Hello and welcome back to another part of the Looking Back series. This post was originally published on 21st November 2019. At the time I was struggling massively with the pain in my feet and ankles. The pain was so bad that I was on crutches to take the weight off, and the slightest pressure made the pain even worse.

Weekly Update

Greetings all and thank you for returning for part four of Mortgage Advisor on F.I.R.E.  I’m still in pain but have reduced the number of painkillers I am taking.  My ankles are both in a bad way.  My right foot hurts when the ankle moves in certain directions, mostly twisting motions.  The left Achilles tendon is sore generally. 

​I’m in between a rock and a hard place because I need to lose weight to put less strain on my joints, but I gained weight when my shoulders were operated on and I stopped exercising.  Diet is the key to everything, and I need to be more disciplined with what I eat.  The problem is, being side-lined once more through ill health has made me feel down and when I feel down, I comfort eat.  It’s a frustrating cycle. 

I have an MRI booked for 29/11/2019.  This will be my eleventh MRI which should mean the one after is free.  

Financial Update

Premium Bonds: £9,150 (up £500 from last week).

Stocks and Shares ISA: £6,890.75 (down £21.64 from last week).

Credit Card Debt: nil (down £3,899.99 from last week).

Loan Debt: £3,850 (up £3,850 from last week).

F**k It Fund: £1,000 (up £149.04 from last week).

Surplus Cash: £400 (up £105 from last week).

Tech Fund: £50 (up £50 from last week).

Total Wealth Figure:* £51,221.92 (up £832.39 from last week)
*(total assets including residence valued at £172,500) £189,990.75 minus (total debts including mortgage) £138,768.83 equals £51,221.92.

As you will have noticed I have taken out a loan to pay off my credit card.  This was something I had been thinking about for a few weeks.  My decision was forced when I realised that much of the credit card balance was now being charged interest and the APR was more than double what I could get on the loan.  The loan is not going to be a long-term debt.  I fully intend to have it cleared by the end of Q2 2020.  I have £1,800 coming in December, as well as a bonus in March.  Between those two lump sums and some overpayments, I should have the debt cleared by April/May time.  It’s unfortunate, from a financial point of view, that I’ve started to automate my finances just as we approach Christmas.  I will be spending a week in Romania with my girlfriend’s family just before Christmas and need to allow a little extra spending money than normal for the trip.  Once Christmas and New Year are out of the way, I can start to concentrate on building passive income in 2020. 

​I am still working on a timeline that will see the first BTL being completed by mid-2020.  We cannot move faster because the deposit money for my JV partner is tied up in investments until mid-2020.  We can start searching for properties ahead of time, and I think we will probably start looking around Easter 2020.  By the end of 2020/early 2021, we should have our second BTL and depending on house values I may have enough equity at that point to release funds from my main residence to fund the deposit on a third BTL with my girlfriend.  It does look positive.

The timeline was optimistic but this was pre-Covid, and I still believe that had Covid not happened I would have been much further along with BTL investments by now.

Ground Rules

This is a four-year plan and I’ve stated before that the best advice for building wealth is to “pay yourself first” and, as much as possible, make the process of building wealth as automatic as possible. 

To that end, I thought it would be a good idea to get down some ground rules for how my investment strategy will look in 2020. 

Rule 1: Save a minimum of £400 each month in Premium Bonds.

Yeah, this isn’t happening in a post-Covid, post-Truss world.

The deposits for the BTLs are the base on which this whole endeavour is built.  There are several places I could store those funds but with interest rates generally being low, I still prefer keeping the money in Premium Bonds.  The funds are not being kept long enough to be eroded by inflation significantly, but I may need access to them at short notice which rules out a longer, fixed-term savings account.  There may be some savings accounts out there that will offer 1%-2% more than the accounts I have researched, but then there is the time and effort involved in researching and setting up those accounts, and then moving the money around.  For the sake of a few pounds, I feel more comfortable keeping the deposit money in Premium Bonds and having a small chance of a significant win.  My return on Premium Bonds has been pretty good with prizes in fifteen of the last eighteen months. 

Rule 2a: Invest a minimum of £250 each month into my Stocks and Shares ISA.

