Notes on financial independence from a UK perspective — index funds, ISAs, and the parts of the plan that aren't about spreadsheets. Not financial advice — I'm not qualified to give any.
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What my employer already insures me for
The risk register had entries for redundancy and poor health, mitigated with an emergency fund and exercise. I'd never actually checked what my employer already covers before deciding what else I needed.
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ISA, LISA, or pension: the order I actually fund them in
The UK FI corner of the internet argues about this constantly. Here's the order I actually follow, and the reasoning for each step, rather than one I'd only defend in the abstract.
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Calculating my own "enough"
The idea that stuck hardest from my book notes was the bucket image from Enough? — aim for the return you need, not the maximum your risk tolerance permits. Here's that arithmetic, actually done.
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Why I only ever buy on Vinted
Sixty-odd orders, two hundred items, and not one instance of me being the seller. It's a one-way habit I'd never actually clocked, let alone defended, until now.
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Staying friends with people who aren't optimising anything
The risk register had a one-line entry called 'Becoming Scrooge.' It deserves more than a line — the social cost of a savings rate nobody around you shares.
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One dashboard instead of three banks
Seventeen accounts, two banks, and one that only exists in a spreadsheet. Why collapsing them into a single number changed more than the number itself.
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What my share of Japan actually cost, and why my own bank data can't tell me
Sixteen days in Japan with three friends. My own transaction export says one number. The real one is almost certainly higher, and I can't recover it from the data I kept.
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A full year, sorted by where it actually went
I claimed housing, transport and income are the 20% that drive 80% of the outcome. I hadn't actually checked that against my own year of transactions until now.
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The £1 vending machine habit
One line item showed up more than almost anything else in a year of transactions: the office vending machine, roughly a pound a time. Here's where it actually came from.
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Secondhand and surplus-food habits, quantified
Buying secondhand clothes and discounted surplus food are two habits I'd kept for years without ever adding up. The totals, and the one pattern I didn't expect.
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The fund switch that mattered more than any other decision I made
A Junior ISA parked in a single UK income fund, four years later moved into a global tracker — the actual numbers, and why the comparison isn't as clean as it looks.
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The Banker on FIRE gap, from the inside
I flagged Banker on FIRE as the only UK FI blog that takes multi-part compensation seriously. I work somewhere that pays this way — here's the piece I wished existed.
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My effective tax rate vs the number everyone quotes
Ask someone their tax rate and they'll give you their marginal rate. The number that actually describes your year is a different one — worked through with a realistic example.
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Career capital vs market capital: what the AWS certificate actually bought
The instinct is to compare what a certification cost against what the same money would have returned if invested instead. That comparison turns out to be asking the wrong question.
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I answered Kinder's three questions in my twenties. The answers weren't about money.
George Kinder's three life planning questions, answered honestly by someone nowhere near financially independent — and what they revealed about why I was saving in the first place.
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Every money book I've read, condensed to what actually stuck
Notes on seven finance books and six that aren't about money but changed how I think about it — with the honest verdict on which ones you can skip.
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Nine FI blogs, reviewed from a UK perspective
Most financial independence writing is American. Here's what nine of the best-known FI blogs are actually good for if you're saving in pounds — and where you have to translate.
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I keep a risk register for my FI plan
We write risk registers and run pre-mortems at work, then plan our own finances with a spreadsheet and a vibe. Here's what's actually on mine, including the risks with no mitigation at all.