Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE.
Weekly Update
The big news from this week is that I’ve accepted a job with a mortgage brokerage. This is a self-employed position, and there are some real positives from this offer. First off, the owner and I hit it off quickly, and he was really keen to bring me on board. The set-up, commission split, and existing client bank all ticked the boxes I wanted ticking, so it was an easy decision to accept the offer.
I should be starting towards the end of August once all the standard checks are complete.
We’ve continued to collect the lions, lionesses, and cubs as the Pride of Yorkshire rolls on. Oana hit her fundraising target for the Sheffield Children’s Hospital, and I’m lagging a little behind. I’m mega proud of Oana for hitting her target so quickly, as I know she’s put some proper effort into it.
If anyone would like to donate to my fundraising effort, you can find my Facebook donation page here:
https://www.facebook.com/share/1FAQQaTbw8
A New Chapter: Introducing The Autism and Financial Independence Podcast
I’m excited to announce a new project that has been in the works for a little while.
Over the past few years, this blog has explored financial independence, investing, and the idea that money is about far more than simply accumulating wealth. At its heart, financial independence is about creating greater security, more choices, and the freedom to live life on your own terms.
Following my own autism diagnosis, I’ve also become increasingly interested in how those ideas apply to autistic people. Work, money and financial planning can present very different challenges when you’re navigating sensory overload, burnout, anxiety, communication differences and a world that isn’t always designed with neurodivergent people in mind.
That’s why I’m delighted to be co-launching The Autism and Financial Independence Podcast.
I’ll be co-hosting the pod with my dad, Darren Scothern, an autistic writer and advocate whose work has focused on autism education, communication and challenging common misconceptions about autistic people.
Together, we’ll be combining our different areas of expertise. Darren will bring his knowledge of autism, the latest research and lived experience, while I’ll focus on financial independence, investing, personal finance and the practical steps that can help people build greater financial security.
Our aim isn’t to tell people how to become millionaires or retire at 40. Instead, we want to explore how financial independence can give autistic people something that is often far more valuable: choice; over where and how you work, as well as a safety net for when things like burnout happen.
The podcast is aimed at anyone with an interest in autism, personal finance or financial independence. Whether you’re autistic yourself, a family member, a friend, or simply curious about FIRE, we hope you’ll find something useful in our conversations.
Our first episode will introduce the fundamentals of FIRE; what it is, what it isn’t, and why we believe it has particular relevance for autistic people. Future episodes will cover everything from budgeting, investing and pensions to burnout, workplace challenges, executive functioning and the psychology of money.
We’ll be sharing more details, including where you can listen, very soon, and we expect to have Episode One ready in a week or so.
I genuinely can’t wait to share this with you, and I hope you’ll join us for the journey.
To make sure you don’t miss a thing, please check out the Facebook page for the pod:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61593076251704
Quantum Immortality, Souls, and the Multiverse
I want to start with a fairly substantial disclaimer: I am not a quantum physicist. I have, however, watched enough science fiction, read enough about quantum mechanics to be dangerous, and spent enough time thinking about completely unnecessary philosophical questions to have developed a theory.
This theory leads to a conclusion that some may view as controversial, but we have quite a long way to go before we get there.
The Many Worlds Problem
One of the interpretations of quantum mechanics is the Many-Worlds Interpretation. The massively simplified version, and physicists are welcome to start getting angry-mad now, is that when different quantum outcomes are possible, reality doesn’t necessarily select one outcome and discard the others. Instead, all of those outcomes continue to exist in different branches of reality.
This often gets condensed in popular culture into the idea that “everything that can happen, does happen.” Whilst that’s not really an accurate description of the physics, it’s useful enough for the thought experiment I’m interested in.
Suppose we take that idea to its logical extreme and imagine an effectively infinite branching multiverse containing every physically possible version of events. Immediately, I think we have a philosophical problem.
Free will.
Let’s say I’m presented with a choice between A and B. I choose A. Except, somewhere in the multiverse, presumably there’s a branch in which I chose B.
So did I actually choose anything?
Take this beyond trivial decisions, and things become much more uncomfortable. Imagine someone has the opportunity to do something morally terrible and decides not to do it. We’d normally consider that decision morally significant. They had the opportunity to cause harm, exercised their free will and chose not to.
However, Many Worlds means there is another branch in which they did commit the terrible act; we have a problem. Which version of that person is morally responsible?
