Seven Years Without Gambling

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

If I could only give one piece of financial advice to someone starting their journey, this would be it: Spend less than you earn.

That’s it. No complicated formulas or detailed fund allocations. Just spend less than you earn.

This one simple principle has created more financial security than almost any other.

The reason it’s so powerful is because almost every other piece of financial advice depends on it.

You can’t build an emergency fund if every pound you earn is already spoken for.

You can’t invest consistently if you’re spending everything that comes into your account.

You can’t become financially independent if your lifestyle expands to match every increase in income.

Living below your means is the engine that powers everything else.

Without it, the rest of the advice in this countdown becomes incredibly difficult to follow.

One of the biggest misconceptions is that living below your means means living a miserable life. People imagine surviving on instant noodles, refusing to turn the heating on, and wearing shoes until the soles give out.

That’s not what it means at all. It simply means creating a gap between what comes in and what goes out.

That gap is where your future is built. Every pound that isn’t immediately spent gives you options. It can:

become part of your emergency fund.
be invested.
overpay your mortgage.
pay for a holiday.
allow you to reduce your working hours.
buy you freedom.

The size of that gap matters far more than the size of your salary. This is something that often surprises people.

A person earning £35,000 and saving £500 a month is usually in a much stronger financial position than someone earning £80,000 who spends virtually all of it.

Income is important, but your savings rate is often even more important.

I’ve met people with excellent salaries who were permanently stressed because they had built a lifestyle that required every penny they earned. I’m talking about people with six-figure salaries, with no savings and lots of unsecured debt.

I’ve talked about the difference between being wealthy and appearing wealthy before. Expensive car finance for a specific brand of car, over something much cheaper that does the same job. Or, spending thousands on an expensive watch that they are then too scared to wear. If you can afford these things without any concern; you’re very fortunate. For most people, they will get into debt to buy these things.

It’s not just the big, expensive, purchases that bite. The regular monthly payments for things that are no longer used all add up. Things like a monthly gym subscription you don’t use, or an enhanced TV package which you ignore in favour of Netflix.

From the outside, people can look wealthy. Behind closed doors they couldn’t afford for a single payslip to arrive late.

That’s not wealth. The more accurate term is dependency. You can’t have freedom if you depend on a payday coming around every month.

On the other hand, I’ve also met people with fairly ordinary incomes who quietly saved and invested year after year.

They weren’t trying to impress anyone; they simply spent less than they earned.

Fast forward twenty years, and they often found themselves with something far more valuable than an Audi or a Breitling:

Freedom.

That’s what living below your means really buys. Not deprivation. I’ll say it again;

Freedom.

There’s another reason I love this advice. It works regardless of your income.

Whether you earn £25,000 or £250,000, the principle remains exactly the same.

Of course, someone on a lower income faces greater challenges, and it would be naïve to pretend otherwise. Rising housing costs, energy bills and food prices have squeezed many household budgets to breaking point.

But whenever your circumstances improve, whether through a pay rise, a new job, or paying off an existing commitment, you have a choice.

You can allow every extra pound to disappear into a bigger lifestyle. Or you can allow at least some of it to improve your future.

Those small decisions, repeated over years, become life-changing. In many ways, living below your means is an act of delayed gratification.

You’re choosing a little less today in exchange for considerably more tomorrow. That might not sound particularly exciting and it certainly won’t go viral on TikTok.

Nobody is posting videos titled “I quietly maintained the same standard of living after my pay rise and increased my ISA contributions.” But it’s exactly the sort of behaviour that quietly creates financial independence.

Let’s just bottom line this for the avoidance of any doubt:

You will almost certainly never become wealthy because you found the perfect investment or created an amazing business.

You are far more likely to become wealthy because, for years or even decades, you consistently spent less than you earned.

Everything else is just detail.

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.

Part 352: Milestones

Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE.

It’s Not All Parents… But It’s Always a Parent

One of the nicest things happening across South Yorkshire at the moment is the Pride of Yorkshire art trail. Beautifully decorated lions, lionesses and cubs have appeared across Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster, each one designed and painted by talented artists. They’re fun, they’re eye-catching, they get people exploring the region, and when the trail finishes they’ll be auctioned to raise money for charity.

It’s a genuinely lovely idea.

Which is why it’s so infuriating to see the same thing every single time we go out.

Every sculpture has signs asking people not to climb or sit on them. It’s hardly an unreasonable request. They’re works of art, not playground equipment. Yet, without fail, you’ll see parents lifting their crotch goblins onto them for photographs, or standing there watching while older children scramble all over them.

Before anyone reaches for the comments section, yes, of course it isn’t all parents. But somehow, it’s always a parent. If this point is confusing, remember that all salmon are fish but not all fish are salmon.

The sign couldn’t really be any clearer. “Please don’t climb on the sculptures.”

So naturally, what do people do?

“Come on, Kayghleigh (or something else equally bizarre), smile for Mummy while you stand on the lion.”

It’s a fascinating glimpse into a mentality that seems increasingly common: the rules are important but only for everyone else.

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People love to complain that society is becoming less respectful, that children have no manners, that nobody follows the rules anymore. Yet children don’t magically develop those attitudes on their own. They watch. They copy. If Mum or Dad treats every polite request as optional, why would the child think differently?

When a child sees an adult ignore a simple instruction because they wanted a better photo, the lesson isn’t just about a sculpture. The lesson is that inconvenience outweighs consideration. That “No” really means “unless you fancy it.” And that’s how entitlement gets passed down.

The frustrating part is that the request exists for a reason. Hundreds of hours have gone into designing, painting and protecting these sculptures. Artists have poured their creativity into them. Volunteers have organised the trail. Sponsors have funded it. At the end of it all, these pieces will be auctioned to raise money for charity.

Every scratch, every scuff and every weakened joint potentially reduces the value of something that exists to do good.

All because somebody decided that their family photo was more important than respecting a very simple request.

This isn’t about being anti-fun. Nobody’s saying children can’t enjoy the trail. Go and find them all. Take photos. Hunt for your favourites. Make a day of it.

Just don’t climb on them.

It’s astonishing that in 2026 that even needs saying.

Seven Years Without Gambling

On 24 July 2026, I quietly passed a milestone that means more to me than almost any investment return, savings target or net worth update I’ve ever written about.

Seven years without gambling. I’ve mentioned before that I had a problem with gambling, and I feel for everyone else out there struggling with this addiction. Gambling is still one of those things that people rarely feel able to discuss honestly.

People laugh about big wins, or speculative accumulators coming in, but how many people talk about losing £20, then £30, and then £100 whilst trying to win it all back?

Looking back now, I can honestly say that stopping gambling wasn’t just one of the best financial decisions I’ve ever made. It was one of the best life decisions.

It’s Not About Willpower

People often talk about gambling as though it’s simply a matter of self-control.

“If you know when to stop…”

“If you’re sensible…”

“If you only gamble what you can afford to lose…”

The problem is that gambling isn’t designed to be consumed sensibly.

The industry doesn’t make money from people placing one £5 bet on the Grand National each year. It makes money from people staying, and coming back again, and again.

Every part of the modern gambling industry has been refined over decades to maximise engagement. Bright colours. Near misses. Free bets. Loyalty schemes. Personalised offers. Constant notifications. Games that take seconds to complete before encouraging you to do it all again.

These aren’t accidental design choices. They’re features, not bugs.

The longer you remain engaged, the more opportunities there are for mathematics to take over.

The gambling industry often claims it wants people to gamble responsibly, yet the data tells a different story. Government analysis of operator data suggests around 60% of gambling revenue comes from the highest-spending 5% of accounts, while some online gambling studies have found that the top 5% of loss-making accounts generated an astonishing 86% of Gross Gambling Yield.

In other words, a disproportionate amount of the industry’s income comes from a tiny minority of customers; the very people most likely to be experiencing gambling-related harm.

The House Doesn’t Need to Win Every Time

One of the biggest misconceptions about gambling is that casinos or bookmakers somehow need everyone to lose all the time.

They don’t. In fact, occasional wins are essential as it keeps the gambler on the hook. If they get the occasional win, they believe they can win again. Winning keeps hope alive. The entire business model relies on the belief that the next win could be just around the corner. There’s a reason why the National Lottery had success with the phrase, “it could be you”.

Beneath the excitement sits something far less glamorous: mathematics. Every casino game, every fruit machine, every roulette wheel and every slot is built around one unavoidable fact: The expected return is negative.

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That doesn’t mean you can’t win. It means that if you repeat the game enough times, the average outcome becomes increasingly predictable.

The casino doesn’t sweat the occasional win from a customer, because over the long term it is impossible for them to lose because the games are designed that way.

Roulette is perhaps the simplest example of how casinos make money. At first glance, betting on red or black looks like a straightforward 50/50 proposition. Except it isn’t. On a European roulette wheel there are 37 pockets: 18 red, 18 black, and one green zero. That single green pocket changes everything. When the ball lands on zero, every even-money bet loses, giving the casino a built-in mathematical edge of around 2.7%.

That might not sound like much, and over a few spins you could easily walk away a winner. But casinos don’t rely on what happens over five or ten spins. They rely on what happens over thousands, or millions, of them. Every spin applies that same tiny advantage, and over time the results drift ever closer to the mathematical expectation. The longer you play, the less luck matters and the more the odds take over.

That’s the uncomfortable truth about gambling. The games aren’t designed to be fair. They’re designed to be profitable. The occasional winner isn’t a flaw in the system, it’s an essential part of it. If nobody ever won, nobody would play. The winners are the advertisements; the mathematics is where the casino makes its money.

Investing Isn’t Gambling

One of the things that has always frustrated me is hearing people describe investing as gambling. They’re almost opposites, at least where true investing is concerned. I’m not talking about crypto, NFTs, or other such bullshit.

When you gamble, you’re entering a game where the odds have deliberately been tilted against you.

When you invest in a globally diversified portfolio of productive companies, you’re buying tiny pieces of businesses that create goods, employ people, innovate and, over long periods, have historically grown alongside the economy.

Investing carries risk. Not investing also carries risk.

Investing does not guarantee riches or wealth.

Markets fall. Companies fail. Returns fluctuate.

However, unlike gambling, investing doesn’t require someone else to lose for you to win, and it isn’t built around a negative expected value before you’ve even started.

The casino becomes wealthier because people play. The investor becomes wealthier because businesses create value. Those are fundamentally different ideas.

FIRE Changed How I Thought About Money

One of the biggest shifts for me wasn’t simply stopping gambling. It was changing what money represented. Money stopped being excitement. It stopped being entertainment.

It stopped being something that might magically solve my problems overnight.

Instead, it became something much more valuable. It became a tool, or more specifically a key that would unlock the door to security, freedom, choice, and time.

Every pound that isn’t lost to gambling becomes another pound working towards financial independence. Another pound invested. Another pound reducing financial anxiety. Another pound buying future options instead of fleeting excitement.

When you begin thinking like that, gambling starts to look increasingly strange. Why would I willingly hand money to an industry whose entire business model depends on me losing it?

You Can’t Beat an Industry Built on Psychology

The gambling industry doesn’t rely solely on probability. It also relies on psychology.

It understands that humans remember wins far more vividly than losses. That we chase losses because we don’t like admitting defeat. That near misses feel strangely motivating. That boredom makes us vulnerable. That stress makes impulsive decisions more likely.

Modern gambling companies employ behavioural scientists, data analysts, marketers and software designers whose entire job is to keep people engaged for as long as possible.

When people say, “Just gamble responsibly,” I sometimes wonder whether we’d ever say something similar about any other industry intentionally engineered to maximise compulsive behaviour.

Personal responsibility matters. Of course it does. But so does recognising when an industry has invested billions into making self-control harder. If someone wraps you in metal chains and throws you into the river, it’s pretty messed up if they claim you’re only drowning because of a lack of character or willpower.

The House Knows You Better Than You Think

One thing that’s changed dramatically over the last decade is that gambling companies no longer simply offer games. They collect data.

Every click. Every deposit. Every game you prefer. How long you play. Whether you tend to increase your stake after a loss. Whether you gamble more on a Friday night than a Tuesday afternoon. Whether you’re more likely to respond to a “free bet” or a cashback offer.

In almost any other industry, we’d call this customer analytics.

In gambling, it can become something far more powerful. The aim isn’t simply to understand customers. It’s to understand how to keep them playing.

Many operators now use sophisticated algorithms to identify patterns of behaviour, tailoring offers and promotions to individual customers. Someone who enjoys football betting may receive free bet offers before a big match. Someone who plays online slots might receive bonus spins. If you’ve been inactive for a while, don’t be surprised if an email lands in your inbox with a tempting incentive to come back.

Some customers are even invited into so-called “VIP” programmes, where dedicated account managers offer bonuses, gifts or exclusive hospitality to encourage continued spending. In recent years, regulators have taken action against a number of operators for failures in these schemes, particularly where they involved customers experiencing gambling-related harm.

Now, to be fair, most people who place the occasional bet on the Grand National, have a flutter during the World Cup, or enjoy a night at the casino on holiday won’t develop a gambling addiction. Millions of people gamble recreationally without it becoming a serious problem.