Neither is this. I may be able to invest the full £20,000 by the end of the 2024/25 tax year, but that will depend on selling my BTL.

Rule 2b: Reinvest all dividend income from the ISA.

Rule 2c: Absolutely no withdrawals are allowed from the ISA.

The second part of my plan for long-term wealth is my Stocks and Shares ISA.  This is a separate project from the property investment and is aimed more at looking after my financial interests in the 15-20-year time frame.  Some of my holdings are already providing a modest income that will only grow over time, but this ISA is very much a long-term work in progress. 

Rule 3: Save a minimum of £100 each month in my F**k It Fund.

I have another pot of money that I call my F**k It fund, which is self-explanatory.  It’s a pot of money that is there for if/when I decide “f**k it”.  It’s also an emergency fund and I will continue to grow this pot little by little until I have enough money to live comfortably for at least three months, and a little less comfortably for another month or two after that. 

Rule 4: Save a minimum of £30 each month in my Tech Fund.

My MacBook gave up the ghost a few weeks ago and now all my writing is done through my girlfriend’s laptop or my phone.  I will need a new laptop at some point, but I will not go into debt for it.  Instead, I have started a small “tech fund” to save for my next laptop and then my next smartphone.  My current iPhone was bought for cash in July’17 in New York as it was significantly cheaper than buying in the UK.  This is probably the longest I have had a smartphone and I hope to get at least another two years out of it.  The phone still holds a charge, has no cracks and performs like it did out of the box.  No need to replace it just yet, but the time will come.

Say what you want about Apple as a company but they make products to last. My iPhone did last until 2023, I think it was, and then I upgraded. Also, my first Macbook lasted around a decade, whereas all my previous Windows-based laptops worked for a year or so before breaking down or suffering a noticeable drop in performance.

Rule 5: If I use my credit card, pay it off immediately. 

​Although I have paid my credit card off, I like the fact it earns airmiles.  I will continue to use the card for spending on the condition that I pay the card off as soon as I spend on it.  I have maintained this habit for the last few days and I hope that writing here about this will help keep me honest. 

Investment Funds

I had some feedback last week that I did not explain in enough detail why I prefer Index Trackers to funds that are actively managed.  I will attempt to explain in a little more detail why I prefer Index Trackers.

Human Psychology

No doubt there are plenty of honest fund managers out there who act with integrity and diligence.  However, even the most trustworthy and dedicated fund managers are at the mercy of their own mind.  I heard a phrase recently which I have modified slightly: the brain cannot guard against itself.

That phrase, the brain cannot guard against itself is so true. It does raise a fascinating discussion about what consciousness is exactly though.

The point I am driving at is that people generally do not like to lose.  When they lose, they tend to try and reclaim those losses.  The concept of chasing losses is what the whole gambling industry is based upon.  Stocks and funds can go up and down and if a fund is having an awful time of it, an active fund manager may be tempted (consciously or not) to try and chase those losses by making riskier and less well-researched trades.  This rarely ends well for the fund, the fund manager or the investors. 

If you take a bit of time to research investment funds you will see a mixture of research that shows active funds can outperform tracker funds.  This is true; active funds can outperform tracker funds, but this is the exception and not the rule.  Many reports claiming this will, one way or another, be trying to sell you a fund and the research will cherry-pick those funds that are performing well. 

​Several (audio)books I have read or listened to have reported that it is not unusual for fund managers to have several funds on the go at once and that they quietly close down the funds that are not performing well so that they can concentrate on the funds that are performing well.  Then, once they have just the top-performing funds in place they can claim that their actively managed funds outperform index trackers.

Churn

The practices I have mentioned above are frustrating, but churn is something that is illegal and that there are some brokers and managers out there that do this makes me very angry. 

Churn is where a broker or fund manager excessively trades to earn more in commission.  Most brokers earn money on every trade they make for a client and this comes out of the money the client invested.  The conflict of interest here is obvious; it is in the interest of the broker to trade as often as possible. 

There is another way for fund managers to act with integrity and Guy Spier talks about this in his book The Education of a Value Investor when he refers to how Warren Buffett would charge fees.  I forget the exact figures, but the principle was the epitome of honest, ethical fund management.  The fund manager would only take a fee if the fund achieved at least 6% (I think it was) growth.  Anything above 6%, the fund manager would charge a percentage against the surplus growth.  In short, the fund manager only gets paid if the fund performs well. 