If both versions are equally “them”, then one behaved morally, and another behaved immorally.
Extend this across an entire lifetime, and there could theoretically be versions of the same individual who lived radically different lives. Somewhere you’re a saint. Somewhere you’re an arsehole. Somewhere you’re a sensible, rational person. Somewhere, though, you’re a Reform UK supporter.
This becomes even more interesting if you introduce religion.
What Happens to the Soul?
Many religions contain some concept of moral judgement. The details vary enormously, but the basic structure is familiar: we live our lives, make choices, and those choices have consequences that extend beyond our physical existence.
But how does that work in a branching universe?
If every version of me possesses the same metaphysical claim to being me, then which one gets judged?
Perhaps they all do. But that raises another question: where did all the extra souls come from? Before the universe branched, there was one David. Afterwards there are two. Branch again and there are four. Keep doing this, and you’ve potentially got an astronomical number of Davids wandering around the multiverse, all believing themselves to be the original. The numbers become insane very quickly.
For example, let’s look at my morning routine. I wake up and choose between toast or cereal for breakfast. Then I choose between coffee and tea. I then decide whether to watch TV or listen to a book whilst having my breakfast. Do I play a game on my phone or doom scroll for a bit? Do I open Facebook or Reddit?
That’s just a few seconds worth of decision making. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that by the time I have finished my breakfast, I’ve made upwards of fifty decisions. For simplicity, I’ve assumed each decision has two possibilities, but in the real world there are many more options available. If we stick with just two options for each decision, and fast forward to the conclusion of the fiftieth choice, there would be over one quadrillion versions of me in branched timelines.
Do they all have souls?
If they do, the traditional relationship between free will and moral responsibility starts becoming very strange indeed. Somewhere there’s potentially a version of me making almost every possible decision available to me.
It therefore seems unfair to reward one David and punish another when the existence of both was apparently required by the structure of reality itself.
Unless we’ve got the relationship backwards.
What If the Soul Doesn’t Branch?
Suppose there is such a thing as a soul, and suppose it doesn’t duplicate when the universe branches. Reality reaches a fork. I can choose A or B.
Both physical outcomes exist because that’s simply what the universe does, but I choose A.
My soul therefore continues along the branch in which I chose A. The other branch still contains David-B. He has my DNA. He has my memories. He has my personality. If you ask him whether he’s David, he’ll say yes. As far as the physical universe is concerned, he’s completely indistinguishable from me. There’s just one difference. Nobody is home.
This David-B is effectively an NPC.
This gives us an interesting way of reconciling Many Worlds with free will. The universe doesn’t care what I choose. It produces both outcomes. But my conscious experience only follows one of them.
In other words: Physics creates the branches. Free will chooses the path. The soul is what travels along it.
Suddenly moral responsibility makes sense again. Somewhere there might be an NPC version of me committing some horrible act, but I didn’t choose that branch. My life consists of the continuous sequence of branches selected through my own decisions.
Therefore, I’m accountable for that path. There are two problems, though.
Firstly. there are other people. Secondly, most choices have many possible outcomes; not just two.
Eight Billion People Choosing Different Universes
Imagine that everyone has a soul operating according to the same rules. You and I are currently occupying the same reality. Then we encounter separate decisions.
I choose A. You choose B.
My soul follows the universe corresponding to my decision. Your soul follows the universe corresponding to yours.
There’s absolutely no reason those have to be the same universe. In my branch, there would still be a version of you. They’d talk like you, behave like you and remember everything you’ve experienced, but your conscious experience might have gone somewhere else.
Likewise, the version of me in your universe might simply be an NPC. Now multiply this process by eight billion people making countless decisions every day. The chances of everyone’s souls continuing along exactly the same branch would presumably become infinitesimally small.
Eventually, almost every branch of reality might contain billions of humans but only a tiny number of actual conscious observers. Take the process far enough and perhaps every soul effectively ends up in its own personal universe surrounded entirely by NPCs.
Which raises a slightly disturbing question: How would you know?
The NPC Problem
An NPC version of someone would presumably behave exactly like the original.
Ask them whether they’re conscious and they’ll tell you they are, and ask about their childhood and they’ll remember it.
Question whether they love their partner and they’ll say yes. Examine their brain and presumably everything would look completely normal, unless they’re anti-vax in which case they will have a nice smooth brain.
