaking beyond your evidence. It’s about not inflating certainty to impress.
And it’s about treating people with baseline respect, even when tensions rise.
You can disagree without belittling, and you can assert without patronising. You can also correct without humiliating.
When people overpromise and then react defensively to scrutiny, it’s usually ego protecting the loan it never should have taken out in the first place. Professional discipline means you don’t take that loan.
You let your performance speak. You let your record build quietly. You don’t need theatre, because consistency compounds.
Overpromising is like living off a credit card and hoping next month’s income covers it. Sometimes it does. But the stress accumulates.
Underpromising and overdelivering is investing steadily and letting the returns do the talking. It doesn’t look flashy. It looks measured. Controlled. Slightly conservative.
But over time, the difference is enormous. One approach creates anxiety and reputational volatility. The other creates stability and long-term trust.
You don’t need to be the loudest voice in the room. You don’t need to be the hero in every interaction. You don’t need people to walk away dazzled.
You need alignment between what you say and what you produce. Every time you overpromise, you sign a contract with your future self, and your future self deserves better than unnecessary debt.
Respect should not be earned, but it can be lost…
There’s a phrase that gets thrown around like it’s carved into stone tablets: “Respect is earned.” It’s usually delivered with a stern nod, as if the speaker has just channelled ancient wisdom. But the more I hear it, the more I think it’s largely nonsense, or at least, dangerously misunderstood.
What people often mean when they say “respect is earned” is actually “status is earned.” Authority might be earned. Trust might be earned. Admiration, certainly. But basic human respect? That should be the default setting.
If you walk into a room, whether it’s a workplace, a client meeting, a GP surgery, or a queue at the Co-op, you should not have to perform a qualifying routine to be treated with basic courtesy. You shouldn’t need a certain job title, salary, accent, or level of confidence to avoid being spoken down to. Respect isn’t a prize for achievement. It’s the baseline of civilised interaction.
The idea that respect must be earned often becomes a thinly disguised excuse for treating people poorly until they prove themselves “worthy.” It’s hierarchical. It’s ego-driven. And more often than not, it says far more about the person withholding respect than the person supposedly failing to earn it. It’s Donald Trump energy.
Because here’s the thing: it costs you nothing to be respectful. You can speak calmly, listen with attention, avoid sarcasm designed to belittle, and disagree without it becoming a personal attack. None of this requires the other person to have demonstrated brilliance, wealth, or authority. It simply requires you to choose not to act like a bellend.
In professional life, especially, this matters. You don’t have to like everyone you deal with. You don’t have to be mates with colleagues, clients, suppliers, or managers. But professionalism is simply respect with a suit on. It is the minimum viable standard of adult behaviour. It’s great when you build long-lasting friendships with people you meet through work. What I’ve found is that those friendships tend to endure when you have shared interests that exist outside of work, but I digress.
When someone says “respect is earned,” what they’re often doing is positioning themselves as the gatekeeper. They’re setting up a system where they start from zero and decide who deserves decency. That’s backwards. The starting point should be 100%. Respect is freely given on first contact. It’s there to be lost, not awarded.
If someone lies, manipulates, bullies, cheats, or repeatedly behaves like a tool, then yes, they can absolutely forfeit that respect. You don’t have to tolerate nonsense. But that’s a response to behaviour. It’s not a pre-emptive withholding. And it’s vital to remember that in a work setting, you can lose respect for someone, but you still have to behave professionally.
And there’s a deeper practical truth here. When you begin from a place of automatic respect, you create stability. Conversations become clearer. Boundaries become easier to hold. Conflict becomes more manageable. You’re not constantly jockeying for dominance or validation. You’re simply interacting as two adults.
Ironically, the people most obsessed with demanding that respect be earned are often the ones quickest to feel disrespected. Because if respect is transactional, then each disagreement feels like theft. Every challenge feels like rebellion, and being corrected feels like humiliation.
There’s strength in being the person who offers respect freely. It shows confidence. It shows self-control. It shows you don’t need to belittle someone to feel taller.
Respect isn’t earned.
Trust, authority, and reputation are earned.
Respect is given. And if someone acts like a bellend, they can lose it just as freely as they received it.
Do you want to help me earn a little cash for free? Of course you do!
Now that I’m self-employed, I’ve signed up with a few businesses that offer services that assist with getting a mortgage. One such service comes from Check My File, which brings together your credit report from multiple sources into a detailed breakdown of your credit history.
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By signing up for the trial period, you’ll help me out with a small commission even if you cancel within that trial period.
Important points:
1. This code is for a free 7-day trial for those who have not had an account with Check My File before.
2. You can cancel anytime with no penalty.
3. If you do not cancel within the 7-day trial period, you will be charged £14.99 until you cancel.
4. It will ask for payment details, but if you cancel within the 7-day trial period, you will not be charged (assuming you have not had an account with them before).
5. I will earn a small commission from Check My File for each person who signs up for the free trial, whether they continue to a paid membership or not.
6. I do not get to see your credit report. It is private to you, unless you choose to share it.
7. To make sure the code tracks, please complete your sign-up in one sitting i.e. don’t close the tab and start again later.
8. Make sure you download your report before cancelling.
9. Yes, this is a shameless plug, but my last wage was paid in October.
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Obliteration Is Not a Peace Plan
Modern warfare is a different beast. The deaths of thousands can be executed with the push of a button from an operator controlling a drone on the other side of the planet. There is also a particular kind of theatre that accompanies modern warfare. It comes with dramatic verbs. Obliterate. Annihilate. Erase. It is designed to sound decisive, final, and even biblical.