Churn is something that can have catastrophic consequences for investors.  Here is an example to illustrate, which draws on all the typical human psychology. 

You invest £10,000 with a stockbroker and give them discretion to trade on your behalf.  The broker charges 0.5% for each trade and then there is Stamp Duty at 0.5%.  On the first trade, you are charged £50 in broker fees and £50 Stamp Duty.

The broker buys 19,800 shares of Company A at 50p per share for £9,900.  The stock then immediately drops to 47p per share.  The holding is now worth £9,306. The broker decides to trade again.  The shares in Company A are sold at 47p but the broker takes a further 0.5% (£46.53).  The investor now has £9,259.47 from an initial £10,000 investment.

The broker explains to the naïve investor that Company B is a sound investment.  The broker places a trade for 7,000 shares in Company B at 130p per share (share prices are always in pence).  7,000 shares at 130p is a trade of £9,100 in addition to Stamp Duty of £45.5 and broker fees of £45.5.  The investor has £68.47 of residual cash. 

The shares in Company B drop to 120p per share and the broker sells them and explains to the investor that this was necessary to “cut losses”.  7,000 shares are sold at 120p per share, resulting in £8,400 being recouped.  Once the broker takes his fee of £42, the investor is left with £8,426.47 with the residual cash included.  After just four trades, the investor has lost over £1,500 (more than 15%) of their investment. 

This is a basic example and you might be thinking, “But what if the share price goes up?”  Have a look at any stock and you will see that the buy price is normally higher than the sell price.  So, whenever you buy a stock you immediately lose value.  Take Apple for example, I’m looking at the live prices now and the buy price is $262.85, and the sell price is $262.22.  Once you factor in commission, fees and tax you immediately lose value when you buy shares.  Brokers that are engaging in churn will not care if your stock goes up or down as either is an excuse to sell.  “Hey, your stock in Company A is up 10% and so I sold to lock in your profit!” and “Company A is trading 7% down so I sold to cut your losses.” 

The previous few paragraphs contain value for novice or naïve investors.  Trading stock is risky if you go into it with no education.  Although some out there claim to make money day trading, I am sceptical of anyone who claims to make serious money this way.  The only way I think you can make money by high-frequency trading is with huge sums of money where tiny changes in the stock price result in significant returns. 

Index Trackers

A basic index tracker would be something like a FTSE100 tracker.  This fund would have shares in all FTSE100 companies and so the value of the fund would mirror the collective performance of the FTSE100.  There is limited trading within the fund, and this would only happen as and when a business is relegated from the FTSE100 and another business is promoted to take its place.  These are generally more passive with lower fees and because the human element is removed there is no risk of losses being chased or of churn. 

Final Notes

It’s been a detailed post this week, but I enjoy discussing all things money and investment-related.  If you have any suggestions for topics you would like me to cover, please leave a comment.  If you are enjoying this blog, please recommend it to a friend.  Finally, if it’s not too much trouble, please follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. 

Thanks for reading and enjoy your weekend. 

Sometimes when I look back at old posts I cringe a little because I think my writing was a bit basic or clumsy. This post didn’t seem all that bad though, and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the content.

Hello and welcome back to Part 2 of my Looking Back series. I’m going back through my older posts, tidying them up a little, and providing some thoughts on what I was thinking at that time. Part 2 of my blog was originally posted in November 2019, back when I was still running my old website. I hope you find this interesting. I will add my commentary throughout the post inside square brackets.

David Scothern – March 2024.

Weekly Update

I’ve been suffering with Achilles Tendonitis in my left foot for a few weeks and I’ve been having physio for it.  I did some exercises on Monday night and felt fine.  In the early hours of Tuesday morning I woke up in a lot of pain, but this time from my right ankle.  It was agony to even have the duvet resting on the foot.  The slightest movement was extremely painful, and I could not put any weight on that side.  So, I went to the Minor Injuries unit, but they could not help.  I returned home and proceeded to get worse as the day went on.  At around 4am on Wednesday morning, I was desperate.  I was in the most pain I could ever remember experiencing and I’ve had torn muscles, strained ligaments, and an assortment of other injuries.  This has been the worst pain I’ve experienced.  