There would be no test capable of distinguishing between someone with a soul and someone without one because, by definition, the soul is the only difference.
Philosophers have actually played with something remarkably similar to this idea through the concept of the “philosophical zombie”: a hypothetical being physically identical to a conscious human being that behaves exactly like one but has no subjective inner experience.
From the outside, there’s no difference. Which means there is only one consciousness you could ever be absolutely certain exists. Your own.
For all I know, everyone reading this is an NPC, and, more importantly, from your perspective, I’m the NPC.
Then There’s Quantum Immortality
This gets even stranger when we introduce another speculative idea: quantum immortality.
The basic thought experiment goes something like this. Suppose an event has two possible outcomes: In one, you survive, and in another, you die.
If both branches exist, there is still a version of you alive in one of them.
The controversial leap behind quantum immortality is that perhaps subjective experience can only continue along branches in which the observer remains alive.
You can observe yourself surviving, but you can never observe yourself being dead.
Combine that with our hypothetical soul and things become interesting.
Maybe conscious experience simply keeps following branches in which the physical body survives.
An accident that should have killed you somehow doesn’t. A disease you were statistically unlikely to survive unexpectedly disappears.
You keep travelling through increasingly improbable branches because those are the only branches in which there remains a functioning version of you for your consciousness to inhabit.
Perhaps what we call death only occurs when there is simply nowhere else to go.
And perhaps, if we’re going to take this speculative rabbit hole as far as possible, that’s the point at which whatever we call the soul finally leaves the physical universe.
Maybe that’s where an afterlife begins.
I should emphasise again that I’ve now travelled an extremely long distance from established physics. Many Worlds is a genuine interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Quantum immortality is a highly speculative philosophical extrapolation from it. Souls are metaphysics. And the idea that your soul is essentially hopping between universes like someone desperately changing trains at Birmingham New Street is entirely my own thought experiment.
But there’s something about it I rather like.
It preserves the idea of free will in a universe where every physical possibility might occur. It provides a continuous definition of the self. It potentially allows moral responsibility to coexist with a branching multiverse. It even provides a mechanism connecting quantum immortality with traditional ideas about the soul and an afterlife.
There is, however, one final piece of evidence that I think deserves consideration.
The Cycle Lane Problem
Imagine a pavement, and next to the pavement is a clearly marked cycle lane.
There are bicycles painted on it, and it has signs and is also a different colour than the pavement.
In short, it’s blatantly obvious there are two distinct paths for different uses.
Yet someone will inevitably decide that the optimal place to walk is directly down the middle of the cycle lane. Sometimes they’ll wear headphones. Sometimes they’ll stare at their phone. Sometimes they’ll walk four abreast.
As you approach them, you’ll ring your bell repeatedly, and they’ll eventually turn around wearing the bewildered expression of someone who has just materialised on Earth and has not yet been briefed on bicycles.
I’ve spent ages trying to understand this behaviour, but perhaps I’ve been looking at the problem incorrectly.
Maybe, after billions upon billions of quantum branches, most conscious souls have simply wandered off into their own universes.
Maybe this particular branch is largely populated by philosophical zombies: convincing physical simulations of human beings that can talk, work, shop, drive cars and operate smartphones but lack the final spark of conscious awareness necessary to think:
“Hmm. Perhaps I shouldn’t walk down the bit of pavement with a fucking bicycle painted on it.”
Suddenly everything makes sense. Quantum mechanics hasn’t just provided us with a possible explanation for the fundamental structure of reality. It has finally explained people who walk in cycle lanes.
What I’m Doing
Listening: The Artist by Lucy Steeds.
Watching: nothing currently.
Reading: Caliban’s War (Expanse Book 2) by James S. A. Corey
The Artist isn’t the sort of book I would normally read or listen to. Set in 1920s Provence, the plot follows a young journalist tasked with writing about a reclusive painter who lives with his young niece. It’s a well-written story, and it kept me engaged, but I think it would have benefitted from being a bit more ambitious or daring. There were plot threads that could have been explored in more detail, and my only major criticism comes from the random insertion of a character, which felt like it belonged in a different story.
I’m glad I read this, as it’s always good to branch out into different genres and settings, but I don’t think I’ll ever go back and reread it. It feels like the sort of book you’d pick up on a cruise or in a hotel, read it and enjoy it, and then leave it behind when you return home.