But that’s also why it’s important to recognise the distinction between can and is designed to.

The fact that many people can enjoy gambling without significant harm doesn’t change the commercial incentives of the industry. Gambling companies are publicly traded businesses with shareholders expecting profits. Those profits come from customers gambling, and from customers continuing to gamble.

That’s not a criticism of capitalism; it’s simply an acknowledgement of how the business works. When an industry’s revenue depends on repeated participation, it’s hardly surprising that enormous resources are devoted to encouraging exactly that.

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For me, that realisation changed everything. I stopped seeing gambling as a harmless game where I might occasionally get lucky. I started seeing it as a product that had been carefully engineered to keep me consuming it. Once you see it that way, it’s remarkably difficult to unsee.

I understand that there are people out there that enjoy the occasional bet. These people, in my personal experience, will often claim that they shouldn’t be blocked from gambling because some people become addicted. I think these people often fail to connect the dots though. The gambling industry makes most of its money from a small number of people who are in an addiction crisis. These people hand their money to the betting sites, and the recreational gambler might win occasionally, but that money is, in large part, coming from people who are addicted, struggling, and more likely to commit suicide than addicts of other behaviours or substances.

What I’m Doing

Listening: The Dead and The Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer.

Watching: All The Light We Cannot See (Netflix).

Reading: Caliban’s War (Expanse Book 2) by James S. A. Corey

Financial Update

Assets

Premium Bonds: £250.00.

Stocks and Shares ISA: £150,345.05.

Fuck It Fund: £0.00.

Pensions: £126,338.26.

Residential Property Value: £245,790.00.

Total Assets: £522,723.31.

Debts

Residential Mortgage: £173,633.19.

Total Debts: £173,633.19.

Total Wealth

Total Wealth: £349,090.12.

Top Ten Countdown – The Best Financial Advice

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

For the longest time, personal finance was presented as a battle between two extremes.

On one side were the spenders and on the other were the savers.

A false dichotomy of reckless spending or abstaining from all pleasures no matter how small until retirement.

I don’t think that’s what good personal finance looks like. Both extremes miss the point. The goal isn’t to stop spending, but rather to spend mindfully.

One of my biggest challenges with money was when I stopped thinking about how to simply spend less and, instead, started thinking about how to spend on what I actually value.

These are two very different questions to consider. Holidays are a good example. Some people love travelling and choose to collect experiences and memories over possessions. Exploring new places genuinely enriches their lives. If this sounds like you, then spending money on travel may be one of the best decisions you make.

For someone else, spending thousands of pounds on two weeks abroad every year might feel like a complete waste because they’d rather be cycling through the Peak District, building LEGO, buying books, or simply enjoying quiet weekends at home.

Neither person is wrong. They’re just spending intentionally. The problem isn’t spending money but spending it by default because they feel it’s what they should be doing.

This is a common theme in this blog, where I discuss how many people do things purely because they feel they should rather than because it’s what they actually want.

How many subscriptions do you still pay for simply because you’ve always had them?

How many purchases have you made because they were on sale rather than because you actually wanted them?

How often have you bought something simply because everyone else seemed to have one?

Do you upgrade your phone and car every year just because it’s what everyone else seems to do?

Modern life is remarkably good at encouraging unconscious spending. We’re constantly being nudged to upgrade.

If it’s not your phone, it’s your car. If it’s not your kitchen, it’s your bathroom.

Do you really need a toothbrush that connects to Wi-Fi? Do you need a washing machine that you can control from your phone?

At some point it’s worth asking whether we’re improving our lives or simply accumulating more expensive ways of doing exactly the same things.

One exercise I occasionally recommend is brutally simple. Imagine someone handed you every item you’ve bought over the past year and asked a single question.

“Would you buy all of this again?”

I suspect most of us would quietly start putting quite a few things back on the shelf.

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That’s because so much spending happens in the moment. A few clicks. “Buy it now”. “Express checkout.”

A little burst of dopamine and shortly after a parcel arrives.

Then six months later we’re wondering why the spare bedroom has become an Amazon distribution centre where boxes double as a fort for the cat.

Intentional spending isn’t about guilt. It’s about alignment. Does your spending reflect the life you say you want?

If financial independence is your dream, does your bank statement suggest you’re moving towards it?

If family is your priority, are you spending money creating memories together or simply buying more stuff?

If your biggest hobby is photography, cycling, gaming, gardening or music, perhaps that’s exactly where your discretionary spending should go, because money is there to improve your life.

Money is not there to win some imaginary competition to die with the largest ISA.

One of the great ironies of personal finance is that people often become so focused on optimising every penny that they forget to enjoy any of them. Saving everything is no healthier than spending everything.

The sweet spot lies somewhere in the middle. Spend generously on the things that genuinely make your life better. Be ruthlessly frugal about the things that don’t.

Once you start doing that, something interesting happens. You often find you can spend more on the things you love because you’ve stopped wasting money on the things you never really cared about in the first place.

That’s what intentional spending is. Not spending less, but spending with purpose. Money is not the end goal. Money is a tool. Like any tool, its value depends on what you choose to build with it.

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.

Part 351: Pedals and Pensions

Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE.

Weekly Update

We had an interesting bike ride this week. We had made it to a point roughly halfway between Meadowhall shopping centre and Rotherham, a distance of maybe 10km from where we live. It’s a route we know well and we usually get to Rotherham, ride around a few bits there and then head back. This time our plans were forced to change. My right pedal just snapped off, leaving a small stump. I tried to make a repair but the screws themselves had sheared off.

So, we were a few hours walk from the nearest repair place and my bike was not in the best condition. We weren’t exactly in the middle of civilisation either, being on a path running alongside a river. The only option we had was for me to try riding the bike back to the bike repair business we use back near Kelham Island; 10km back the way we came.

Surprisingly, we managed it. It was not massively comfortable on my right foot, but we took it steady and I tried to coast as much as possible. Our guy at the Russell’s Bike Shed replaced the pedals in just a few minutes with some that are much better and stronger.

Once the repair was complete we decided to ride out to Oughtibridge which takes us through Hillsborough and past the stadium, on to Beeley Woods and then into Oughtibridge itself. Well, my pedals were not done abusing me. As we went through some rough ground in the woods my back wheel slid on a loose branch and as the bike threatened to topple over I put my left foot down to stop the fall. A fraction of a second later the pedal raked down my left calf and yeah, some obscenities may have been shouted into the forest.

We had an embarrassing moment on a ride the following day. Oana and I tend have a real good laugh when we are riding together. We have almost twenty years of in-jokes and stupidity, and we will never grow up.

We were riding along a route where we could just about ride along side each other, and we were misquoting some of our favourite films and shows and laughing harder with each one, and then we got to arguing about the exact meaning of “next Sunday”, as in, if you say “next Sunday” to someone and you are having this conversation on Friday, are you talking about the day after tomorrow or the following Sunday?

This silly debate went on for a good few minutes with us shouting insults at each other in a joking, but impressively inventive way.

At no point during this several minute long back and forth did the rider who was directly behind us ding a bell or make us aware he wanted to pass. When the path widened and he did pass, we got a rather interesting side-eye glance from him.

So yeah, that happened.

The Search for Work

Since leaving Lloyds I’m now searching for my third job. I’ve had a few offers but I’ve not accepted anything yet. The mortgage broker world is a strange one because most of the opportunities are for self-employed. I don’t have an issue with that in particular, but there are some recurring themes that I’m finding frustrating.

I actually enjoy helping people with finding a mortgage. It can be extremely satisfying helping someone secure their first home, or helping them with debt consolidation. It’s not just a simple financial transaction; sometimes you can legitimately change someone’s life. It might be a young couple trapped in an expensive rental desperate to own their own place, or it could be someone looking to escape an abusive relationship. Mortgages aren’t just about making money; it’s all about helping someone with their home, and I take that responsibility seriously.

What I don’t enjoy is the business side of it. I don’t enjoy searching for clients, or networking, or any of that stuff. I like being given appointments and then doing what I can to help those clients.

I’ve been clear in all my communications with recruiters and brokerages about this. I don’t have an existing client bank, and I don’t want to spend lots of time building one. I want to come into a business, be given appointments, and then crack on. It makes me money, and it makes the business money via the commission split. It also helps the client get what they wanted.

The recruiters I’ve been dealing with are great, and they understand what I’m after. The problem is when I’m told that an opportunity comes with leads provided, and then I meet the brokerage and it all falls apart. I’ve had discussions where I’ve been told leads are provided so long as you spend approximately £1k to buy them in batches. I’ve also been told that leads are provided but the conversion rate is maybe 1 out of 20. Most frustratingly is when I’ve been told leads are provided, and when I turn up for the interview, the interviewer basically admits they said that to get people through the door but you are expected to provide your own leads.

For all the frustrating conversations I’ve had, there are some that have been positive and that I’m hoping to progress. I’m still hopeful of having something sorted by the end of the month, but we’ll have to wait and see.

World Cup

I’m not going to spend ages on this, as I think other people have said what I think; we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by making some bizarre tactical decisions. We went too defensive, too early. We took off quality players to replace them with decent enough international defenders, only to then remove other starters for the second string attackers when we were chasing the game.

I said after the game that I couldn’t think of a more high profile example of a manager’s tactical clusterfuck leading to such a drastic reversal of fortunes.

In the end, Argentina scored the goals and had plenty of other chances to score. We can’t argue with the result. I don’t think Argentina did their image any favours with their gamesmanship or their banner after the match.

As for Tuchel, I’d let him go. He did well to get us to the semi-final, but he was brought in to surpass what Southgate did; not match it. I think Tuchel bottled it, and you have to ask the question whether national pride was the missing factor. Would an English manager have made different decisions? Maybe. Would pride have resulted in a different outcome? Possibly. I just think in international football, the manager, coaching staff, and players should all be of the country they are representing.

One More Year? Why the State Pension Changes Reinforce the Case for Financial Independence

There was a story this week that a friend sent over to me, and I suspect it caught the attention of many people who are thinking about retirement.

The Government is expected to bring forward the increase in the State Pension age to 68, meaning that millions of people could end up waiting an extra year before they become eligible to receive their State Pension. Although nothing has been formally legislated yet, it appears to be the direction of travel, and if it does happen, it will affect people who had planned their retirement around the current timetable.

As is often the case, social media immediately divided itself into opposing camps. Some blamed Labour. Others pointed out that previous governments had proposed similar changes. Before long, the debate became less about pensions and more about politics.

Personally, I think that’s missing the bigger picture.

The uncomfortable truth is that whoever happens to be in government is facing exactly the same problem. People are living longer than ever before. Medical advances mean many of us will spend decades in retirement rather than a handful of years. At the same time, birth rates have fallen, meaning there are proportionally fewer working-age people paying into the system to support an ever-growing retired population.

Whether you agree with increasing the State Pension age or not, the maths is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

I also don’t think anyone should be surprised by this. We’ve already seen the State Pension age increase from 65 to 66, and it’s currently in the process of rising to 67. If we’re being completely honest with ourselves, would anyone really be shocked if it eventually became 69? Or even 70? I certainly wouldn’t.

For followers of the Financial Independence movement, though, I think this story contains a far more important lesson than simply “the pension age is going up.”

One of the biggest advantages of pursuing Financial Independence is that it allows you to stop relying on politicians to decide when you can retire.

That’s something I don’t think gets talked about enough.

When many people first discover FIRE, they’re understandably drawn to the idea of retiring at 45 or 50. The headlines always focus on that part. But for me, early retirement has never been the main attraction. The real attraction is having choices.

If I want to continue working because I enjoy it, brilliant. If I decide I’d rather work part-time, that’s an option too. If I wake up one morning and decide I’ve simply had enough of the nine-to-five, I’d like that decision to be mine rather than one imposed on me by whatever pension legislation happens to be in force at the time.

Stories like this are a reminder that retirement rules aren’t fixed. They change. Governments change. Tax rules change. Pension access ages change. None of these things are guaranteed to stay exactly as they are today.

That means every good FIRE plan should include a degree of flexibility.

For most UK FIRE followers, retirement doesn’t involve simply finishing work one day and immediately claiming every pension available. Instead, retirement is usually made up of several different phases.

Perhaps you retire at fifty. Your ISA and other accessible investments then support you until you can access your workplace or private pension.

That pension then carries you through until the State Pension begins. That period between your pension becoming available and the State Pension kicking in is often referred to as the “bridge.”

If the State Pension age increases by another year, then that bridge also becomes another year longer. At first glance, it doesn’t sound particularly dramatic. It’s only one year after all.

But one year of retirement isn’t free. If your household spends £30,000 per year, then you’ll need to fund another £30,000 before the State Pension begins. In reality, it could be even more than that because your investments lose an additional year of compounding, and your withdrawal plan has to stretch a little further.

For someone who is carefully working towards a FIRE number, that could easily mean needing tens of thousands of pounds more before feeling comfortable enough to retire.

The irony, of course, is that a one-year increase in the State Pension age could ultimately lead some people to delay retirement by considerably longer than a year while they build that extra bridge.

Does that mean FIRE is suddenly a bad idea? Quite the opposite.

