Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE. 

Weekly Update

The weather has been pretty great recently and I’ve taken full advantage. Up to and including May 29th, I’ve completed over twenty rides and covered over 400km. Being outside, especially along the canal and river with all the greenery and wildlife is so refreshing for mind and body.

It was just the other day that Oana and I were talking about how we never seem to have bad bike rides. We should have known better than to tempt fate…

On Saturday afternoon we went for a ride along one of our usual routes and part way between the city centre and Meadowhall, along the canal, Oana’s front tire went flat. It wasn’t a sudden blowout, she said she’d felt it start going weird a few minutes before. 

We looked online for anywhere close we could get a repair done, as we didn’t really have the right equipment (our own fault entirely) but the closest places were still a good walk away. We aimed for Meadowhall as they have bike pumps and whatnot, and along the way we passed a Smyth’s toy shop which sold bike pumps. The only one they sold was a cheap, plastic, piece of shit that did nothing. So back to square one. 

We did some Google-fu to see if there were any mobile bike repair companies working, but the one we found did not inspire any confidence when we spoke to them on the phone.

Our next attempt was to see if we could get on the tram back to the city centre. In Sheffield we have the Supertram network which is generally decent. Technically bikes aren’t allowed unless they can be folded up, but it was a quiet time and we thought we’d appeal to their mercy and see what could be done. They would only need to take Oana as I could ride home. Anyway, the tram was empty but the conductor would not even let us speak as he just kept banging on about bikes not being allowed. Fair enough, I suppose but he did not have to be so rude about it.

We decided that the best course was to just walk home. Buses don’t let bikes on, and we were nowhere near a train station. After about half an hour of walking we met two other cyclists who stopped and helped us repair the tire. It wasn’t a perfect repair, but it was inflated and sealed enough to get us home. Some people, like these cyclists, are great. Others, are not.

Another Media Appearance

The big news this week is that my recent interview with Sky News has been published on their site. They say any publicity is good publicity, but as a fellow poster on a forum I post on said:

I’ve never hidden my past struggles with gambling, and it’s now 2,501 days since I last placed a bet. It does feel a bit reductive to open with the words “Former gambling addict…” though.

Anyway, the article has generated some discussion online and I want to address some of the common thoughts people have had…

My Thoughts on the Sky News FIRE Article

First of all, I want to say thank you to Sky News for including me. The article was generally fair, balanced, and did something that many mainstream pieces about FIRE fail to do: it acknowledged both the benefits and the criticisms of the movement.

That said, there were a few points that I’d like to expand upon, because when you’re interviewed for an article, there simply isn’t room to include every nuance.

£20,000 Is Not Our Target

One figure that stood out in the article was the suggestion that Oana and I could live on around £20,000 per year. While that number is technically accurate, it’s important to understand what it represents. £20,000 is not our target lifestyle. It’s our minimum viable lifestyle.

It’s the amount we’d need to keep a roof over our heads, food in the cupboards, the bills paid, and the lights on. In other words, it’s the number we’d need to survive.

We don’t want to merely survive. We want to enjoy life.

Our actual spending target in retirement is higher than that because we want room for holidays, hobbies, experiences, helping family, continuing to adopt and look after elderly rescue cats, and all the other things that make life enjoyable, such as absurd amounts of LEGO.

The £20,000 figure is simply useful for planning because it tells us where the floor is. It’s a bit like when a football club says they just want to reach forty points; they want more, but the first goal is always survival.

We Aren’t Sacrificing Things We Want

Another common reaction whenever FIRE is discussed is that people assume those pursuing it are living lives of constant sacrifice. I understand why, but it’s not true.

The article mentioned that we don’t have children, don’t own a car, don’t smoke, and don’t drink alcohol. For some people, that sounds like a list of sacrifices. For us, it isn’t. This belief is putting the cart before the horse.

We don’t drink alcohol because we don’t particularly enjoy it. We don’t smoke because neither of us has any desire to. We don’t own a car because our lifestyle doesn’t require one. I’ve lived in Kelham Island since 2012, and between walking, cycling, trains, buses, and the occasional taxi, I’ve never felt the need to own a vehicle, and the same goes for Oana.

Most importantly, we don’t have children because we don’t want children. It’s an important part of my beliefs that creating life is a huge responsibility and unless you are totally and completely ready to be a parent, you shouldn’t do it. I always say that you should live the life you want. Too many people, at least in my experience, have kids and get married because it’s expected.

The point here is that this isn’t a financial decision, but rather a life decision that just happens to have financial consequences. I think this distinction matters because some readers may come away thinking we’ve given up these things in pursuit of financial independence. The reality is much simpler:

We’ve built our financial plan around the life we want to live, rather than the other way around.

FIRE Isn’t About Spending Less

One of the biggest misconceptions about FIRE is that it’s all about extreme frugality. In my experience, that’s not really true.

The question isn’t: “How can I spend less money?”

The question is: “Am I spending money on the things that genuinely matter to me?”

Let’s take cars as an example again. I don’t give a single solitary shit about cars.

If somebody offered me a £10,000 car and a £50,000 car that both got me from A to B equally well, I’d happily take the cheaper option and invest the difference, but that’s me.

Someone else might absolutely love cars. They might get genuine enjoyment from them.

If that’s the case, and they can comfortably afford it, then there’s nothing wrong with buying the more expensive one.

The key word is mindful though. I think everyone should occasionally stop and ask themselves:

“Am I buying this because I genuinely value it, or because I feel like I’m supposed to have it?”

Financial Independence Is About Options

Perhaps the biggest misconception of all is in the name itself. People focus on the “retire early” part, but for myself and others I’ve met following their own FI plan, the more important part has always been “financial independence.”

The goal was never to stop working at the first possible opportunity, the goal was to create options.

Options to change career, reduce hours, walk away from toxic workplaces, spend more time with family, or do things just for the pleasure of it rather than for a wage.

Money can’t solve every problem, but it can buy flexibility, and flexibility is often what people are really searching for.

If there’s one thing I’d want people to take away from both the Sky News article and this blog, it’s that FIRE isn’t a one-size-fits-all blueprint.

You don’t have to give up everything you enjoy or live on beans and rice.

What you do need is clarity about what matters to you and what doesn’t.

You then need the confidence to build your life around your own priorities rather than what someone else expects of you.

For Oana and me, that means a life without children, without a car, and without alcohol.

For somebody else, it might mean raising a family, owning a sports car, and travelling the world.

Both are perfectly valid. For most people, they will find achieving FI easier with the first scenario rather than the second. It’s not to say one life choice is wrong and the other right. The inescapable fact is that FI will be much more difficult in the second scenario.

Anyway, the important thing is that you’re making those choices consciously rather than just doing what you think you need to.

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What I’m Doing

Listening: 2034 by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis.

Watching: Rescue Me (Netflix).

Reading: Leviathan Wakes (Expanse Book 1) by James S. A. Corey

Financial Update

Assets

Premium Bonds: £250.00.

Stocks and Shares ISA: £147,533.45.

Fuck It Fund: £22.30.

Pensions: £125,089.38.

Residential Property Value: £242,113.00. 

Total Assets: £515,008.13.

Debts

Residential Mortgage: £173,797.96. 

Total Debts: £173,797.96.

Total Wealth: £341,210.17.

The Bricks & Minifigs LEGO Dispute: What I Think I Know So Far

I only became aware of the Bricks & Minifigs situation recently, and I’m still trying to piece together the exact details. So, before I go any further, this is not me claiming to have the definitive version of events. It’s more a case of me looking at what has been reported, what has been alleged, what has been denied, and trying to make sense of a story that seems to have turned from “a dispute over a LEGO collection” into a full-blown internet drama.

And because this involves allegations, legal disputes, franchise agreements, and a lot of people being very angry online, I’m going to be careful with my wording.

From what I understand, the case centres on a large LEGO Star Wars collection owned by Bryan Mansell and his father. Reports suggest the collection was built up over many years and included hundreds of sets and more than a thousand minifigures. Some reports have put the estimated value as high as $200,000, although Bricks & Minifigs disputes that figure and has suggested the documented value may be lower.

The basic version, as I currently understand it, is that the collection was placed with a Bricks & Minifigs franchise store in Salem-Keizer, Oregon, under some form of consignment arrangement. In simple terms, a consignment deal means one person gives goods to a shop to sell on their behalf. The shop takes a cut, and the owner receives the rest. That sort of arrangement makes sense for something like a large LEGO collection because individually selling hundreds of sets and minifigures is a lot of work.

Where it gets messy is what happened afterwards…

The local franchise reportedly changed hands, or at least came under new control, and the original consignment arrangement became disputed. The Mansell family’s side appears to be that the collection remained theirs, and that either the remaining stock should have been returned or the proceeds properly accounted for. Bricks & Minifigs corporate, on the other hand, has said that it was not a party to the consignment agreement, did not authorise it, and that consignment arrangements were not allowed under its franchise rules.

That distinction matters legally, but it does not necessarily make the story feel any cleaner from the outside.

This is one of those situations where the legal question and the moral reaction may not line up neatly. Legally, there may be a major difference between a deal made with a local franchisee and a deal made with the wider corporate brand. There may be issues around who had possession of the stock, what was sold, what was moved offsite, what records exist, what agreements were signed, and what obligations transferred when the store changed hands.

But morally, most people will look at the headline version and think: a family handed over a valuable LEGO collection, and now they apparently do not have the collection or the money they expected from it. That is the part that lands emotionally.

Why it has exploded online…

LEGO is not just plastic. Well, technically it is plastic. Very expensive plastic. But for collectors, it is also memory, nostalgia, time, obsession, and in some cases a serious financial asset. A large Star Wars LEGO collection built up over many years is not the same as a box of old toys under the stairs. It can represent decades of collecting, careful storage, emotional attachment, and potentially life-changing value.

That is probably why this story has cut through in a way that a more ordinary commercial dispute might not have done. People understand the emotional value of a collection. They understand how vulnerable someone can feel when they hand something precious over to a business. They also understand the frustration of being bounced between different parties, each one saying, in effect, “not our problem”.

At the same time, I do think it is worth being careful about internet certainty.

The online version of a dispute is often the most emotionally satisfying version, not necessarily the most accurate one. Once a story gets simplified into heroes and villains, it becomes very hard for nuance to survive. In this case, Bricks & Minifigs has denied stealing the collection and says corporate did not take, sell, or conceal it. The company also says only a small amount of potentially related inventory was found after the store was repossessed, and that much of the stock may already have been sold or moved before corporate became involved.

Whether that explanation is convincing is a separate question. But it exists, and if I’m writing about this honestly, I have to acknowledge it.

There is also the franchise angle, which is fascinating in a slightly grim way. As consumers, we tend to see a brand name and assume we are dealing with “the company”. If I walk into a branch of a familiar chain, I do not mentally separate the local operator, the franchisee, the franchisor, the landlord, the parent company, and whoever controls the till system. I see the sign above the door.

But legally, those distinctions can matter enormously.

That is one of the uncomfortable lessons here. If you hand over valuable items to a business operating under a known brand, who are you actually contracting with? The local store? The franchisee? The wider brand? What happens if the franchisee goes bust, sells up, defaults, gets removed, or loses control of the premises? What happens to your goods if they are not clearly recorded, segregated, insured, and traceable?

For anyone who collects, invests in, or resells physical items, that should be a sobering thought.

It also made me think about the wider world of alternative assets. I’ve written before about investing, financial independence, and the temptation to see anything with a rising secondary market as an “asset class”. LEGO, watches, trading cards, whisky, trainers, retro games; they all have communities where people talk about values, returns, scarcity, and future gains.

But this case is a reminder that an asset is only as safe as the chain of custody around it.

A Vanguard fund does not go missing because someone moved it to an offsite storage unit. A pension does not get mixed up with someone else’s stock room. An ISA does not depend on whether a local franchisee correctly logged each minifigure. Physical collectibles have a very different risk profile. They can be stolen, damaged, miscatalogued, disputed, sold without proper records, or trapped in legal arguments that cost more to resolve than most people can afford.

That does not mean collectibles are bad. I love LEGO. I understand why people collect it, and I understand why some sets become seriously valuable. But stories like this show why I’d be very wary of treating collectibles as a major part of a serious financial plan. They can have value, but they also come with storage risk, liquidity risk, authentication risk, platform risk, and, as this case appears to show, counterparty risk.

The YouTube element has also turned the whole thing into something much stranger. Reckless Ben became involved and helped push the story into the wider public eye. Depending on your point of view, that is either citizen journalism, internet vigilantism, performance art, or a chaotic mixture of all three. It has certainly brought attention to the Mansell family’s situation. It has also escalated the pressure on Bricks & Minifigs and the wider franchise network.

That brings another uncomfortable question: when traditional legal routes are too expensive, slow, or inaccessible, is public pressure the only tool people feel they have left?

I don’t know the answer. I’m deeply uncomfortable with pile-ons, harassment, and businesses being review-bombed by people who do not know the full facts. I’m also deeply uncomfortable with the idea that an ordinary person might have to go viral before anyone takes their complaint seriously.

Both things can be true at once.

For now, I’m left with more questions than answers and I’m interested to see how this story develops.

I do think there are some broad lessons to be learned here.

If you are handing over a valuable collection to be sold, you need paperwork, photographs, inventory lists, serial numbers where possible, agreed valuations, insurance details, payment terms, inspection rights, and written confirmation of who is legally responsible for the goods. You need to know whether you are dealing with the brand, the franchisee, or an individual business owner. You need to know what happens if the business changes hands. And you need to be very wary of assuming that a familiar logo means a simple chain of responsibility.

For businesses, the lesson is just as clear: if people trust you with emotionally and financially valuable items, you need bulletproof processes. If the process breaks down, “that was not technically our responsibility” may be a legal defence, but it is rarely a satisfying public response.

I’m still following the story, and I’m sure more details will come out. At the moment, it feels like a messy collision between collectibles, franchise law, poor record-keeping, social media outrage, and the very human fear of being powerless against a business. We’ve probably all had times we’ve come up against a business that is not providing the best service, and it can be incredibly difficult to navigate that. I think that is why stories like this attract attention.

That’s all for this week. Thank you for reading, and 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 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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bio.link/davidscothern.