I arrived at Accident and Emergency at around 6am Wednesday and saw the triage nurse quite quickly.  I was wearing some tracksuit bottoms, a simple t-shirt and a sweater.  It was cool in the A&E waiting area with the big doors to the outside opening frequently and blasting cold air inside, but I was sweating.  I took my jumper off and my t-shirt was soaked.  I felt a little faint and asked my girlfriend to get me some water.  I took a few sips and started feeling worse.  The pain was so bad I could not think straight.  I felt the blood drain from my head and face.  My girlfriend and the medical staff later told me I turned grey.  I told my girlfriend something, I can’t remember what exactly.  I felt like I was slipping away, like an out-of-body experience or something.  I have a heart condition that is being managed with medication, and I remember thinking, just for a split second, this is it, my heart has given out and I’m going into shock.  Then everything went dark.

[This was a scary incident. I can’t begin to describe the pain I was in. This was the start of several months of pain, and extended periods on crutches. Lots of tests later, I was diagnosed as having gout. Yes, the same gout that was known as the King’s Disease. I felt far from regal when I was on the floor in A&E].

I opened my eyes and I was on the floor of the A&E department with a group of medical staff around me.  They lifted me onto a bed and wheeled me through to a ward.  I was in and out of it at this stage.  I was put through a series of tests on my heart and eventually was given morphine for the pain.  I left the hospital after 6pm with a support boot for my foot, my crutches and some stronger painkillers.  But no diagnosis.  I have an appointment next Wednesday with a private specialist.  

It’s been a freaky few days.  I’m still in a lot of pain but it’s not as severe as it was yesterday.  I can’t stand without support.  I’m using crutches to get around the apartment.  I never knew that the ankle could cause this much pain.  It’s difficult to describe just how bad it is.  It’s like a white, blinding flash of pain starting in the ankle and surging through my body like an electric charge.  Yesterday, had they offered amputation with the promise the pain would go, I would have taken it and thanked them.  

My pain got so bad that I considered calling an ambulance.  In the end, I had a telephone call from a doctor who told me to increase my painkiller dosage.  Before going to bed last night I took eight pills: 2 x codeine, 2 x nefopam, 2 x paracetamol and 2 x amitriptyline.  It seemed to work, although I am not promoting this course of action.  If you’re in pain, please seek medical attention and do not self-medicate.  

My Financial Education

I grew up in a working-class household where financial education was not “a thing”.  My parents were very young when I was born and whilst I could not have asked for more loving or supportive parents, they were basically still children when they had me.  It would have been unreasonable to expect them to impart financial wisdom to me.  What I learned about money, initially, I learned from them.  What they learned, they learned from their parents.  And so on.  

I remember sitting at home when I was a teenager one evening.  I was maybe 18, or 19.  For some reason, I was thinking about interest.  The idea that money could create money was fascinating to me.  Even at this age, despite not knowing the terms passive income, compound interest, or what things like asset allocation meant, I knew that if I wanted to be wealthy my money would have to work for me.  I remember crunching numbers and working out how much I would need to have saved in an ISA to earn £1,000 per year in interest.  The number seemed so far off at the time.  Without a solid financial education, it was. 

I started dabbling in share dealing a few years ago but most of my trades were ill-informed.  I won some.  I lost more.  I was learning about money, but slowly and without direction.  It was a chance discussion with a friend and coworker that turned my groping around in the dark into a laser-like focus. 

My friend, who is as frustrated and unfulfilled with working a job as I am, told me about a book he was reading by an author who was a financial guru of sorts.  The tagline of the book was that your home is not an asset, and instead, is a liability.  I was intrigued.  Some of you will know who I am talking about and which book I am referring to.  It is Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.  I signed up for an Audible account and started listening.  The book changed my life.  That is not hyperbole.  The book…

Changed

My

Life.

[Looking back at Kiyosaki’s writing, I hold a different view to what I had when writing this post in 2019. I still credit him with changing my mindset, but the books he wrote contained very little in the way of practical advice I could take forward. It was a great starting point though, and despite changing my opinion on Kiyosaki over the years, I’m still grateful that these books helped change my mindset when it comes to finance and investing].