If anything, I think this news strengthens the argument for becoming financially independent.

The more your retirement depends upon government policy, the more vulnerable you are every time those policies change.

If your entire retirement plan relies on receiving the State Pension at exactly 67, then every review announced by Westminster becomes a source of stress. On the other hand, if you’ve built sufficient investments to support yourself, these announcements become little more than an inconvenience. You might need to make a few adjustments to your spreadsheet, but your entire future isn’t thrown into doubt because someone in Whitehall has changed a date.

That’s one of the reasons I’ve always viewed the State Pension as a bonus rather than the foundation of my retirement. Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not going to turn it down when the time comes. I’ve paid National Insurance for years, and I’ll happily accept whatever I’m entitled to. But I also don’t want my financial future to be entirely dependent upon it.

If it arrives at 67, great. If it’s 68, so be it. If it eventually becomes 69 or even 70, I’ll probably sigh, write another blog post about it, and carry on with life because, hopefully, my retirement won’t be resting on that single date.

And I think that’s the biggest takeaway from this week’s news.

Financial Independence has never been about escaping work as early as possible. It’s about reducing the number of things outside your control that can dictate your future.

You can’t control inflation, or tax policy, or pension legislation.

What you can control is how much you save, how consistently you invest, how much flexibility you build into your plans, and how dependent you choose to be on decisions made by other people.

If the State Pension age really does rise sooner than expected, then yes, some FIRE followers may need to revisit their calculations and plan for an extra year of bridging their income. But that’s exactly what good financial planning is supposed to do.

Financial Independence isn’t about predicting the future perfectly. It’s about building a life that’s resilient enough to cope when the future refuses to stick to the plan.

Competence, or a lack thereof…

I have two ongoing health issues at the moment. The first is worsening of my hearing. It’s something that runs in my family, and my hearing is getting worse all the time. I was referred to the audiology team at my local hospital last year, and I thought I’d chase the referral up as it’s been roughly eight months since I saw the GP.

The audiology team told me the waiting list was a minimum of eleven months. Now, I’m not one to try and unfairly jump the queue, but this is impacting my quality of life and making job interviews more difficult. The audiology team said they could speed up the process if my GP contacts them. Fair enough.

I logged into the app the surgery uses and sent a request detailing all the above. I didn’t need an appointment; just something sending from the GP to the audiology department. The practice responded by asking me to book in to see a GP with the next available appointment a month away.

So, I send another message repeating all the above and asking why I need to see the GP when they were the ones who referred me. I explained that surely the appointment could go to someone who needs it, and all I need is a quick message sending from the GP to the hospital booking team. The practice ignored all my questions and just invited me to book an appointment with the next available one being over a month away.

As a result, I’ve just given up and taken the appointment. All that will happen is I’ll attend and both myself and the GP will wonder what the fuck I’m doing there. It’s a perfect example of a meeting that could have been an email.

The second issue is my right elbow which has been in pain since the summer of 2022. I have seen many surgeons, doctors, physios, and the like. No one has been able to diagnose or treat the problem. I was sent to see another consultant in April. I was told I would be referred to a different consultant, because this consultant did not know what she could do for me.

Last week I called the consultant’s secretary to check on that referral. She said she would type up my clinic letter and that would have all the information in it. When the letter came through it had factual errors, and absolutely no mention of any follow ups or referrals on. It essentially said, “Yes, he is in pain. I don’t know why, and I’m not doing anything further.”

Navigating the NHS should not be this difficult or stressful. I wouldn’t class myself as particularly vulnerable, but there are plenty of people who are, and when they are faced with this sort of bureaucratic bullshit they are unable to find a way through and just end up forgotten.

Bureaucracy: Death by a Thousand Forms

This week I’ve also had a front-row seat to an extremely frustrating issue Oana is dealing with.

Now, before anyone jumps in with “well customs have to check parcels”, yes… of course they do. Nobody is arguing that countries shouldn’t inspect goods coming into the country or collect taxes where they’re due. Rules exist for a reason.

The problem isn’t that there was a process. The problem is how that process was handled.

Oana sent a birthday present to a close friend in Romania. Nothing expensive, nothing commercial, just a collection of thoughtful little gifts: bookmarks, a greeting card, a keyring, a tote bag, some costume jewellery, stickers and a few other bits and pieces. We paid extra for Royal Mail’s International Tracked service because the whole point was to know where it was and, hopefully, have it arrive before the birthday.

The parcel reached Romania on 1st July. And then, nothing.

The tracking might as well have not existed. For an entire week there was no indication that customs needed anything. No email. No phone call. No update on the tracking. No message saying, “We’re waiting for documents.”

Eventually Oana chased the Romanian Post herself, only to be told that documentation was required. Which immediately raises the obvious question: if you knew you needed documents on 1st July, why did nobody tell anyone until a week later?

Determined not to spoil the surprise, Oana asked whether she could deal with all the customs formalities herself. She explained that this wasn’t a commercial shipment, it was simply a birthday gift, and that the recipient was already under a great deal of personal stress. Romanian Post confirmed that this would be fine.

So she spent hours gathering everything they requested: descriptions, values, explanations, identity documents and endless emails backwards and forwards.

Then came one of those moments that perfectly sums up bureaucracy. They asked for her phone number and email address. The same phone number already printed on the customs declaration. The same email address they’d been using to correspond with her throughout the entire process.

Still, she sent them again. Then, despite agreeing that Oana could handle everything herself, customs suddenly contacted the recipient directly by SMS and instructed her to complete declarations instead.

Surprise ruined.

The customs declaration listed the contents, so before she’d even opened the parcel she already knew what some of her birthday presents were, and because bureaucracy rarely settles for one form when three will do, she then found herself registering online, applying for an EORI number, submitting identity documents and completing more declarations, all while dealing with difficult family circumstances.

Even after all that, more requests kept appearing. Another declaration. Confirmation she’d pay any duties. Confirmation she’d pay delivery fees. No indication what those fees might actually be. Just another box to tick. At every stage it felt like the finish line kept moving.

What really struck me wasn’t that documents were required. It’s perfectly reasonable that customs might need information. It’s that nobody seemed capable of asking for everything at once. Instead, every few days another hurdle appeared. Another email. Another request. Another department. Another explanation. Another delay.

If someone wanted to design a system that maximised stress while minimising efficiency, I’m not entirely convinced it would look much different. As anyone following the FIRE movement knows, we often talk about money being a finite resource. Time is even more finite.

Between researching procedures, writing complaint emails, sitting on hold, chasing updates, filling in forms and explaining the same situation over and over again, countless hours simply disappeared.

Hours that could have been spent with friends. Hours that could have been spent relaxing. Hours that could have been spent doing literally anything more productive than proving, for the third time, that yes, the email address they’ve just emailed is, in fact, your email address.

As I write this, we still don’t have any resolution, and it’s looking increasingly likely that Oana and her friend are just going to give up. It’s a shame for this friend as she’s a lovely woman who could have used a nice surprise.

What I’m Doing

Listening: The Dead and The Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer.

Watching: Radio (Netflix).

Reading: Caliban’s War (Expanse Book 2) by James S. A. Corey

In late 2001, just after 9/11, I went on a school exchange to a high school in Anderson, South Carolina. It was a fantastic experience as I stayed with a family who had kids attending T. L. Hanna. I remember those times fondly.

Anyway, the other day we sat down for dinner and Oana had a film ready for us to watch called Radio. I knew absolutely nothing about this film. It started with a caption stating it was taking place in Anderson, South Carolina. That itself was a nice coincidence as the city only has a population of roughly 28,000. A couple of minutes later I start to recognise the names on the school uniforms; T. L. Hanna.

We paused the movie to look it up and it’s based on a true story of the friendship between a high school sporting director played by Ed Harris, and Cuba Gooding Jr’s character who goes by the nickname “Radio”.

In all honesty, it’s not a great film. It’s not terrible; it’s just ok. Were it not for the little link between myself and the school it was set in I would not have stuck with it.

Notable alumni of Hanna high school including Chadwick Boseman, and James Michael Tyler; the actor who played Gunther in the sitcom Friends.

Financial Update

Assets

Premium Bonds: £250.00.

Stocks and Shares ISA: £149,262.76.

Fuck It Fund: £0.00.

Pensions: £125,595.17.

Residential Property Value: £245,790.00.

Total Assets: £520,897.93.

Debts

Residential Mortgage: £173,633.19.

Total Debts: £173,633.19.

Total Wealth: £347,264.74.

Top Ten Countdown – The Best Financial Advice

6. Invest Early and Let Time Do the Heavy Lifting (Part 349)

5. Avoid High-Interest Debt (Part 350)

4. Build an Emergency Fund

Life has a habit of ignoring your financial plans. You can have the perfect budget, a healthy investment portfolio, and every spreadsheet colour-coded to perfection, but life doesn’t care.

Your boiler breaks. Your car fails its MOT. Or, your bike pedal snaps.

It could be that your cat decides that swallowing something it shouldn’t sounded like a fantastic idea. It might be that your washing machine develops a mysterious new feature where it floods the kitchen instead of cleaning your clothes.

Or perhaps the biggest one of all…

You lose your job.

None of these things are particularly unusual. In fact, they’re almost inevitable if you wait long enough. The problem is that many people treat these events as surprises rather than certainties.

It’s not a question of if life throws you a financial curveball. It’s when, and that’s where an emergency fund comes in. Think of it as financial shock absorbers. A pothole in the road is still unpleasant, but with decent suspension you drive over it and carry on. Without suspension, the same pothole can wreck the entire journey.

Money works in much the same way. A £700 boiler repair is annoying. Without an emergency fund, it can become a crisis. Suddenly you’re reaching for the credit card, taking out finance, borrowing from family, or wondering which bill can wait until next month.

One unexpected expense begins a chain reaction. An emergency fund breaks that cycle.

Instead of asking, “How am I going to pay for this?”, you simply transfer the money, solve the problem, and start rebuilding the fund afterwards.

The emergency still happened. It just didn’t become a financial disaster. One of the biggest misconceptions about emergency funds is that they’re somehow wasting money.

People will often say, “Wouldn’t that cash earn more if it were invested?”

Probably.

But that’s missing the point entirely. An emergency fund isn’t there to maximise returns.

It’s there to minimise risk.

Insurance isn’t a great investment either, but you probably wouldn’t cancel your home insurance because your index fund has historically produced better returns.

They serve different purposes. Your investments are there to grow your wealth. Your emergency fund is there to protect it. That protection also extends beyond your bank balance. It buys you options.

Imagine your employer becomes unbearable. The atmosphere turns toxic. Every Sunday evening fills you with dread.

If you’re living from one payday to the next, you may have little choice but to stay.

But if you have six months’ worth of essential expenses sitting safely in the bank? The balance of power changes. You can afford to hand in your notice. You can take time to find the right role instead of the first available one. You negotiate from a position of confidence rather than desperation.

To me, that’s one of the most underrated benefits of an emergency fund. It doesn’t just protect your finances. It protects your choices. And if you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you’ll know that’s really what financial independence is all about.

Freedom; to say no, to walk away, to make decisions because they’re right for you and not because your bank balance leaves you with no alternative.

How much should your emergency fund be? There’s no universal answer. Some people are comfortable with three months’ essential spending. Others prefer six.

If your income is unpredictable or you’re self-employed, you might sleep better with a year or more set aside. The exact number matters less than having something, because even a modest emergency fund is infinitely more useful than no emergency fund at all.

Ironically, the best emergency fund is the one you hope never to use. It’s a bit like carrying an umbrella. If it doesn’t rain, you don’t complain that the umbrella was unnecessary. You simply appreciate that it was there if you’d needed it.

An emergency fund works exactly the same way. You build it, quietly hope it gathers dust, and sleep a little better knowing that when life inevitably decides to throw another surprise your way, you’ll be ready.

And trust me when I say, life always has another surprise waiting.

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.

Part 350: Shouldn’t We Want Life To Be Easier?

Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE.

Weekly Update

Well the World Cup has thrown up a few surprises. England put in a heroic performance against Mexico, and then stumbled over the line against Norway.

It was a bit of a strange atmosphere in our household as Oana and I both love Norway. However, England is my home. I’m glad England progressed, but had Norway won I would not have been devastated.

The match was a frustrating one as it felt England couldn’t get out of their own way. The play was sloppy and it seemed like there were more than a couple of lapses of concentration.

Jude Bellingham is a once in a generation talent though, that much is obvious. He can be a bit of a luxury player at times, but he’s dragged us through that game with some real quality.

Now we face Argentina. I can’t say I know much about this Argentina side, but with players like Kane and Bellingham in our team, we have a chance against anyone. Even Gordon has started to look like a footballer in the last couple of games.

Apart from football, the only other notable events are a few conversations I’ve had with recruiters. I’ve not got any formal offers on the table as I write this, but talks are progressing with a few firms. I’m confident that by the end of the month I’ll have something in place.

“I suffered, so you should too”

As I write this, we’re once again staring down another heatwave. The annual ritual has begun. Weather apps are glowing orange, shops have run out of fans, and social media has descended into its usual civil war.