And right now, we are watching that theatre play out again as the Orange Dipshit strikes again.
The United States and Israel have launched direct attacks against Iran, escalating an already volatile region into something far more combustible. Donny Trump has spoken openly about obliterating Iranian military capacity and annihilating its naval forces. The language is not cautious. It is not restrained. It is not the language of someone attempting to lower the temperature. It is the language of domination. It’s the language of someone desperately compensating for something. The important point is that domination is not peace.
Bombs Don’t Build Stability
There is a persistent myth in geopolitics that overwhelming force produces long-term security. That if you hit hard enough, fast enough, decisively enough, your opponent simply collapses into compliance. To a degree, maybe they do. Maybe the people just bide their time until the occupying force decides to leave. History has demonstrated that uncomfortable truth in recent years.
Military strikes may degrade infrastructure. They may destroy hardware. They may eliminate commanders. What they do not destroy is grievance. In fact, they often fertilise it. National humiliation does not produce reconciliation; it produces radicalisation. Every missile that lands does not just destroy a target; it creates a narrative, and narratives outlast rubble.
If the stated goal is peace, then the method of escalating violence is intellectually incoherent. In the same way you can’t gamble your way out of debt, you cannot bomb your way to trust. You cannot threaten annihilation and expect de-escalation in return. You cannot shout someone into submission and call it diplomacy.
The Rhetoric of Strongmen
The language matters, and words have power. When a president speaks of obliteration and annihilation, he is not merely describing a tactical objective. He is projecting an identity. It is the lexicon of strongmen; leaders who frame conflict as spectacle, who present destruction as proof of strength, who equate maximal aggression with credibility.
But strength and stability are not the same thing, in the same way that respect and admiration can be separate, as I discussed earlier.
Strong rhetoric can win applause at rallies. It can dominate headlines. It can make a leader appear decisive. What it does not do is create durable peace in one of the most historically fragile regions on earth.
And let’s be honest: this is not a video game. There is no reset button. No clean ending screen. There are civilians in Tehran. Sailors in the Gulf. Families who will absorb the shockwaves of decisions made thousands of miles away. When leaders speak casually about annihilation, it reveals something deeper: a willingness to reduce entire populations to abstractions.
It’s like Trump is playing Civilization, one of my favourite games of all time. Is he actually worried about nuclear proliferation, or is there another agenda at play?
Escalation Is a Ladder With No Top
The most dangerous illusion in moments like this is the belief that escalation can be tightly controlled. That strikes can be “limited.” That retaliation can be “managed.” That regional actors will remain neatly contained. Conflict rarely respects those assumptions.
Iran retaliates. Allies become involved. Proxy forces activate. Shipping lanes destabilise. Energy markets spike. The entire region shifts into a more brittle posture. Each step feels reactive, justified, and necessary. And yet each step climbs further up a ladder that becomes increasingly difficult to climb down. Peace requires off-ramps. War rhetoric removes them.
Peace Is Not Won Through Obliteration
There is a harsh clarity here: destroying military assets does not erase political reality. Nations do not disappear because a president declares they should. And threats of total annihilation do not create legitimacy; they create fear.
Fear is not the foundation of peace. Peace is built on containment, diplomacy, incentives, and pressure balanced with restraint. It is built on preventing the next war, not fighting the current one.
When leaders default to the language of obliteration, they are not demonstrating strategic depth. They are revealing strategic impatience, which can be expensive in geopolitics.
If this escalation continues, it will not be remembered as the moment peace was secured. It will be remembered as the moment another long chapter of instability was opened loudly, theatrically, and with words that sounded strong but solved very little.
There are a few times when military conflict is justified. I can’t say I think this is one of those times.
What I’m Doing
Listening: Cannibal: Chess Team Book 7 by Jeremy Robinson and Sean Ellis.
Watching: The Tourist (BBC iPlayer).
Reading: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Financial Update
Assets
Premium Bonds: £3,000.00.
Stocks and Shares ISA: £133,633.86.
Fuck It Fund: £5,001.62.
Pensions: £118,915.57.
Residential Property Value: £243,430.00.
Total Assets: £503,981.05.
Debts
Residential Mortgage: £174,369.33.
Total Debts: £174,369.33.
Total Wealth: £329,611.72.
I have finally gotten around to moving my pension from my IMH employment, and with that, the last thread connecting me to them is cut. The funds were transferred as cash, but I’ve not invested it yet. The transfer only completed on Friday, and I went to look at placing a deal on Saturday, which would complete Monday, but all this stuff kicking off in Iran gave me pause. I’ll wait and see what happens to unit prices next week, as I may get more for my money. It’s not that I’m trying to profit from war, as I was going to invest anyway; it just seemed like the sensible thing to do.
It will be interesting to see what impact this war has on the global economy. A prolonged conflict could push oil prices up, which in turn would have an impact on global shipping. This would then convert to higher prices for goods that have to be shipped long distance. If the Strait of Hormuz is closed, or otherwise rendered unsafe, it will add uncertainty to the markets. Approximately a quarter of oil transported by sea passes through this region.
Airline travel is also going to be affected by these “combat operations”. Flights will need to divert around the areas of conflict, which will lead to more fuel consumption and higher fares. A lot of questions in life can be answered when you follow the money. I’d be very interested to look at some trading accounts over the coming days and weeks. I’m not saying that this new conflict is a way of transferring wealth, but it wouldn’t be the first time.
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:
Biolink
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bio.link/davidscothern.