Robert Kiyosaki discussed things I had known on some level, but not well enough to put them into words.  After I finished Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I bought another book by Robert Kiyosaki, Cash Flow Quadrant.  I finished that book quickly and purchased another by him; Guide to Investing.  I was enthralled.  Throughout 2018 I finished several books on finance and investing, with a few other personal development books thrown in, and I kept a list of what I had read or listened to.  Here is the list:

– Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
– Rich Dad, Poor Dad: Cash Flow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki
– Rich Dad, Poor Dad: Guide to Investing by Robert Kiyosaki
– Shares Made Simple by Rodney Hobson
– Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
– Money by Rob Moore
– Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
– FU Money by Dan Lok
– Deep Work by Cal Newport
– Start Now, Get Perfect Later by Rob Moore 
– The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing by Pat Dorsey
– Start With Why by Simon Sinek

I also read a fair amount of fiction, history and politics books.  On a side note, Audible is an amazing service.  I struggle to read physical books for long periods as I suffer from cluster headaches and migraines.  I also have floaters in my vision that make reading frustrating for me as I see black spots all across the page.  So, Audible allows me to listen and learn in a relaxed frame of mind.  In 2018 I completed 33 books.  As of November 4th, 2019, I have finished 79 books on various topics.  As you have probably guessed there are quite a few finance and personal development books in there:

– The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday
– Property Investing Secrets by Mark Homer and Rob Moore
– Multiple Streams of Property Income by Mark Homer and Rob Moore
– Life Leverage by Rob Moore
– No Money Down Property Investing by Kevin McDonnell
– Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
– How to Own the World by Andrew Craig
– Fake by Robert Kiyosaki
– The Naked Trader by Robbie Burns
– Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas
– The Complete Turtle Trader by Michael Covel
– Financial Freedom by Grant Sabatier
– Trend Commandments by Michael Covel
– I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi
– 100 Side Hustles by Chris Guillebeau
– Reset by David Sawyer
– The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins
– The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko.
– Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin
– High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard
– The Complete No Nonsense Guide to Property Investing by David Tarn
– Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
– The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss
– The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason
– Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker.

And again, quite a bit of fiction.  I have found that the best lessons I have learned about investing are the simple ones.  There are no complicated systems or “hacks” for becoming wealthy.  It is simple.  The difficult part is that it requires persistence, discipline and an ability to think in the long term.  This is where the study of stoicism has helped me.  It has helped me realise that I cannot control the external, but instead can only control the internal.  Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is a moving and powerful book.  It is an account of Viktor Frankl’s experiences in the Nazi Concentration Camps in the Second World War.  Even if you have no interest in financial independence, this book should be read by everyone.  Many of Frankl’s observations can be applied to many walks of life and his work is similar to the Stoic philosophy in many ways.

Stoicism helped me by focusing my thoughts on the long term and understanding that I can only control my thoughts and my behaviours.  So how does this relate to financial freedom?  Well, I cannot get from my current position to wealthy overnight.  If I try to get rich as quickly as I can, then I will probably fall flat on my face.  Instead of working on the result, I need to work on the process.  The process is internal and under my control.  The result is not.  As I have read in several sources, the process of making money should be systematic, and mechanical and the money should do the work through compounding.  I do not work for my money, my money should work for me.  I set up the correct process, and the money is created for me. 

The Buy-to-Let Process

I discussed in my previous blog how I would potentially have £100 per month coming in from my first BTL after costs and splitting the rent with my JV partner.  Compounding is where the process picks up from.

When I receive the rent from this future BTL, I will still be earning money from my job. So, in addition to the £400 per month I save in Premium Bonds now, I will have the money freed up from paying off my credit card and the rental income from the first BTL.  In total, at this point, I should be saving in the region of £700 per month.  Assuming I want to get to £14,850 saved (the amount I needed for the first BTL) it would take approximately 20 months to save this amount.  However, there are a couple of secret weapons.  There is my residence and my first BTL.