This time the battleground isn’t politics, football, or whether pineapple belongs on pizza. It’s schools. Should children be sent home because classrooms are roasting?

Now, there’s a perfectly reasonable debate to be had. Parents still have to work. Not every family can suddenly provide childcare at a moment’s notice. Schools provide meals, support and stability for many children. Closing them isn’t a simple decision, and pretending otherwise ignores a lot of real-world complications.

But that’s not the argument that seems to dominate online. Instead, it’s the familiar chorus of:

“Well, I had to sit through hot classrooms in the 1970s/80s/90s, so today’s kids should just get on with it.”

Or…

“It’ll toughen them up.”

Really? Is that genuinely the benchmark we’re aiming for?

Imagine applying that logic everywhere else.

“I survived without seatbelts.”

“I grew up breathing cigarette smoke in restaurants.”

“I never had the internet.”

“I walked five miles uphill both ways.”

Good for you. Genuinely. But why would your response be to wish the same discomfort on someone else?

Surely the entire point of civilisation is that each generation tries to make life a little bit better for the next one.

We don’t refuse pain relief because our grandparents had to grit their teeth through it. We don’t ban central heating because Victorians managed with a fireplace and several jumpers.

Progress is supposed to be… well… progress.

If classrooms are hitting temperatures where children struggle to concentrate, teachers are exhausted, and everyone’s counting down the minutes until home time, then surely it’s reasonable to ask whether the current system is fit for purpose.

Maybe the answer is improved ventilation. Maybe it’s investing in school buildings designed for a warming climate. Maybe it’s changing school hours during extreme weather. Maybe, in exceptional circumstances, it means closing for a day or two.

Or, and stay with me here because this is a radical suggestion; we stop screwing up the only planet we have?

The above points are sensible discussions to have.

“I had it bad, so they should too” isn’t a sensible discussion. It’s cruel, bitter, and full of resentment.

The strange thing is that most of us want our own children to have opportunities we never had. We want them to live longer, healthier lives. We hope they’ll earn more, worry less, and solve problems we couldn’t.

So why, when it comes to something as simple as sitting in a 35°C classroom, do some people suddenly decide that unnecessary suffering has become a treasured national tradition?

Maybe it’s because admitting the next generation deserves better somehow feels like admitting we deserved better too. That’s true, and it’s probably the saddest part of the whole debate.

Autistic Burnout

This week I came across a study looking at autistic burnout, and it struck a chord with me.

One thing that really stood out wasn’t the exhaustion itself, but how people described everyday life becoming harder. Not impossible, just… heavier.

That’s probably the best way I can describe burnout.

Imagine walking into a strong headwind. You can still reach your destination, but every single step requires more effort than it should. You look across and see everyone else walking normally while you’re leaning into the wind wondering why you’re working twice as hard just to cover the same distance.

That’s what burnout has felt like for me.

I could still do my job. I could still hold conversations. I could still solve problems. But every task seemed to demand more mental energy than it used to. Things that would once have taken five minutes suddenly took fifteen. A day that used to leave me pleasantly tired now left me completely drained.

It’s easy for people on the outside to miss this because, from their perspective, you’re still functioning. You’re still turning up to work. You’re still answering emails. You’re still smiling in meetings. Ok, maybe I never smile in meetings, but you get the point.

What they don’t see is that the battery that once comfortably lasted all day is now flashing red before lunchtime.

The danger is that our natural response is to push harder.

If something takes twice the effort, we convince ourselves we simply need to put in twice as much effort. We stay later. We mask harder. We force ourselves through another day, another week, another month.

The problem is that burnout doesn’t work like a fitness programme where pushing through makes you stronger.

It’s more like trying to drive a car after the fuel warning light has been on for the last fifty miles. You might keep moving for a while, but you’re not fixing the problem. You’re just increasing the chances of grinding to a halt somewhere particularly inconvenient.

When you hit burnout, it’s not a lack of motivation. It wasn’t that I’d suddenly become worse at my job. It was that I was using significantly more energy to achieve exactly the same outcome. Sometimes you know you’ve hit the limit but sometimes you don’t.

I think that’s an important distinction, and again brings me back to one of my favourite quotes;

“He hadn’t been aware he’d felt wrong until he suddenly felt right again.”

James S. A. Corey – The Expanse

When we see someone struggling, our instinct is often to encourage them to try harder. But sometimes trying harder is precisely what got them into burnout in the first place.

Sometimes what people need isn’t more pressure. They just need to have less resistance.

Now, imagine your child, your niece or nephew, your grandchildren, and they are not only having to deal with intense heat in the classroom, but they are also undiagnosed autistics. They are trying hard to fit in by masking, and they’re dealing with this heatwave.

The Million Dollar Question

A story caught my eye this week about a young woman in Canada who won the equivalent of around £1 million on a scratchcard. So far, so standard. What made headlines wasn’t the win itself, but what she chose to do with it.

Instead of taking the million-dollar lump sum, she opted for $1,000 a week for life.

Predictably, the internet immediately split into two camps. One side declared she’d made the worst financial decision since someone looked at a £5 meal deal and thought, “I’ll just get the sandwich.” The other argued she’d guaranteed herself a comfortable income for the rest of her life and would never have to worry about blowing it all.

So, who’s right and who’s wrong?

Well, both.

From a purely mathematical perspective, the lump sum almost certainly wins.

A million pounds invested sensibly in a diversified portfolio has historically produced returns that would comfortably exceed £1,000 a week over the long term. Not only that, but you’d still own the underlying capital. Compound growth is a wonderful thing. It’s basically the financial equivalent of putting Greggs sausage rolls in the oven and somehow ending up with a bakery. Quite why you would want a Greggs sausage roll in the first place is beyond me, but such is life.

The weekly payments, on the other hand, take nearly twenty years just to catch up with the value of the lump sum before you even think about inflation or missed investment returns.

If we’re looking purely at spreadsheets, calculators and historical market returns, it’s not even a close contest.

But here’s where personal finance stops being about maths and starts being about people.

Not everyone who receives a million pounds keeps a million pounds. There are countless examples of lottery winners going bankrupt.

Give ten people a million pounds and you’ll probably get ten completely different outcomes. One invests it. One buys a sensible house. One pays off debts. One decides their cousin’s revolutionary alpaca cryptocurrency startup can’t possibly fail.

Money doesn’t magically make someone good with money. In fact, sudden wealth often magnifies the habits you already have.

If someone knows they’re impulsive, struggles with budgeting or simply doesn’t trust themselves not to make a series of expensive mistakes, then choosing a guaranteed weekly income isn’t necessarily irrational. They’ve effectively put the money behind protective glass where they can’t accidentally spend it on twelve holidays, three Range Rovers and an NFT of an overcooked potato.

It’s a bit like asking whether I’d rather have unlimited biscuits in the cupboard or one biscuit delivered every morning. Logically, I know the cupboard is better value. Realistically, if the cupboard contained unlimited chocolate Hobnobs, I’d be dead by Thursday with crumbs all down my shirt and a look on my face that states “I regret nothing.”

This is why I always say that personal finance is as much about behaviour as it is about numbers.

The mathematically optimal decision isn’t always the best decision for a particular person. The best investment strategy is the one you can actually stick with. The best budget is the one you’ll actually follow. The best savings plan is the one you won’t raid the moment Amazon tells you something is “80% off” despite suspiciously being the same price it was yesterday.

Would I have taken the lump sum?

Absolutely.

But that’s because I know exactly what I’d do with it. I’d invest it, keep living much as I do now, and let compound growth do the heavy lifting. Twenty years from now, Future David would probably send Present David a thank-you card.

The young woman didn’t necessarily make the mathematically correct choice.

But she may well have made the right choice for herself.

And that’s perhaps the most important lesson of all: the best financial decision isn’t always the one that looks smartest on paper. It’s the one that gives you the greatest chance of ending up financially secure in the real world.

What I’m Doing

Listening: The Dead and The Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer.

Watching: FIFA World Cup.

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

Financial Update

Assets

Premium Bonds: £250.00.

Stocks and Shares ISA: £147,328.55.

Fuck It Fund: £0.00.

Pensions: £125,734.38.

Residential Property Value: £245,790.00.

Total Assets: £519,102.93.

Debts

Residential Mortgage: £173,633.19.

Total Debts: £173,633.19.

Total Wealth: £345,469.74.

Top Ten Countdown – The Best Financial Advice

6. Invest Early and Let Time Do the Heavy Lifting (Part 349)

5. Avoid High-Interest Debt

There are two types of compound interest. The kind that quietly helps you build wealth, and the kind that quietly destroys it.

Most of us spend a lot of time talking about the first one. We celebrate investing, pensions, ISAs and long-term returns. But compound interest has a darker side, and if it’s working against you instead of for you, it can become one of the biggest obstacles to financial freedom.

High-interest debt doesn’t just cost you money. It steals your future income.

Every pound you spend paying interest is a pound that can’t be invested, saved, or spent on something that genuinely improves your life. It’s money that has already been earned but is now working for someone else instead of you.

Credit cards are perhaps the best example. Now, before anyone starts sharpening their pitchforks, I want to make something clear. Credit cards are not evil. In fact, I use them regularly.

When used responsibly, they offer consumer protection, rewards, cashback, air miles, and can even help with cash flow. Used correctly, they’re an incredibly useful financial tool.

The problem isn’t the credit card. The problem is carrying a balance.

Once you’re paying 25%, 30%, or even 40% interest on borrowed money, the maths starts working relentlessly against you. You can make the minimum payment every month and feel like you’re making progress, while in reality much of your payment is simply covering the interest that’s being added.

It’s a bit like trying to fill a bath without noticing the plug has fallen out. You’re pouring water in, but it never seems to get any fuller. High-interest debt works in much the same way. You keep making payments, but the debt shrinks frustratingly slowly because so much of your money is disappearing into interest.

This is why I often disagree with advice that tells people they should invest before clearing expensive debt. Let’s say your credit card is charging 30% interest. Paying that debt off is effectively the same as achieving a guaranteed 30% return on your money.

Good luck finding an investment that can reliably match that year after year. It doesn’t exist.

This is one of the rare occasions in personal finance where the correct answer is usually refreshingly straightforward.

If you’re carrying expensive debt, getting rid of it should be one of your highest financial priorities. Notice I keep saying high-interest debt. Not all debt is the same.

A mortgage at a relatively low interest rate that allows you to buy a home is very different from borrowing hundreds of pounds at eye-watering rates to fund everyday spending.

Likewise, a student loan in the UK behaves very differently from a payday loan.

Debt isn’t automatically good or bad. Context matters. What you borrowed it for matters.

The interest rate matters. Your overall financial situation matters.

The mistake many people make is treating all borrowing as though it’s identical. It isn’t.

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that debt often creates more than just financial pressure. It creates mental pressure. You wake up thinking about it. You hesitate before opening your banking app. Unexpected expenses become stressful because you’re already juggling repayments.

Even if you’re keeping up with everything, the debt sits quietly in the background, demanding a slice of every future payday. There’s a reason people often describe finally paying off expensive debt as feeling like a weight has been lifted.

It genuinely is. It’s not just the money. It’s the freedom.

That’s one of the reasons FIRE appeals to me so much. Financial independence isn’t really about having millions of pounds. It’s about reducing the number of financial obligations that dictate your choices.

Every debt you eliminate is one less claim on your future income. One less bill. One less thing to worry about. One more step towards your money working for you instead of someone else.

If you remember only one thing from this section, let it be this: Compound interest is one of the most powerful forces in finance, and you need to make sure it is working for you instead of against you.

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.

Part 349: The Heavy Lifting

Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE.

Weekly Update

I’d love to report back on a fantastic week but unfortunately it’s been a little frustrating. We had a plumbing issue with our en-suite bathroom, and these issues tend to come around more often than a new UK PM. This time it was a leaking pipe into the toilet cistern; the one that refills the cistern after flushing.

We managed to get hold of a plumber who came over an hour or so later and he seemed like a decent guy. He sorted the issue in just a few minutes and hardly charged us anything. We offered him a coffee and then spent around half an hour chatting about everything from cats, to Lego, to Pokemon, and Magic: The Gathering.

Although he didn’t charge us much, it was still an expense we could have done without. Back when I was working we had ordered some Lego from the Bricklink Designer Program, and I thought we had paid for it. We had not actually paid, so I was surprised to see a charge of just under a thousand pounds applied to my Amex.

The plumbing issue and the oversight with the Lego, in addition to some upcoming vet bills for Poppy, mean we have blown through the remaining cash savings we held.

But wait, there’s more…

On top of all this we had our half yearly service charge bill. Between service charges and ground rent we pay roughly £1,900 per year. The ground rent accounts for £200 of that figure, and we pay £850ish every six months for the service charge. Normally, we have it saved in advance, but this time we were a little under.

It’s been a difficult week financially, and it meant I had to cancel some planned outings with friends.

