Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE.
Weekly Update
It has been a week of bike rides for the most part, which I’m sure will come as no surprise to regular readers. The weather has been better which is usually a good thing but it has led to the return of my alter-ego, Red Lobster. This is my nickname for when I let myself get burned by the sun. It started in New York back in 2017 when Oana and I took the boat trip around Manhattan. It was a beautiful sunny day, but, well, I was wearing a vest and my arms turned crimson.
I’ve put through a few job applications and have had a few positive responses. I should have had an interview on Friday but they asked to reschedule just two hours ahead of the appointment, which brings me on to job interviews in general.
The Job Interview Goes Both Ways
One of the biggest mistakes people make when attending a job interview is assuming they are the only person being assessed. The reality is that an interview should be a two-way conversation. Yes, the employer is deciding whether they want to hire you, but you should be doing exactly the same thing. You’re deciding whether you want to work for them.
For some reason, many candidates walk into interviews as though they are appearing before a tribunal. They feel they have to justify every decision, explain every gap in their CV, and convince a panel of strangers that they are worthy of employment. The power dynamic becomes completely one-sided. It shouldn’t be.
If you are successful, you’re potentially going to spend forty hours a week or more with these people. You’ll be trusting them with your income, your wellbeing, your career progression and, in many cases, a significant chunk of your mental health. That’s not a decision that should be made lightly. You will potentially be spending more time with these people than with your partner.
When an employer asks why you left your previous role, it’s perfectly reasonable for you to ask why the previous person left theirs. When they ask about your long-term ambitions, it’s perfectly reasonable to ask about staff turnover, progression opportunities and how long members of the team typically stay with the business.
When they ask what you can bring to the company, it’s entirely fair to ask what the company can bring to you. The relationship works both ways.
One of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that organisations often become very good at selling themselves during interviews. They’ll talk about culture, support, development opportunities, teamwork and career progression. They’ll paint a picture of a thriving workplace where everyone is happy and successful.
Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes it isn’t.
That’s why candidates need to look beyond the polished presentation and ask meaningful questions. How is performance measured? What support is available when things go wrong? How often do people leave? What does a typical day actually look like? What are the biggest challenges facing the business right now?
The answers to these questions can often tell you more than anything written in a job description.
I’ve always found it interesting that some interviewers become uncomfortable when candidates start asking detailed questions. To me, that’s a warning sign. A good employer should welcome scrutiny. If a business is genuinely proud of its culture and working environment, it shouldn’t be afraid to discuss it openly.
In many ways, the questions that an employer doesn’t want to answer can be more revealing than the ones they do.
This becomes even more important as you gain experience. Early in your career, you may feel grateful simply to be offered an opportunity. As your skills develop and your experience grows, you begin to realise that your time has value. Your knowledge has value. Your expertise has value.
You are not simply asking for a job. You are offering a service. The employer needs something from you just as much as you need something from them. That’s not arrogance. It’s recognising the reality of the relationship.
I’ve seen people stay in poor jobs because they convinced themselves that they should be grateful to have one. I’ve also seen people ignore obvious warning signs during the recruitment process because they wanted the position badly enough to overlook them.
The problem is that those warning signs rarely disappear after you’ve signed the contract. More often than not, they become magnified. If interviewers arrive late, appear disorganised, contradict one another, fail to answer reasonable questions or seem dismissive of concerns, pay attention. They are showing you exactly how the organisation operates. Believe them.
The interview process is often the best behaviour a company will ever display. If things look chaotic during the courtship phase, don’t assume they will suddenly improve once you’re on the payroll.
A job interview is not an audition where one side holds all the power. It’s a mutual assessment. The company is deciding whether you are the right fit for them. You should be deciding whether they are the right fit for you. Never forget that.
What I’m Doing
Listening: Not for Disclosure by Jonathan Caplan.
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: £149,060.10.
Fuck It Fund: £321.16.
Pensions: £127,759.32.
Residential Property Value: £242,113.00.
Total Assets: £519,503.58.
Debts
Residential Mortgage: £173,797.96.
Total Debts: £173,797.96.
Total Wealth: £345,705.62.
After a conversation with a good friend who is also following a FI plan, I was prompted to check how much progress my finances have made since the start of the year. Considering that my last, full, regular wage was paid in September, with a partial wage in October, I was not expecting much. Here are the results:
Half Year Financial Update – Comparison from Week 323 to 347
Premium Bonds: £23,000.00 -> £250.00 (98.91% decrease)
Stocks and Shares ISA: £127,344.11 -> £149,060.10 (17.05% increase)
Fuck It Fund: £1.61 -> £321.16 (19,847.8% increase)
Pensions: £111,413.72 -> £127,759.32 (14.67% increase)
Residential Property Value: £243,430.00 -> £242,113.00 (0.54% decrease)
Total Assets: £505,189.44 -> £519,503.58 (2.83% increase)
Total Debts: £174,692.83 -> £173,797.96 (0.51% decrease)
Total Wealth: £330,496.61 -> £345,705.62 (4.6% increase)
Half Year Financial Update: Week 323 vs Week 347
The first thing that jumps out is the Premium Bonds figure. At the start of the year I had £23,000 sitting there. Six months later that has fallen to a majestic £250. That’s a 98.91% decrease.
If this was an investment fund, there would probably be a parliamentary inquiry. Thankfully, this wasn’t a market crash. It was a conscious decision to move money elsewhere. The Premium Bonds got the full Lindisfarne treatment. What remained afterwards was less a savings account and more a historical monument to where the money used to be.
The biggest beneficiary was my Stocks and Shares ISA, which grew from £127,344 to £149,060, an increase of £21,716 or 17.05%.
Now, before anyone accuses me of being a Temu version of Warren Buffett, £8k of that increase came from contributions rather than investment growth. Nevertheless, money has moved from cash-like holdings into productive assets, which is exactly what I’d expect to see at this stage of the journey.
The ISA continues to do what it has always done: quietly get on with the job while I spend far too much time checking it.
Then we come to the real star of the show. The Fuck It Fund.
At the start of the year it contained £1.61. Today it stands at £321.16.
That’s a growth rate of 19,847.8%. Nineteen thousand, eight hundred and forty-seven percent.
Any financial commentator would tell you that past performance is not indicative of future returns. In this case, that’s probably for the best because if this growth rate continued for another six months I’d be in a position to buy Luxembourg.
Sadly, the reality is less exciting. It turns out that going from “essentially empty” to “containing actual money” creates some rather silly percentage calculations.
The pensions have quietly put in a strong performance, increasing from £111,414 to £127,759, a gain of £16,346 or 14.67%.
This is one of the less glamorous parts of the FIRE journey. Nobody gets excited about pensions because they’re locked away behind a giant wall labelled “Not Yet”.
The irony is that they’re often doing the heaviest lifting. While people obsess over day-to-day stock market movements, the pension sits in the background like a dependable diesel engine, slowly dragging the entire retirement plan forward.
Property, meanwhile, appears to have spent the first half of the year impersonating a stagnant puddle.
The estimated value fell from £243,430 to £242,113, a decrease of 0.54%.
In practical terms, this is statistical noise. House price estimates fluctuate more than Donald Trump’s foreign policy.
One week they’re up, the next they’re down, and nobody seems entirely sure what’s happening.
The more important figure is the overall picture. Total assets increased from £505,189 to £519,504. Total debts decreased from £174,693 to £173,798.
As a result, total wealth increased from £330,497 to £345,706. That’s a gain of £15,209 in six months, or 4.6%.
Now, some people might look at that figure and think it seems underwhelming compared to some of the individual percentage increases elsewhere.
The reality is that wealth building isn’t usually dramatic. Most of the time it’s boring. It’s gradual. It’s repetitive.
It’s moving money from one pocket to another. It’s making sensible decisions over and over again. It’s resisting the temptation to do something stupid when markets wobble.
The FIRE community often talks about the magic of compound growth, but the truth is that the magic looks remarkably mundane while it’s happening.
Nobody wakes up one morning financially independent.
Instead, you wake up and realise that your net worth is £15,000 higher than it was six months ago despite changing jobs, navigating life, paying bills and generally dealing with the chaos that adulthood likes to throw at you.
That’s not flashy or exciting, but it’s progress, and progress is what ultimately wins.
Top Ten Countdown – The Best Financial Advice
10. Know Where Your Money Actually Goes
8. Don’t Try to Look Rich
Number 8 on this list shares some overlap with the previous entry but I think it deserves its own entry. One of the most common “lightbulb moments” in someone’s personal finance journey is when they realise that looking rich is not the same as being wealthy.
We’ve all seen it at one point or another. The brand-new luxury car on the driveway. The designer clothes. The latest phone. The expensive watch. The social media posts from glamorous holidays. The carefully curated image of success. It’s easy to look at these things and assume that the person behind them must be wealthy, and to be fair, sometimes they are.
Quite often though, they aren’t.
One of the biggest mistakes people make is confusing spending money with having money. The two are not the same thing. In fact, they’re often opposites.
A person who spends every penny they earn can look incredibly successful from the outside while quietly having very little wealth. Meanwhile, someone with hundreds of thousands of pounds invested may drive an unremarkable car, live in a modest house, and wear clothes bought years ago.
The difference is invisible because wealth isn’t what you spend. Wealth is what you keep.
This idea completely changed the way I thought about money when I first encountered it. Like many people, I grew up assuming that wealth was something you could see. If someone had a big house and a nice car, they were rich. End of discussion.
Then I started working in financial services. Over the years I met plenty of genuinely wealthy people, and many of them looked surprisingly ordinary. Some drove cars that were ten years old. Some lived in homes that were perfectly nice but far from extravagant. Some were millionaires who would think twice before spending money on something they didn’t need.
At the same time, I encountered people earning impressive incomes who were permanently stressed about money because every pound they earned had already been committed to maintaining an expensive lifestyle. Ever more expensive purchases were being funded on credit, and not long after a significant percentage of their income was being used to pay interest on those credit agreements, for things that were not needed.
It was a powerful reminder that income and wealth are not the same thing. This is partly because our society encourages people to display success rather than build it. Nobody can see your ISA balance unless you share it. Nobody can admire your pension contributions.
Nobody walks past your house and says, “Look at the size of their emergency fund.”
Wealth-building is largely invisible but consumption is visible. As a result, many people feel pressure to spend money proving they are successful instead of quietly becoming successful. Social media has poured petrol on this fire. Back in the day, people would compare themselves to a small group of family, friends, and neighbours. Now, it’s against a list of hundreds or thousands of connections on social media.
We’re constantly exposed to carefully edited snapshots of other people’s lives. Luxury holidays. Flashy cars. Expensive meals. Designer purchases. What we don’t see are the credit card bills, the car finance agreements, the personal loans, or the sleepless nights worrying about money.
We compare our behind-the-scenes reality with everyone else’s highlight reel and convince ourselves we’re falling behind. The truth is that financial success is not a performance.
You don’t need strangers to validate your choices. You don’t need a luxury car to prove you’re doing well. You don’t need a designer logo on your chest to confirm your self-worth. And you certainly don’t need to go into debt trying to impress people who probably aren’t paying as much attention as you think they are.
One of the most liberating moments in any financial journey is when you stop caring about appearances. When you realise that a car’s job is to get you from A to B. That a watch’s job is to tell the time. That a house’s job is to provide a home.
Once you detach your identity from the things you own, it becomes much easier to make decisions based on what you actually value rather than what you think other people expect.
This doesn’t mean you’re forbidden from buying nice things.
If you genuinely love cars, buy a nice car. If luxury watches are your passion, enjoy them. If designer clothing makes you happy and you can comfortably afford it, fill your boots.
The key word is genuinely. There’s a world of difference between buying something because it brings you joy and buying something because you hope it will change how other people see you.
The first can be a worthwhile use of money. The second is often an endless and expensive game that can never truly be won.
The people who build lasting wealth understand something that many others never do. Looking rich and being rich are two very different things, and if you have to choose between them, being wealthy is usually the better option.
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
You can now find all my social media pages by checking out my Biolink:
bio.link/davidscothern.