Additional Borrowing on a Mortgage

As time goes by, the debt owed on my main residence will reduce.  Also, I live in an up-and-coming area of Sheffield that was voted the best place to live in the whole of the UK (Google Kelham Island).  As my mortgage debt comes down, I will have enough equity in my property (the difference between your mortgage debt and the value of the property) to complete additional borrowing and put that towards the deposit.  The plan is to release £10,000 this way.  I will use £5,000 to fund my second BTL.  The other £5,000 will be for my girlfriend to invest.  Assuming I need £14,850 and I already have £5,000 from my residence, I only need £9,850.  I also have the initial BTL.

When I was working out the cost of the first BTL, I included £3,000 for refurb costs.  The idea is that we buy a property that needs some work.  Not a complete refurb but a few quick hits that can improve the valuation.  Once we have owned the BTL for six months we will be able to look at either additional borrowing or a remortgage to another lender to release the equity from the increased valuation.  Switching to another lender would probably be more difficult and costly as it would require us to have taken an initial mortgage with no early repayment charges.  Although there are some around, I suspect we will probably go with a fixed rate with a lender we know and trust.  So, a further advance with the existing lender to take some of our money back out of the deal.  It would work like this:

1. Purchase a BTL that needs some work or a property that requires a fast sale and is undervalued.  Or both. 
2. Assuming we purchase a property at £90,000 we would assess what needs doing and then research what increase in value we would get from the refurb.
3. Try to find a property where the value can be increased by a minimum of £2 for every £1 spent.  
4. Coupled with property price increases, it should be possible to extract some money from the property within 6-12 months.  

I understand that the process requires a lot of research and with one exception there are no guarantees.  From over a century of records; property prices have increased over time.  This is as close to a guarantee as you can get.  There are peaks and troughs throughout, but, properties will only increase in value over time.  Because the interest-only debt is stagnant the gap between the debt and value will only increase in the longer term which potentially allows you to return to the well several times.  Each BTL becomes a plant producing seeds that will turn into other plants.  Exponential growth is the name of the game.  

Once we have two BTL earning rental income, instead of saving £700 per month towards the third property I will be saving £800 or more.  Then, I have three properties which can be used to release more equity; the two BTL and my residence.  

A rough timeline…

Mid-2020: One BTL
End of 2020/Early 2021: Two BTL
End of 2021: Three BTL
Mid 2022: Four BTL
End of 2022: Five BTL
End of 2023: Six or more BTL.

[For those who watched Game of Thrones, the phrase; My Sweet Summer Child comes to mind. How naive and hopelessly optimistic I was. It’s difficult to think about how the world was pre-Covid, but the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, the absolute clusterfuck of the Tory government under Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, and the war in Ukraine, all conspired to make it much more difficult to build a property portfolio. It was always an ambitious plan, but several once-in-a-generation events pushed it from ambitious to impossible].

The beauty of this plan is that the release of equity from each property already owned can be combined so that two or more properties can be “working” together to produce the deposit for one more BTL.  Once you get to the point where you have ten or more BTL working for you, the speed at which property portfolios can grow is astonishing.  It seems like it is too good to be true, but I know people that have done this; people I have met personally and professionally.  It can be done.  It will be done.  

Financial Update

Premium Bonds: £8,650 (up £400 from last week).

Stocks and Shares ISA: £6881.20 (up £362.20 from last week).

Credit Card debt: £3,937.23 (down £58.42 from last week).

F**k It Fund: £850.96 (up £0.61 from last week).

Surplus Cash (not including cash marked for living expenses): £300

Total Wealth Figure (All Assets minus all Debts): £188,758.76 (including value of my residence) – £138,856.06 (including mortgage) = £49,903.

I’ve used some of the spare cash I had last week to increase my Premium Bonds and I’ve kept some cash spare.  I’m not wanting to commit yet to a definitive strategy of concentrating on the credit card or building up the deposit fund in my Premium Bonds.  I’ve been using the credit card for day-to-day spending and then rounding up the payments I make to pay the debt down every couple of days.  For now, I think I will keep to this middle-of-the-road approach and see what happens in the new year.

In the next instalment I will talk a little about the other arm of my strategy for long-term wealth; my Stocks and Shares ISA.  I will also discuss some of the books I’ve read in a little more detail and recommend which ones are good to start with if you want to begin your journey to financial independence.  

Thanks for reading,

Dave.