With all of the above I made the decision to sell some of my unopened Lego, that I’d hoped to keep for a while longer to appreciate in value. The sets below are available for collection in Sheffield, on the off chance any readers are interested:

Wealth versus Cash Flow

One of the interesting things about building wealth is that it doesn’t necessarily make you immune from having the occasional cash flow problem. Looking at this week’s figures, some people might assume that because my net worth is comfortably into six figures, unexpected bills shouldn’t really be an issue.

The reality is very different. Most of our wealth isn’t sitting in a current account waiting to be spent. It’s tied up in investments, pensions, and our apartment. On paper, those assets are worth a significant amount, but they don’t help much when the plumber needs paying this afternoon or the service charge lands in your inbox tomorrow morning.

It’s an important distinction that often gets overlooked. Net worth measures what you own overall. Cash flow measures whether you can comfortably pay the bills that arrive this month. You can be wealthy and still have a tight month if several unexpected expenses decide to turn up together.

That’s exactly why emergency funds are so important. They’re not there because you expect something to go wrong every week. They’re there because life has an uncanny ability to pile everything on at once. The leaking pipe, the surprise Lego payment, the service charge, and upcoming vet bills for Poppy could all have arrived over several months. Instead, they all chose the same week.

It’s also a reminder that financial independence doesn’t mean life suddenly becomes problem-free. Boilers still break. Cats still need the vet. Buildings still need maintaining. The difference is that these events become financial inconveniences rather than financial disasters.

This week has certainly been frustrating, and it has meant making compromises like selling some of my Lego collection and cancelling a few plans. But that’s a world away from worrying about whether the bills can be paid at all. That’s one of the biggest benefits of building wealth over time. It doesn’t stop bad weeks from happening, but it makes them much easier to recover from.

I could, of course, sell investments instead. But I don’t really want to interrupt my ISA if I can avoid it. The Lego was always bought as a hobby first and an investment second. Some of it has appreciated nicely, and if selling a few sets keeps my long-term investments untouched, that’s a trade I’m happy to make.

After a week that seemed determined to empty our bank account, it was almost a relief to spend ninety minutes watching England attempt to empty my enthusiasm for football instead.

In a repeat of the previous week, we saw another uninspiring England performance in the World Cup. I don’t understand what our strategy is in games, and we seem to lack ideas and creativity. Were it not for Harry Kane dragging us through that last match against DR Congo, the players would already be back in the UK.

I’ve heard a lot of people complaining about the kick off time for the match against Mexico, but it’s a very Anglo-centric view. The competition is taking place in a different time zone, and these matches are arranged before it is known who will be competing. Waiting until the line up is known before deciding the kick off time is not realistic when you factor in transport and accommodation for visiting fans.

I think FIFA shot themselves in the foot by trying to change the kick off time at such short notice, and if they’d just left it as planned, there’d be hardly any grumbling.

I’ll try and stay awake for the match, but I don’t think we’ll progress. I think a combination of the altitude, the home field advantage, and our lack of creative spark will really hold us back. I hope I’m wrong, but I think this will be our last match of the World Cup.

Bike Rides

We have managed to get a few bike rides in over the past week, including a fun evening ride where we cycled up a tall car park to the open area on top which gives some great views of the city. On Sunday we had a ride out to Rotherham and decided to explore. We ended up getting a little lost and turned to Google Maps to set us right. It knew we were cycling and told us to go down a footpath.

Let me tell you, it was no footpath. It was a dirt trail with plants overgrown on all sides. We got scratched and scraped but made it through until we arrived at a canal. We bumped into a middle aged guy and stopped to talk to him. It turns out he is looking after the area and slowly trimming some of the plants and trying to make the path usable again. He told us this was the Fitzwilliam canal and gave us some of the history of the area. We had a nice little chat with him and went on our way. Sometimes, these little encounters restore some faith in your fellow humans.

What I’m Doing

Listening: Quantum Radio by A.G. Riddle.

Watching: FIFA World Cup.

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

Financial Update

Assets

Premium Bonds: £250.00.

Stocks and Shares ISA: £148,892.08.

Fuck It Fund: £0.00.

Pensions: £126,801.89.

Residential Property Value: £242,113.00.

Total Assets: £518,056.97.

Debts

Residential Mortgage: £173,633.19.

Total Debts: £173,633.19.

Total Wealth: £344,423.78.

Top Ten Countdown – The Best Financial Advice

9. Avoid Lifestyle Inflation

8. Don’t Try to Look Rich

7. Get Rich Slowly

6. Invest Early and Let Time Do the Heavy Lifting

If money had a superpower, it wouldn’t be intelligence, it would be time.

Ask most people what makes someone a successful investor and you’ll hear answers like choosing the right shares, spotting the next big company, timing the market, or having insider knowledge of the economy.

In reality, one of the greatest advantages an investor can have has nothing to do with skill at all. It’s simply getting started.

Albert Einstein supposedly called compound interest the eighth wonder of the world. Whether he actually said it or not is open to debate, but the sentiment is absolutely correct. Compound interest is one of the closest things finance has to magic.

You earn returns on your money. Then you earn returns on those returns. Then you earn returns on those returns. Year after year, decade after decade, the process quietly gathers momentum.

The strange thing about compounding is that it doesn’t feel particularly impressive at first.

In fact, it can feel painfully slow. Imagine rolling a tiny snowball down a mountainside. For the first few metres, almost nothing seems to happen. But as it gathers more snow, it becomes larger, heavier, and picks up speed. By the time it reaches the bottom, it’s almost unrecognisable from where it started.

That’s compounding and the biggest mistake people make is assuming they have plenty of time.

“I’ll start investing when I get a better job.”

“I’ll begin once I’ve paid off the car.”

“I’ll wait until the kids are older.”

“I’ll start next year.”

Before they know it, next year has become ten years. One of the hardest lessons in investing is that the years you think don’t matter often matter the most.

A person who starts investing in their twenties has an advantage that someone starting in their forties simply cannot buy.

Even if the older investor earns significantly more money. Even if they’re more financially knowledgeable. Even if they make better investment decisions.

Time is doing most of the work. A basic example illustrates this better than words.

Person A starts investing £100pm and earns 6% p/a. After 25 years they would have a balance of £69,300 of which £39,300 is interest.

Person B starts investing ten years later. They invest £200pm for 15 years with the same interest as Person A. Although this person is investing double the amount each month, for 60% of the time that Person A is investing, they would only have a balance at the end of £58,165, of which £22,165 is interest.

Person A deposits a total of £30,000, and Person B deposits a total of £36,000, yet Person A ends up with more money.

The major difference is time. Person A is allowing much more time for compound growth to work on their investment. Starting early is the biggest advantage.

This is why I often smile when people become obsessed with squeezing an extra half a percent from an investment or endlessly debating which global index fund is marginally better.

Those decisions matter but they’re nowhere near as important as simply getting money invested in the first place. Far too many people spend months trying to optimise something they haven’t even started.

It’s a recurring theme in life. Perfection delays progress. Progress creates results.

Of course, starting early doesn’t mean starting with huge amounts of money. This is another myth that discourages people. You don’t need thousands of pounds to begin investing.

You don’t need to wait until you’ve “made it”.

Small amounts invested consistently over a long period will almost always outperform large amounts invested inconsistently. Consistency beats intensity.

The beauty of starting early is that it also gives you something incredibly valuable: flexibility.

You can afford market downturns because you still have years ahead of you. You don’t panic when headlines scream that markets have crashed because history tells us markets have always recovered eventually.

Instead of fearing volatility, you begin to see it as part of the journey. Ironically, as you get older, time becomes increasingly valuable because you have less of it. Money can be earned back. Bad investments can recover. Careers can change. Businesses can be rebuilt.

Time only moves in one direction. That’s why I often say that the greatest asset any young investor possesses isn’t their income. It’s their age.

And if you’re reading this thinking you’ve left it too late, let me reassure you. You haven’t.

Could you have started ten years ago? Probably.

Could you have started twenty years ago? Almost certainly.

But unless someone has quietly invented a time machine without telling the rest of us, that’s no longer an option. The next best time is today, because twenty years from now, you’ll either be grateful that you started… or wishing you had.

A Word of Caution…

The examples given here are very basic and there’s no context. There are going to be situations where holding off from investing in favour of paying down debts will make more sense. I’m not giving specific advice here, but rather discussing general advice about some of the high level concepts in investing. For specific advice for your circumstances, consult a professional.

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.

Part 348: The Week That Wouldn’t End

Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE.

Weekly Update a.k.a. The Week That Wouldn’t End

By the midpoint of this week I felt like I had slipped into some sort of budget version of Groundhog Day. Seriously, this week has been absurd. I think this feeling dawned on me during half time of the England and Ghana match.

I’m not usually one to complain about the weather. We spend eleven months of the year in Britain moaning about rain, cloud and temperatures that barely scrape double figures. So when summer finally turns up, it feels a bit rich to immediately start complaining that it’s too hot.

But, yes, there’s a but…

There is “nice summer weather”…

…and then there’s waking up wondering if someone has quietly relocated Sheffield to southern Spain overnight.

The flat has basically turned into a giant storage heater. Every day it absorbs heat, and every night it politely refuses to give any of it back. I don’t generally find sleep restful; it’s just part of who I am. I exist in some sort of perpetual semi-awake state propped up by caffeine.

Sleeping has become even less of a restful experience and more of an endurance event.

Oana and I have actually moved our mattress into the living room. It’s the only room with direct access to the balcony, so we’ve been sleeping with the doors wide open in the hope that even the slightest breeze might wander through.

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It actually worked, a little. Even Poppy has decided she’s had enough of the bedroom. Instead of curling up inside, she’s spent most nights stretched out on the balcony, looking far more comfortable than either of us.

It has been a struggle for her and there’s been a few times she’s been panting. We’re doing everything we can to keep her cool, and we’ve even opted against any bike rides this week as we want to stay with her to monitor her. At least we know that the weather will break, but for a cat or dog it must be stressful and confusing.

Then, just when I thought the week couldn’t feel any longer…

England played. Twice.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Winning football matches is generally considered a good thing. I’d much rather be writing after two victories than two defeats.

But fuck me ragged, those matches felt like they were being played at 0.5x speed.

I’ve had Teams meetings that could have been emails that moved quicker.

Whatever the explanation, they somehow managed to make an already endless week feel even longer.

The strange thing is that weeks like this are oddly memorable.

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We just spent several days trying not to melt, relocated an entire mattress into the living room, watched the cat make consistently better life choices than we did, and sat through what felt like three hours of football compressed into ninety minutes.

And somehow, it feels like the most British week imaginable.

Until the next heatwave arrives, I guess. At which point you’ll find me dragging the mattress back into the living room without a second thought.

The other thing this week reminded me of is just how quickly the climate conversation gets polarised.

Someone, probably a Reform voter, inevitably says,

“We’ve always had hot summers.”

And they’re right. We have. Let’s all take a moment to salute their ability to remember this fact.

I mean, the summer of 1976 has almost mythical status in Britain. Anyone old enough to remember it will happily tell you about it. Heatwaves aren’t some brand-new invention.

It’s not really the point, though. The point isn’t that hot weather exists. The point is that it seems to be happening more often, lasting longer and reaching temperatures that used to feel extraordinary.

Every few years we seem to be saying,

“Well… that’s the hottest June on record.”

Or,

“That’s another temperature record broken.”

Or,

“The Met Office has issued another extreme heat warning.”

Eventually you stop calling them freak events and start wondering whether they’re becoming the new normal. That’s exactly what the Met Office says we’re likely to see: more frequent and more intense hot spells as the climate warms.

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I think one thing that confuses people is hearing that the planet has warmed by “only” a degree or so. A single degree sounds like nothing.

If I turned my thermostat up from 20°C to 21°C, I probably wouldn’t even notice, but the Earth isn’t your living room.

That average increase applies across the entire planet. Oceans. Atmosphere. Ice sheets. Deserts. Forests. Mountains. It’s an astonishing amount of extra energy being added to the climate system, and it shifts the odds towards more extreme weather.

Think of it like loading a pair of dice. You can still roll a one and still have a temperate summer. But if you load the dice ever so slightly, you’ll start rolling sixes more often.

It’s not that the weather has necessarily become more predictable, it’s that the probabilities have changed. We’re dealing with a vast system with so many moving parts that it’s difficult for anyone to fully understand it. It’s not just a thermostat. It’s a fluid system. We will still have cold days in June, and warm days in December. A single point on a temperature chart doesn’t prove anything. It’s all about the bigger picture; and that bigger picture has a single message:

So no, this heatwave doesn’t “prove” climate change. Individual weather events never do.

But when the records keep falling, the heatwaves keep coming, and what used to be a once-in-a-generation event starts cropping up every few years, it’s probably worth paying attention.

The Number 10 Revolving Door

There comes a point where you stop asking whether politicians are learning from their mistakes and start wondering whether they’re speedrunning a civilisation collapse.

Let’s take a stroll through the last decade or so of British politics. Bring a strong drink.

David Cameron

The man who called a referendum because he wanted to settle an argument inside his own party. Imagine burning your house down because you couldn’t decide where to hang a picture.

Brexit wasn’t forced upon him by some unstoppable historical force. He chose to roll the constitutional equivalent of a D20 because he assumed he’d win.