Financial Update
Assets
Premium Bonds: £250.00.
Stocks and Shares ISA: £153,537.15.
Fuck It Fund: £0.00.
Pensions: £129,385.62.
Residential Property Value: £245,790.00.
Total Assets: £528,962.77.
Debts
Residential Mortgage: £173,447.84.
Total Debts: £173,447.84.
Total Wealth
Total Wealth: £355,514.93.
I’m fairly happy with how my finances are holding up at the moment. Despite not being able to invest for the last few months, my investments have continued to steadily grow. With my new job starting soon, I’m hopeful I’ll be able to start putting money into my ISA, pension, and other investments.
Top Ten Countdown – The Best Financial Advice
10. Know Where Your Money Actually Goes (Part 345)
9. Avoid Lifestyle Inflation (Part 346)
8. Don’t Try to Look Rich (Part 347)
6. Invest Early and Let Time Do the Heavy Lifting (Part 349)
5. Avoid High-Interest Debt (Part 350)
4. Build an Emergency Fund (Part 351)
3. Spend Intentionally (Part 352)
2. Live Below Your Means (Part 353)
1. Pay Yourself First
When I started putting this list together, I had a fairly good idea of what would end up at number one. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that no other piece of financial advice has had a greater impact on ordinary people quietly building wealth over the long term.
Pay yourself first.
It’s a simple idea, but it’s one that completely changes the way you think about money.
Most people approach their finances in the same order every month. Payday arrives, the bills go out, they buy the shopping, treat themselves here and there, perhaps make a few impulse purchases, and then, if there’s anything left at the end of the month, they’ll put it into savings.
The problem is that there usually isn’t anything left.
Money has a funny habit of disappearing. There’s always another birthday, another takeaway, another Amazon parcel that seemed like an excellent idea at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday evening, another subscription you forgot you were paying for. Before you know it, payday has rolled around again and saving has been pushed into next month’s problem.
Paying yourself first simply reverses that process.
Before you begin spending on the nice-to-haves, you put money aside for your future. That might mean transferring money into an ISA, contributing to your pension, topping up your emergency fund or overpaying your mortgage. Whatever your goals happen to be, they are funded before discretionary spending gets a look in.
Now, before anyone starts firing angry emails at me, let me make something absolutely clear.
Paying yourself first does not mean ignoring your financial commitments. I’m not suggesting you skip your mortgage payment so you can buy shares in a global index fund. Your rent, mortgage, council tax, utility bills, food and other essential commitments still come first because, rather inconveniently, becoming homeless tends to derail most financial plans.
Think of it like this.
There are three broad categories your income needs to cover.
First come your essentials; the things that keep a roof over your head, food on the table and the lights on.
Second comes paying your future self.
Only then comes everything else.
It’s that third category where many of us quietly lose hundreds of pounds every month without really noticing.
One of the reasons this approach works so well is that it removes the need for constant willpower.
Willpower is overrated. It’s brilliant for a few days. A few weeks if you’re particularly motivated.
But life gets in the way. You have a stressful day at work. The washing machine breaks. The cat needs to see the vet. You decide you’ve earned a little treat. Suddenly the money you intended to save has disappeared into everyday life.
Systems are far more reliable than motivation, and that’s why I love automation.
Set up a standing order for the day after payday so your savings or investments happen automatically. After a few months, you stop thinking about it altogether. You simply adapt to living on what’s left.
Humans are remarkably good at adapting their spending to the money available. If your employer accidentally reduced your salary by ten per cent, you’d notice immediately. Yet if you quietly diverted that same ten per cent into long-term investments before you ever saw it, chances are you’d adjust surprisingly quickly.
Over time, those automatic contributions become habits. Those habits become years. Those years become wealth. And that, ultimately, is why this advice sits at number one. Not because paying yourself first will make you rich overnight. It won’t. In fact, like so much of the advice in this countdown, it’s almost boring in its simplicity.
But if you consistently prioritise your future self over impulse spending, something remarkable starts to happen. Your emergency fund grows. Your investments grow. Your pension grows. Your financial resilience grows.
Most importantly, your options grow.
The real purpose of money has never been to own the biggest house or drive the flashiest car. It’s to create security, freedom, and ultimately choice.
Every time you pay yourself first, you’re buying a little more of all three.
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.