He lost. Then resigned, taking his ball and going home, and leaving everyone else to deal with the consequences of the biggest constitutional upheaval in modern British history.

Outstanding leadership.

10/10 for delegation.

Theresa May

Inherited an impossible job and somehow made it even harder.

Her Brexit strategy appeared to consist of repeatedly driving into the same brick wall and hoping Parliament eventually apologised to the wall.

Three meaningful votes and three defeats.

An election she didn’t need and a majority she somehow lost.

Then, there’s the dancing like a Temu version of Disco Stu.

Boris Johnson

A Prime Minister whose administration managed to combine absolute confidence with spectacular incompetence.

“Take Back Control.”

Control of what? Certainly not Downing Street.

Partygate wasn’t really about cake. It was about asking millions of people to sacrifice weddings, funerals and seeing dying relatives while Number 10 apparently interpreted lockdown rules as optional DLC.

Trust, once lost, is incredibly difficult to rebuild. Johnson took a flamethrower to it.

His greatest achievement may be going down in history as the only PM to attempt to hide in a fridge.

Liz Truss

The political equivalent of downloading ransomware onto the economy.

A little over forty days.

That’s it. Some yoghurts have longer shelf lives.

Managed to terrify financial markets, crash pension funds and make a lettuce look like the stable option.

Historians usually need years to assess economic damage.

This one only needed September.

Possibly the PM with the funniest nickname; Daggers, as in Dagenham, three stops past Barking.

Rishi Sunak

Perhaps the most technically competent of the bunch but he inherited a house already on fire. Then spent most of his premiership insisting the smoke and fire was actually the aurora borealis. Yes, Simpsons references are the best.

He wasn’t driving the car. He was simply the last person holding the steering wheel before it went over the cliff.

The Conservative Legacy

Fourteen years of austerity. The Brexit clusterfuck. The NHS under extraordinary pressure.

Criminal courts with enormous backlogs. Local authorities flirting with bankruptcy. Public services stretched thinner than supermarket toilet paper in March 2020.

Record tax burdens and stagnant productivity. Flatlining living standards and housing that became steadily less affordable.

And after all of that they still wanted another term. It’s almost admirable.

Labour

Then came Labour, or rather, the version of Labour that spent years convincing itself that its biggest enemy wasn’t the Conservatives. It was Labour.

The treatment of Jeremy Corbyn divided the party for years. Supporters argue he was subjected to relentless media hostility, internal sabotage and an unprecedented campaign to undermine his leadership. Critics argue he was unelectable and mishandled serious issues including antisemitism within the party.

Whichever side you fall on, one thing seems difficult to dispute: Labour spent an extraordinary amount of time fighting itself while the Conservatives remained in government. That’s political malpractice.

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Keir Starmer

Starmer won because the Conservatives imploded. It wasn’t because he was wildly popular with a cult of personality. You need a personality for that to happen.

He’s often presented himself as a safe pair of hands rather than a transformative figure, and sometimes that works. It’s a little like how some football managers are parachuted into struggling clubs. What they do isn’t pretty, but it’s effective. At least when it works.

Sometimes it looks like managerial politics in a country crying out for vision. His supporters call it pragmatism. His critics call it having the political charisma of an unplugged printer.

Then Along Comes Nigel Farage

Every election cycle Britain discovers Nigel Farage again, as if he is some sort of political cold sore.

It’s the same each time. He arrives and promises simple answers to staggeringly complicated problems.

He appears on television acting like an everyman and taps into genuine public frustration about immigration, public services and trust in politics.

Those frustrations are real and pretending they aren’t is one reason Reform has grown.

But frustration is not a governing philosophy and the solutions, and sometimes even the alleged problems, are not as simple as claimed.

Running a country isn’t the same as winning an argument on social media.

If fixing Britain were as easy as shouting “common sense” into a microphone, we’d have solved everything years ago.

The Bigger Problem

This isn’t really about parties. It’s about competence. The UK increasingly resembles a country where every incoming government blames the previous one, promises radical change, achieves remarkably little, then hands an even bigger mess to the next lot.

Meanwhile the public gets poorer and public services creak under increasing pressure.

Young people can’t afford homes as wages stagnate and house prices increase.

Infrastructure ages. Productivity stagnates. The NHS struggles.

Politics becomes increasingly performative. Everyone keeps shouting. Nothing gets fixed.

If your solution to fourteen years of Conservative decline is simply “more Conservatives wearing different coloured ties,” you’ve missed the point.

If your solution is assuming Labour automatically deserves endless patience, you’ve missed the point too.

And if your answer is believing that one charismatic populist is somehow going to bulldoze decades of structural problems with sheer force of personality, well, slap yourself repeatedly until you believe otherwise.

Britain doesn’t need another messiah. It needs competent adults. The fact that this now feels like an ambitious request tells you everything you need to know.

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The Five-Year Delusion

Perhaps the biggest lie in modern politics isn’t one told by a particular party.

It’s the idea that any government can fix decades of decline in a single Parliament.

They can’t, and pretending otherwise just sets everyone up for disappointment.

Let’s look at the NHS. People complain there aren’t enough doctors and nurses.

They’re right. So what’s the solution?

Train more. It’s that simple. Simple doesn’t mean quick though.

The medical student entering university in 2027 won’t become a fully qualified consultant for well over a decade. Even becoming a GP takes years of training after medical school. It’s also important to recognise that the journey to studying medicine often starts in the early to mid teens as children start choosing a study path. You cannot order doctors from Amazon Prime. The estimated delivery from ordering a new doctor is, ballpark, a decade; or two terms of government.

The same applies to nurses, radiographers, paramedics, physiotherapists, pharmacists and every other skilled healthcare professional. Every political party promises to “fix the NHS.”

None of them can do it before the next election. It’s not because they don’t want to. It’s because biology and education refuse to obey election timetables.

Energy is no different. Everyone wants cheap, clean, secure, and reliable energy..

A new nuclear power station takes well over a decade from planning to generating electricity.

Offshore wind farms require years of environmental studies, planning permission, financing, manufacturing, installation, grid connections and commissioning.

New transmission lines can spend years trapped in planning processes before a single pylon appears. The electricity grid itself wasn’t designed for the world we’re trying to build.

Modernising it isn’t a weekend DIY project. It’s a generational engineering programme. You can’t just build a solar farm and hook it up to the grid as if you were plugging in a new flatscreen TV. The national grid has limited capacity, and when you build a new energy production facility, you need all the surrounding tech, equipment, and resources.

Housing? The same story.

You don’t solve a housing shortage by making one speech at a party conference. You need planning reform, and from the top of my head;

Infrastructure.
Construction workers.
Surveyors.
Engineers.
Bricklayers.
Electricians.
Plumbers.
Roads.
Schools.
GP surgeries.
Water supplies.
Sewers.
Public transport.

Every new housing development is a giant logistical puzzle. It can take decades to create a new community of homes, because those homes need all the associated stuff; public transport links, roads, utilities, internet, and so on.

And here lies the problem. Our politics has become obsessed with instant gratification.

Governments announce policies designed to produce headlines before the next election.

Oppositions promise they’ll fix everything even faster. The public expects miracles.

Reality stubbornly refuses to cooperate because reality doesn’t care about polling day or manifesto promises.

Five-year election cycles encourage short-term thinking. The country, meanwhile, has problems that require twenty-year plans. No Prime Minister wants to spend billions on projects whose benefits will mostly be enjoyed by their successor.

So instead we keep reaching for sticking plasters like a tax tweak or a rebranded initiative. Meanwhile, the underlying problems continue ageing like milk in the sun.

Perhaps that’s the conversation we should be having. How we build a political system capable of making decisions whose rewards won’t be visible until today’s schoolchildren are adults.

What I’m Doing

Listening: The Traveller by Joseph Eckert.

Watching: Rescue Me (Netflix).

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

I finished The Traveller just before finishing up this post. It’s one of the best stories I’ve listened to in the last few years. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The premise is that the protagonist starts travelling through time each morning, skipping a day ahead, then two days, four days, and so on.

I don’t want to say too much as I think the book benefits from going in with little information. In terms of vibe and tone, it reminded me of Replay by Ken Grimwood, one of my favourite novels of all time.

I also just finished Rescue Me and, overall, I’d say it gets an 8/10 score from me. There is a dip in quality in the middle seasons, but it ends with quality story telling.

Financial Update

Assets

Premium Bonds: £250.00.

Stocks and Shares ISA: £149,087.98.

Fuck It Fund: £321.16.

Pensions: £127,391.43.

Residential Property Value: £242,113.00.

Total Assets: £519,163.57.

Debts

Residential Mortgage: £173,797.96.

Total Debts: £173,797.96.

Total Wealth: £345,365.61.

Top Ten Countdown – The Best Financial Advice

9. Avoid Lifestyle Inflation

8. Don’t Try to Look Rich

7. Get Rich Slowly

If someone offered you a guaranteed way to become wealthy over the next thirty years, most people would politely decline. Not because they don’t want to be wealthy but because it takes thirty years.

We live in a world obsessed with shortcuts. We want six-minute abs, overnight success, viral fame, and investment returns that double our money by next Tuesday. We celebrate the lottery winner, the cryptocurrency millionaire, and the entrepreneur who sold a company for millions before turning thirty.

What we don’t celebrate nearly as much is the person who quietly invested every month for decades, and yet, that’s the path that is far more likely to work.

One of the hardest truths to accept in personal finance is that building wealth is, for most people, incredibly boring. There are no dramatic twists or secret formulas.

Building wealth is almost always thousands of small, sensible decisions repeated over and over again.

Spend a little less than you earn. Invest consistently. Avoid unnecessary debt. Keep your costs low. Stay invested.

Repeat.

It sounds almost disappointingly simple because it is.

The difficulty isn’t understanding these principles. It’s sticking with them when everyone around you seems to be getting rich faster. It’s navigating the boring middle when things seem to stand still.

Every few years a new craze appears.

Dot-com stocks. Property. Cryptocurrency. NFTs. Artificial intelligence.

The latest “can’t lose” investment opportunity. Suddenly everyone seems to know someone who doubled their money in six months, retired at thirty-five, or turned a small investment into a fortune.

It’s incredibly tempting to believe you’re missing out, and sometimes people really do make extraordinary returns.

The problem is survivorship bias, and I know I’ve discussed this before, but it is such an important concept that a regular reminder is wise.

For every person posting screenshots of spectacular gains, there are countless others quietly nursing losses that never make it onto social media. Nobody rushes online to announce they’ve just lost half their savings chasing the latest trend.

We mostly hear from the winners. That’s why slow investing feels so unrewarding at times.

There’s very little to talk about.

Nobody boasts that their globally diversified index fund faithfully delivered roughly what the market did this year. Nobody becomes an internet sensation because they made another monthly pension contribution. There are no exciting headlines announcing that someone once again resisted the temptation to sell during a market downturn.

But these are exactly the kinds of behaviours that build wealth over decades. The irony is that the slow approach often ends up being the fastest route to long-term financial success.

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People chasing quick riches frequently jump from one opportunity to the next. They buy high because everyone else is buying. They panic when prices fall. They sell low. They chase the next big thing. In doing so, they often sabotage the very returns they were hoping to achieve.

Meanwhile, the slow investor simply carries on like a cargo ship on the ocean, never going particularly fast but moving relentlessly hour after hour, day after day, month after month, and year after year.

Market crash? Keep investing.

Boom? Keep investing.

Election? Keep investing.

Recession? Keep investing.

It’s almost boring enough to be a superpower.

One of my favourite sayings is that the stock market is a mechanism for transferring money from the impatient to the patient. The longer I invest, the more convinced I become that this applies to personal finance in general. Patience is an underrated financial skill.

It’s why compound interest is so powerful. Not because it works quickly, but because it works relentlessly, just like that cargo ship I mentioned.

Each year builds upon the last. Returns generate further returns. Small contributions become meaningful sums. What feels insignificant in your twenties can become life-changing by your fifties.

The challenge is that progress is almost invisible at first. It’s like watching a tree grow.

You don’t notice much from one day to the next, but look back twenty years and the difference is extraordinary.

This is also why I think the phrase “get rich quick” is so dangerous. It suggests that wealth is primarily about finding the right opportunity. In reality, it’s usually about becoming the kind of person who consistently makes good financial decisions over a very long period of time.

That isn’t exciting. It won’t sell many online courses. It won’t attract millions of views on YouTube.

But it has one enormous advantage over almost every “secret” investment strategy you’ll ever encounter:

It actually works.

So if your financial journey feels slow, don’t be discouraged. Slow isn’t the opposite of successful. For most people, slow is exactly what success looks like.

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.

Part 347: Half Year Update

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

9. Avoid Lifestyle Inflation

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.

Part 346: Another One Bites The Dust

Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE.

Another One Bites The Dust

If you’ve been following Mortgage Advisor on FIRE for any length of time, you’ll know there are a few recurring themes:

Financial independence.

Autism.

Cats.

LEGO.

Coffee.

Questionable life decisions.

Highlighting yet another Tory clusterfuck.

And changing jobs.

Well, dear reader, it is with a mixture of amusement, resignation, and the sound of a certain Queen bassline playing in the background that I can announce that I have once again left a job.

“Another one bites the dust.”

Before anyone starts sharpening their pitchforks or speculating wildly in the comments, let me be clear: there is no scandal, no dramatic falling out, and no tale of corporate espionage.

Sometimes things simply don’t work out, and that’s ok. In truth, I started feeling a little bit of regret at taking the role a while ago, but tried to push that down and make a success of it. However, the realisation that I was living as an example of the Sunk Cost Fallacy brought me to my senses. Once that mental switch was flipped, I gave notice minutes later.

I’ve spent the last few years on what can best be described as a tour of the UK mortgage industry. After more than thirteen years at Lloyds, I have sampled various flavours of mortgage advice, each one teaching me something new about the industry, about business, and about myself.

What I have learned is that there is a huge difference between being able to do a job and finding an environment where you can thrive doing it. If I do something, I want to be successful at it. In the mortgage industry, a major factor in success is finding the right environment and support structure. For many years at Lloyds I had that, with some amazing managers and colleagues. My time at Lloyds came to an end because it just all went a bit stale after more than 13 years doing the same thing in the same way.

The older I get, the more I realise that success isn’t just about income. It’s about culture. It’s about values. It’s about whether you wake up on a Monday morning thinking, “Let’s do this,” rather than, “How many years until retirement?” I really, truly, started my time at my most recent role with the former but I found myself thinking more about the latter as time went on.

Thankfully, financial independence gives me options. Not enough options to retire tomorrow and spend my days cycling around Yorkshire listening to the latest Jeremy Robinson book, but enough options to make decisions based on what is right rather than what is merely necessary.

There’s a reason it’s called FU Money, and that is a position I never take for granted.

So, what happens next?

At the time of writing, I’m exploring my options. The mortgage industry remains a career that I enjoy, and there are still plenty of avenues left to investigate. The story is far from over.

I’ve already had a number of recruiters reach out to me, and I’ve heard that a few people have been fighting my corner in the background. I’m not massively concerned as things stand, but for now I find myself standing at another crossroads.

What’s the phrase, “man plans, god laughs”?

After all…

“Another one bites the dust.”

The Freedom Dividend

Now that I’ve left another role without having anything else lined up, I’ve encountered the same sort of question from several people;

“Aren’t you worried?”

The answer is “not particularly”.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have unlimited money and although I’m not far from being able to retire, I can’t just retire now. I’m not at the point where I have zero financial concerns, but what I do have is time and breathing space. I have choices. I have freedom.

This freedom was not created by a single stroke of genius or lucky win. It is the end result of years of financial discipline and solid investing habits. Every ISA contribution, every instance of delayed gratification where I could have spent on something but didn’t, it’s all built the foundations for being able to sit where I am now.

For many people employment feels like a trap. It’s something that you simply have to do because there is no other option. This is the beauty of FI: you can reverse that scenario.

I mentioned FU Money before, and it’s not to sound arrogant or flippant. It’s not just about being able to tell someone where to go if you’re in an uncomfortable situation. It’s about knowing that when a situation becomes intolerable, you can simply leave. It’s negotiating from a position of strength.

There are a couple of things I’ve told many people over the years who have been struggling with a work situation. The first is that any employer/employee relationship is never going to be fair. It’s not about fairness. By its very nature, it’s an unfair relationship, so you need to stop thinking about it in those terms.

The second thing leads on from that point about fairness. In order to rebalance the scales when it comes to negotiating with an employer, you need leverage. I’m going to say it again just for emphasis; stop thinking about what is fair. That will not get you anywhere. The key word is not fairness but leverage.

Leverage can take many forms.

If you’re an exceptional performer who would be difficult to replace, that’s leverage.

If you possess specialist skills that are in high demand, that’s leverage.

If you have an extensive professional network that can open doors elsewhere, that’s leverage.

However, one of the most powerful forms of leverage is financial. The less dependent you are on your next payslip, the more options become available to you.

This is one of the reasons I find it strange when people dismiss saving and investing as simply being about retirement. Retirement is merely one possible destination. The real benefit is the flexibility that financial security provides throughout your working life.

Imagine two employees sitting in the same meeting. Both dislike what is happening around them. Both disagree with the direction of travel. Both are unhappy with how they are being treated.

One has no savings, significant debt, and relies entirely upon their next monthly salary. The other has built up a substantial emergency fund, investments, and enough financial resilience to withstand a period out of work if necessary.

Although they appear to be in the same position, they are not.

The first employee has very little room to manoeuvre. Every decision is constrained by financial necessity. They may know they should leave, but they cannot afford to. They may want to challenge something, but they fear the consequences.

The second employee still has responsibilities, bills to pay, and risks to consider, but they possess something incredibly valuable.

Choice.

That choice changes the dynamic of every conversation.

It changes how you negotiate salary and working conditions.

It changes how willing you are to challenge poor decisions and how much nonsense you are prepared to tolerate.

Most importantly, it changes how afraid you are. Fear is often the hidden force behind many workplace decisions. Fear of losing income. Fear of uncertainty. Fear of not finding something else. Fear of the mortgage payment. Fear of what happens next.

Financial independence doesn’t eliminate fear entirely, but it reduces its influence.

When you know that you could survive for months, or even years, without employment if necessary, you stop approaching every workplace disagreement from a position of vulnerability. You begin negotiating from a position of strength.

Ironically, this often makes people better employees, not worse ones. They become more willing to speak honestly. More willing to challenge assumptions. More willing to walk away from situations that are unhealthy or unsustainable.

That’s why I believe one of the greatest benefits of building wealth is not the ability to buy more things. It’s the ability to say no.

No to bad opportunities, poor treatment, environments that are damaging your wellbeing.

No to situations that are taking you further away from the life you actually want.

The person who can say no possesses leverage, and leverage, far more than fairness, is what shifts the balance of power.

Sheffield Wednesday Football Club

Few football clubs have experienced a season quite as turbulent as Sheffield Wednesday.

The months during the 2025/26 season have been dominated by uncertainty, frustration and, at times, genuine concern about the future of the club. Administration, financial difficulties, the departure of much of the playing squad, protests against our previous owner, and an atmosphere of instability around Hillsborough that wasn’t just emotional with very real concerns that the stadium was unsafe for supporters. For many fans, it felt as though the club had reached a crossroads.

Now that the season has finished, with a record low points total and relegation to the third tier of English football, you would be forgiven for assuming that the club was on its knees and ready to be put out to pasture. Instead, the club is under new ownership and the message is one of rebirth. All clubs think that their fans are the best, but even with the blue tinted glasses off it’s hard to argue that Wednesdayites are not up there with the best in the world. They turn out in numbers regardless, and have only boycotted games as part of a campaign to remove the previous owner.

Sheffield Wednesday have endured a campaign that will live long in the memory for all the wrong reasons. Results on the pitch were dismal, confidence was shattered, and optimism was in short supply. Against that backdrop, the new leadership team set themselves an ambitious challenge. Their target was to sell 21,000 season tickets, a figure that would represent one of the highest totals in the club’s history and a powerful demonstration that the bond between club and supporter remained intact despite everything that had happened.

Many outside Sheffield may have viewed that target with scepticism. After all, football supporters are often portrayed as consumers. When the product deteriorates, the theory goes, customers simply take their money elsewhere. It is a neat and tidy explanation, one that works perfectly well in most industries.

Football, however, has never operated according to normal rules.

A football club is not merely a form of entertainment. It is part of a city’s identity, a repository of memories, traditions and shared experiences that span generations. Supporters do not simply choose to support a club in the same way they might choose a streaming service or a favourite restaurant. For many, their football club becomes intertwined with family history, friendships and some of life’s most significant moments.

That is why the achievement of reaching 21,000 season ticket sales deserves recognition beyond the headline figure itself. Yes, Wednesday have smashed that target.

This was not a fanbase responding to success. There had been no promotion to celebrate, no cup run to inspire renewed optimism, and no promise of instant transformation. Instead, supporters were being asked to commit their money and their faith after a period in which both had been stretched to breaking point, and they responded.

In doing so, Sheffield Wednesday supporters have demonstrated something that those outside football often struggle to understand. Loyalty is not measured when times are good. It is measured when there are perfectly rational reasons to walk away and people choose not to.

The easiest decision this summer would have been to wait. To hold back. To demand proof that the club was moving in the right direction before committing hard-earned money. Nobody could have blamed supporters for taking that approach. Indeed, many clubs in similar circumstances have seen significant declines in attendance and season ticket sales as disillusionment takes hold.

Instead, Hillsborough will once again be populated by thousands upon thousands of supporters who have chosen to believe that better days lie ahead.

That belief should not be mistaken for blind optimism. Wednesday supporters have seen too much over recent years to be naïve. They understand the challenges that remain. The club still faces a lengthy rebuilding process, both on and off the pitch. Trust must be restored, stability must be established, and the foundations for long-term success must be laid carefully and deliberately.

What the season ticket figures demonstrate is not that supporters believe the work is complete. Rather, they show that supporters are willing to play their part in ensuring that the work can begin. There is something profoundly encouraging about that.

In an era where football is increasingly dominated by discussions of broadcasting revenues, sponsorship deals and commercial growth, it is easy to forget that clubs ultimately derive their strength from the communities that support them. Owners come and go. Managers arrive and depart. Players move on. What remains are the supporters who continue to turn up year after year, carrying the history and identity of the club with them.

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Our previous owner balked at the claim he was simply a custodian of the club. Our new owners have embraced that assertion. The sale of 21,000 season tickets is therefore about far more than revenue. It is a statement about resilience. It is evidence that Sheffield Wednesday remains deeply woven into the fabric of the city and the lives of those who follow the club.

Most importantly, it sends a message at the conclusion of one of the most chaotic periods in the club’s history. Despite everything that has happened, the supporters remain.

For all the uncertainty that still exists, that may prove to be the most important foundation upon which Sheffield Wednesday’s recovery is built.

I’ll be there next season with my Dad as we, hopefully, watch this great and historic club regain former glories.

What I’m Doing

Listening: Parallax by Jeremy Robinson.

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: £145,367.03.

Fuck It Fund: £321.16.

Pensions: £122,942.63.

Residential Property Value: £242,113.00.

Total Assets: £510,993.82.

Debts

Residential Mortgage: £173,797.96.

Total Debts: £173,797.96.

Total Wealth: £337,195.86.

Top Ten Countdown – The Best Financial Advice

Last week I covered number 10 in my countdown. This week, we move on to number 9.

9. Avoid Lifestyle Inflation

One of the most dangerous financial traps isn’t a market crash, a recession, or even a bad investment. It’s success, or rather what happens after success.

If you ask a group of people what the answer to their financial problems is, most will reply “earning more money.” To an extent, this is correct. Earning more money can reduce financial stress and free up more disposable income. The problem, or the danger, is when people increase their spending in line with their extra income.

I’m thinking of people who get a significant pay raise and decide to get a more expensive car, or upgrade their Sky package. Their income increases, and their spending follows suit.

The term for this is “lifestyle inflation”, and it’s a major reason why high earners complain of living month to month, with little in the way of savings or investments. Their pay goes up, and suddenly they need a bigger house with a bigger mortgage.

All of this comes with associated increases in spending. You have a bigger house, and suddenly you need more furniture and a bigger television. You have the extra costs for insurance, utilities, and keeping up with your neighbours as they plant elaborate gardens.

None of these purchases are necessarily bad in isolation. The problem is that they become permanent. Every upgrade becomes the new normal, and the prospect of stepping back to a previous standard of living seems scary. What was once considered a luxury quickly turns into a necessity. The nicer car that felt extravagant six months ago now feels ordinary. The larger house becomes simply “home”. The upgraded lifestyle stops feeling special and starts feeling expected.

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This creates a strange situation where someone earning twice as much as they did ten years ago may not actually feel any wealthier. Their income has increased, but so have their obligations. Their financial freedom hasn’t improved because every extra pound has already been assigned a job.

Lifestyle inflation is particularly dangerous because it often arrives disguised as progress.

Society actively encourages it. We are constantly told that success should be visible. If your income rises, surely your car should improve. Surely your house should get bigger. Surely people should be able to see that you’ve done well.

But genuine wealth and the appearance of wealth are not the same thing, and the difference is often invisible from the outside.

One of the most eye-opening lessons in personal finance is realising that many wealthy people don’t look wealthy at all. They aren’t trying to impress anyone. They’re busy accumulating assets rather than status symbols.

Meanwhile, some people who appear affluent are financing that appearance with debt, leases, monthly payments, and a constant need to maintain a lifestyle that consumes every penny they earn.

This is why avoiding lifestyle inflation can have such a profound impact on your long-term finances. Every pay rise presents a choice. You can spend all of it, some of it, or almost none of it.

Imagine receiving a £3,000 annual pay rise after tax. If you immediately absorb that into your lifestyle, nothing really changes. You’ll likely enjoy some nicer things, but your overall financial position remains much the same.

If instead you invest most of it, that same pay rise can become the foundation of future financial freedom.

Repeat that process several times throughout your career and the results become remarkable. The person who consistently saves a portion of every pay rise often ends up in a dramatically stronger position than someone who earned the same income but spent every increase.

I’m not arguing that people should not enjoy their earnings. Like with most of the advice I go through in this blog, the reality is nuanced and personal. If you get a significant increase in income, by all means treat yourself but do so in a mindful way. You could even have a 50/50 system, for example. For each increase in pay you commit to investing half the increase whilst using the other half on something enjoyable. It doesn’t even have to be 50/50. It could be 60/40, or 30/70.

There is a strain of personal finance advice that treats every purchase as a moral failing and every pound spent as a missed investment opportunity. That’s not a life; it’s becoming a slave to your finances when you are supposed to be working for financial freedom.

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Again, for emphasis, the goal isn’t to avoid improving your lifestyle. The goal is to improve it consciously. Spend more on the things that genuinely matter to you. Upgrade the areas of your life that bring lasting happiness or meaningful convenience. Just be careful not to let every increase in income automatically become an increase in spending.

Financial independence is often portrayed as something achieved through extraordinary sacrifice. In reality, for many people it is simply the result of allowing income to rise faster than lifestyle.

The next time you receive a pay rise, ask yourself a simple question.

Do I want this money to improve my lifestyle today, or my freedom tomorrow?

There is no right or wrong answer. But making the choice deliberately is far more powerful than letting lifestyle inflation make it for you.

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:

https://www.checkmyfile.partners/GZMJPSJ/2CTPL

Biolink

You can now find all my social media pages by checking out my Biolink:

bio.link/davidscothern.

Part 345: A Good Week and the Best Financial Advice

Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE.

Weekly Update

The weather has been awful for most of the week meaning I’ve not been able to get out as much as I’d have liked. However, we did manage a nice walk with a friend towards the end of the week. Our friend, Yvonne, who I’ve mentioned before, picked us up and drove us to Rivelin, where we completed an almost 10k walk. Along the way we saw lots of mallards, mandarins, and many herons. There is something so refreshing about being in nature, with the trees, water, and wildlife.

We also met lots of excited dogs, and it’s impossible not to smile when they come bounding over with a big smile of their own wanting attention. We saw one dog carrying an impressively sized branch, and then a while later another dog carrying half a tree. I made sure to praise both dogs for their incredible stick carrying efforts.

On Saturday we were due to go for a group bike ride in the morning but the weather was, again, awful, so we gave that a miss. Just after lunch the weather was a bit better, so I went for a ride. Oana wasn’t feeling great and we needed some shopping, so I rode out to a couple of supermarkets to get what we needed.

Along the route to meadowhall shopping centre the dedicated cycle lane had been closed for some sort of street market. Quite why they chose to hold it here instead of in one of the many vast car parks in the centre I don’t know. A few people have been bitching about it online, and whilst I don’t have an issue with street markets, it seems odd to hold it on a cycle path when there are huge empty spaces just a few meters away.

This particular cycle lane is a nightmare at the best of times as people who must be NPCs (non-player characters) just shuffle along like zombies across the cycle lane and then start growling when you point out their stupidity. Would these people just walk out into the road without looking? Actually, yes, they probably would.

A Great Experience at Urban Choola

On Sunday myself, Oana, and my parents went for lunch at Urban Choola, an Indian restaurant in Sheffield. It was our first time here, and like with any first visit to a restaurant there’s always the concern that it’s going to be a bad experience. Fortunately, this meal was a delight. We all enjoyed our food and we ate until we were full. The service was friendly and not too intrusive. All in all, a cracking restaurant experience and we would definitely go back.

Dear Motorists…

Every few weeks I see the same story. Someone gets caught speeding, ignoring a red light, or caught driving through a bus lane, or maybe found parking where they shouldn’t.

A few days later, an official looking envelope arrives, and suddenly the victimhood begins.

“It’s just a money-making scheme!”

“It’s a cash grab by the clown-cil!”

“They should be tackling real crime!”

“It’s outrageous!”

No. What’s outrageous is that a fully grown adult somehow managed to convince themselves that the consequences of their actions are everyone else’s fault.

Let’s clear something up. Traffic cameras do not randomly fine people. They don’t emerge from the shadows and decide to ruin someone’s day. They don’t wake up in the morning and think, “You know what? Let’s target Bob in his Vauxhall Corsa.” There’s no malice or bullying going on here.

The camera sits there doing absolutely nothing. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month until, inevitably, someone decides to ignore the clearly signposted speed limit, drive down a bus lane, jump a red light, or park where they shouldn’t.

The camera simply records the evidence. That’s it. The easiest way to avoid a speeding fine is almost laughably simple:

Don’t speed.

That’s the entire strategy.

Not “drive 38 in a 30 and hope.” Not “I know the road.” Not “everyone else does it.”

Just don’t speed. Problem solved.

The same applies to bus lanes.

If the giant painted BUS LANE markings, the road signs, and the giant red tarmac somehow fail to communicate the message, I’m not sure what else society is supposed to do.

Perhaps we need a giant flashing sign saying:

“THIS LANE IS NOT FOR YOU, STEVE.”

Then comes my favourite argument: “They should be dealing with real crime.”

Ah yes, the mythical “real crime” defence. The one that appears every single time someone gets caught doing something they knew they weren’t supposed to be doing.

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Here’s a thought; If people stopped taking the piss with the law, the authorities wouldn’t have to spend time enforcing it.

The police didn’t invent speeding. The police didn’t invent dangerous driving. The police didn’t invent people treating traffic laws like optional suggestions. Drivers did that.

Let’s be honest, many of the same people screaming about traffic enforcement are the first people to complain about reckless drivers outside schools, speeding through residential areas, dangerous overtakes, illegal parking, and drivers using their phones.

I also don’t want to generalise too much, but fuck it, I’m here now. I can state with a high degree of confidence that the sort of people I’ve described will have also uttered something about “stopping the boats” at some point this year.

Apparently enforcement is only acceptable when it applies to someone else. The reality is that modern traffic cameras are one of the most efficient forms of law enforcement we have.

A camera can monitor a road twenty-four hours a day. It doesn’t need breaks, overtime, pension and NI contributions, or sick pay. It simply records violations and allows police resources to be used elsewhere.

Which is exactly what the “focus on real crime” crowd claim they want. You can’t simultaneously argue that police should spend less time on traffic offences while also opposing the technology that allows them to spend less time on traffic offences.

Pick a lane, just preferably not the bus or cycle lanes.

And before anyone says it, yes, speed limits can sometimes feel arbitrary. Yes, some roads probably should have different limits. Yes, local authorities occasionally make baffling decisions.

That’s a perfectly reasonable debate to have. But once the limit is there, the rule is the rule.

You don’t get to ignore it and then act surprised-Pikachu when you’re caught.

That’s like walking into Tesco, stuffing a steak down your trousers, getting stopped by security, and then complaining that they should be catching “real criminals.” The level of self-awareness is remarkable, as are the mental gymnastics required for this to somehow make sense in your brain.

The thing that fascinates me most is how many people seem to view themselves as law-abiding citizens while simultaneously treating every traffic regulation as optional. Yes, you might get away with speeding a few times, but when it goes wrong and you kill a car full of people, it’s not the sort of thing you can take back.

If you only obey rules when they’re convenient, you’re not really obeying them. You’re negotiating with them. Cameras don’t negotiate. They simply remember.

So next time someone starts ranting about speed cameras, bus lane cameras, red-light cameras, average speed checks, or whatever enforcement technology has ruined their week, ask a simple question:

“What exactly were you doing when the camera caught you?” Because nine times out of ten, the answer is the same: breaking the rules.

If that’s the case, I have some revolutionary money-saving tips.

Slow down.
Stay out of the bus lane.
Obey the signs.
Keep your phone in your pocket.

Congratulations! You’ve just beaten the system.

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What I’m Doing

Listening: Parallax by Jeremy Robinson.

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: £147,225.24.

Fuck It Fund: £321.16.

Pensions: £125,871.50.

Residential Property Value: £242,113.00.

Total Assets: £515,780.90.

Debts

Residential Mortgage: £173,797.96.

Total Debts: £173,797.96.

Total Wealth: £341,982.94.

Over the last few weeks I put together my countdown of the greatest science fiction television series of all time. It was one of the most popular series of posts I’ve written in quite some time, generating plenty of discussion, debate, agreement, disagreement, and the occasional accusation that I was criminally underrating somebody’s favourite show.

The response got me thinking. One of the things I enjoy most about writing this blog is taking a subject I care about and breaking it down into a ranked list. Lists are fun. They’re easy to follow, they encourage discussion, and they force you to think carefully about what truly deserves to be at the top.

So, I’ve decided to make countdowns a regular feature going forward. Don’t worry, Mortgage Advisor on FIRE isn’t suddenly turning into BuzzFeed or Bored Panda. The focus will remain on personal finance, investing, financial independence, psychology, and the various random topics that catch my attention. But from time to time, I’ll be putting together a ranked list on a particular subject and explaining not just what made the list, but why.

For this latest countdown, I’m tackling something much closer to the heart of the blog: the best financial advice of all time.

This isn’t a list of clever investment strategies, stock tips, or complex tax planning techniques. In fact, most of the advice on this list is remarkably simple. That’s because the best financial advice usually isn’t complicated. The challenge isn’t understanding it; it’s consistently applying it.

Some of these lessons are centuries old. Others have been repeated by investors, financial planners, and ordinary people who have quietly built wealth over decades. Yet despite their simplicity, they remain as relevant today as ever.

So let’s begin with number ten.

10. Know Where Your Money Actually Goes

If there is one piece of financial advice that almost everyone needs to hear, it is this: before you try to change your spending, understand your spending.

It sounds obvious, but many people have only a vague idea where their money goes each month. They know roughly what they earn, roughly what the mortgage or rent costs, and roughly how much they have left in their account before payday. Beyond that, things become surprisingly fuzzy. Ask someone how much they spend on takeaways, subscriptions, coffees, Amazon purchases, or impulse spending, and the answer is often little more than an educated guess.

The problem with guesses is that they are frequently wrong, and I have seen this time and time again with people who come to me about their mortgage. I’ll ask how much is being spent on takeaways, for example, and when I try to verify this on their bank statements, the two figures are often wildly different. I don’t blame or judge people for this. As a species we are generally poor at estimating this sort of behaviour.

When people decide they need to budget, their first instinct is often to start tracking every penny they spend. They download an app, create a spreadsheet, colour-code categories, and enthusiastically record every purchase. For a week or two, they become the model of financial discipline. Then life gets busy, the tracking becomes tedious, and the whole system falls apart.

Even when people stick with it, there is another problem. The moment you know you are being monitored, you change your behaviour. It’s the financial equivalent of stepping onto a set of scales every hour. You stop buying things you would normally buy. You become unusually careful. You don’t capture your real spending habits; you capture a temporary version of yourself that is on its best behaviour.

A far better starting point is often to look backwards when you were not being monitored. You wouldn’t set a weight loss goal without knowing what your currently weigh.

Go through the last three to six months of bank statements and credit card statements. Don’t judge yourself. Don’t try to justify anything. Simply observe. Where did the money actually go?

This exercise can be uncomfortable because it replaces assumptions with evidence.

You might discover that the occasional takeaway you thought cost £50 a month is actually closer to £200. The streaming subscriptions you barely notice add up to another £50. The quick trips to the supermarket somehow total several hundred pounds. Those little purchases that seemed insignificant in isolation suddenly reveal themselves as a meaningful percentage of your income.

Equally, you might find pleasant surprises. Perhaps you’re already spending less than you thought. Perhaps your finances are healthier than you realised. The goal isn’t to find reasons to feel guilty. The goal is to understand reality.

This is where many budgeting articles get things backwards. They start with the question, “How much should you spend?” when the more important question is, “How much do you currently spend?”

You cannot create a realistic financial plan until you know your starting point. A budget built on wishful thinking is doomed to fail. A budget built on actual behaviour has a chance of succeeding.

The beauty of this approach is that it also highlights your priorities. Every pound spent is effectively a vote for something. Looking through your statements reveals what you’ve been voting for with your money. Sometimes those votes align perfectly with your values. Other times they don’t.

Maybe you say travel is important but spend more on takeaway food than holidays. Maybe you claim financial independence is your goal but discover hundreds of pounds disappearing on purchases you barely remember making. These aren’t moral failings. They’re simply useful pieces of information.

Once you understand where your money is going, every other piece of financial advice becomes easier to apply. You can identify areas to cut back without feeling deprived. You can increase savings without guessing. You can make informed decisions instead of emotional ones.

Most importantly, you stop operating on assumptions.

Financial success doesn’t begin with investing, side hustles, or finding the perfect savings account. It begins with awareness. Before you worry about where your money should go, take the time to discover where it’s already going.

The answers may surprise you. They may even change your life.

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:

https://www.checkmyfile.partners/GZMJPSJ/2CTPL

Biolink

You can now find all my social media pages by checking out my Biolink:

bio.link/davidscothern.

Part 344: Another Media Appearance

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.

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£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?”

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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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2. You can cancel anytime with no penalty.

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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.

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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.

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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: