What kinds of catastrophes would you hope to survive? Is preparing for an economic meltdown even on your To Do list?

Can you protect yourself from extreme events with judicious investment decisions? Is it even worth trying?

If it’s a giant meteor heading towards Slough then you’d want to go in the first impact. Slough might gain something aesthetically, but it wouldn’t leave a future to relish.

But what about a more modest society-rattling scenario? Some kind of economic collapse, say.

How might such a scenario unfold and what will it do to your investments?

My experience of economic meltdowns is modest. So rather than making up my own scenario, I’ll lean on someone else’s imagination.

The Mandibles

In her book, The Mandibles*, Lionel Shriver follows the plight of one family in their attempts to survive the mother of all economic meltdowns. It’s based in the US but it’s not too hard to imagine a UK parallel.

In the novel, runaway US debt turns international investors sour on Treasuries. The dollar loses its privileged position in favour of a new international reserve currency, the bancor. The US is excluded from the new currency bloc, however, and in a fit of presidential pique the US defaults on its debt.

Further beset by a wide-scale cyber failure, a flailing government turns to money printing and capital controls. The ensuing hyperinflation leads to nationwide economic and social breakdown.

Sounds plausible.

The permanent portfolio?

Faced with such a situation how would you like your investment portfolio to be positioned? Is there any mix of asset types that would help?

Who knows. But let’s look at what happened to the Mandibles.

Equity and Bonds

Mr Mandible senior started the book with a vast equity and bond portfolio, the inheritance of which had his offspring jockeying for position.

Unfortunately, the entire US finance system ground to a halt after the debt default. It never recovered in its original form. The value of the Mandible’s portfolio dropped to zero before the end of chapter one.

A complete and permanent failure of stock markets has happened before. The clearest examples required a communist revolution, as in Russia in 1917 and China in 1949.

Other examples often followed war. For example in Germany in the aftermath of WWII, where hyperinflation followed by currency reform effectively wiped-out pre-war investors.

In short, equity and bonds may not be the rock to cling to in a catastrophe.

Cash

Real-world examples of hyperinflation making cash next to meaningless are plentiful.

In post-WW1 Germany, workers were paid twice a day because cash was losing value so quickly. The price of bread went from 250 marks to 200 billion marks over the course of 1923, with subsequent (possibly apocryphal) tales of people taking wheelbarrows of cash to the bakers.

In 2009, after an intense bout of hyperinflation, the government of Zimbabwe released a 100 trillion-dollar note. Hopefully the wheelbarrows could be left at home for a few days.

The Mandibles suffered a similar fate. In the early stages of the crisis, the one remaining family member with any cash coming in needed to spend it on food the same day, as it wouldn’t be worth much a day later.

By the end of the book the dollar had disappeared entirely, to be replaced by the bancor.

Gold

For the Mandibles, gold was still very highly valued but that led to its own problems.

Any gold held by a nominee financial institution disappeared overnight, along with the equities and bonds.

Beyond that though, the US government outlawed the private ownership of gold. Enforcers went door to door to confiscate all gold items, from jewellery to gold teeth. Houses were ransacked and residents subjected to vigorous interrogations. Only those with the most secret hiding places, nerves of steel, and an impenetrable poker face managed to hold on to something.

Again, history suggests this is a credible response to currency and debt crises.

Whilst not quite the same brutal confiscation suffered by the Mandibles, both the US (1933) and the UK (1966) have previously deemed it necessary to restrict the private ownership of gold.

Property

Freehold property ownership proved a better investment for the Mandibles. Whilst in the short term they were thrown out of their house by gun-wielding squatters (who were later thrown out by even scarier gun-wielding squatters), once some sort of normality was restored a few years later, property ownership was reinstated.

Communist revolutions tend to be less kind to property rights, but if you can avoid those then it seems there’s a fair-to-middling chance you’ll get to keep your house by the end of any upheaval.

Although you may need to budget for a new kitchen and carpets by that point.

Guns

Guns often seem to play a key role in apocalyptic tales of human endurance, but starting gun fights is not a good survival strategy.

As we saw with the squatters, there’s always someone else with a bigger gun. It might be best to stay out of the arms race altogether.

Skills

Much more useful is to acquire some practical skills. If you can grow food, fix the roof, or dig a cess pit, you will find yourself in demand.

Developing a new skill is the greatest investment of all. It cannot be confiscated and will pay you dividends for ever. But you need to pick the right subject.

One of the older Mandibles was an economist back when the economy was still functioning. While his offspring fought for their collective survival, he dedicated himself to writing a thesis on why he was right about everything all along, despite not foreseeing the economic collapse.

Spoiler: he did not survive until the end of the book.

(Some less generous readers may think that economists aren’t of much use even when the economy is functioning.)

Survival

Some of the Mandibles did survive to see some sort of order restored. Key to this was joining a small community on a ranch owned by their uncle. Which was handy.

Survival is hard on your own. You need friends with complementary skills to make a go of it.

One of the Mandibles even managed to hang on to some gold throughout the whole ordeal. That helped them get back onto their feet.

Plan A

So there you have it. Own a property, bury some gold in your garden, practice your poker face, get some friends, and go to carpentry evening classes.

Survival guaranteed!

But what if the next real disaster doesn’t look like this? Will any of the above help you when it comes to the crunch?

Or maybe there won’t be a disaster, but you end up eating cat food because most of your portfolio is buried under the Hollyhock.

Plan B

I do not have gold buried in the garden (although of course I would say the same if I did). And I’m told my face always betrays exactly what I’m thinking – which can sometimes be embarrassing but more to the point means I would not fare well under interrogation.

I do own a property, and I maintain good relations with my daughter and her partner who live in a rural area and grow some of their own food. But my motivation for this was not related to surviving economic meltdown.

Whilst a cautious approach to investing – founded on diversification and a hefty cash buffer – will hopefully enable me to ride out the ups and downs of the market rollercoaster, I have no contingency plans for anything worse.

While the sun is shining, I will enjoy my good fortune in life and maybe go out for a walk. I’ll worry about the gun-toting squatters when they turn up at the door. If I’m lucky they never will.

Fingers crossed.

The post Surviving economic meltdown appeared first on Monevator.

There is nothing like investing when it comes to exposing yourself as a weak-minded gimboid.

I know all about buying stocks low and selling high. I understand the rationale behind Warren Buffett’s aphorism, “be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”

Yet when my portfolio hits red, I fret. And when my return numbers glow green, I feel the pleasure centres in my brain light up like Vegas.

The uptick in fortune means it will cost me more every time I buy additional equities, of course. But hang the expense, I want to be a part of this now! The party’s on and I need to get my snout in the trough, quick.

I know this because despite being a good passive investor who pound-cost averages and rebalances annually, I am not an entirely mechanical man.

And oh, the flesh is weak.

Only flesh and blood

You see I long allowed myself a measure of freedom when investing – a certain amount of money to put into the market every year that wasn’t dictated by the calendar.

Don’t get me wrong. This was never a gambler’s float, used to punt on some company that’s rumoured to be on the verge of discovering cancer-curing jam.

I invested my discretionary dollop in index trackers. However I was free to do so whenever I wished.

Sounds good? The snag is that in reality I struggled to take the plunge when the market did. I wasn’t always been brave enough to blow my ammo when equities were relatively cheap. I held on and on until the upswings, and then I got less for my money.

Oh I had my excuses. Especially when I hadn’t yet escaped the rat race, and so was still subject to the whims of The Man as well as Mr Market.

Impure instinct

Especially before full-strength financial independence had my back, my brain was always on hand with self-justifications to reassure me that reason was actually in control, not instinct:

• I was worried about my job.

• My company was restructuring.

• My monthly drip-feed was already casting cash into the cavernous cake hole of the capital markets.

• “I better not throw in any more in case I’m axed! I’ll need every penny.”

The reality was that the overweening fear of loss was in charge.

What these optional investing side quests actually taught me was I am just one of the herd. A member of the cattle class.

I’m not special. I react and feel like everyone else who makes up the statistics that show this sort of irrational behaviour can cost investors dear.

Gorilla warfare

The truth is it takes willpower to overcome the apeman within, and there’s some evidence that willpower is in limited supply for all of us. We can’t bank on having enough in reserve when we need it.

This in turn means the fewer decisions that are left up to my meat-bag of a brain, the better.

Passive investing would be much easier if we could program a robot to handle it all for us and to physically prevent our continued interference, like some benevolent Dalek with a taser.

Perhaps the AI revolution will give us all the cold-blooded reptilian investing agent of our dreams?

Once it’s emerged from the primordial slop, I mean.

Well, perhaps. But until we can trust an agent to run our portfolio without it going rogue and selling the house to bet everything on pork futures, it’s up to us to manage our all-too-fallible frontal lobes.

Don’t just do something

Back when I still stacking my escape-stash, automatic investing droids were nowhere to be seen. So instead I automated as much of the investing process as possible.

You see, the one human behaviour that always worked for me is inertia.

• I never messed with the direct debit that funnelled money out of my bank account and into my broker’s.

• I kept hands-off the regular investment scheme that piped cash straight to my chosen funds.

• I dared not touch lock-in wrappers like ISAs, pensions, and fixed-term bank accounts, where a cost is imposed for premature evacuation.

Inertia is the great human pacifier. It’s a force that’s more powerful than fear in my world – especially if the fear is something intangible, like an investing loss.

Eliminate all carbon units

There are other weak points where human intervention can easily scupper the best plans.

For instance, you might fiddle with asset allocation every time you choose the next fund to buy. And, boy, what mischief you can get up to when it’s time to rebalance…

“Sell those lovely equities to buy more bloody bonds. In this market?!”

Putting my investing on rails did help me to resist the urge to keep thrashing my winners.

But it sometimes also took a stiffening of resolve, and a quick prayer of deliverance to the passive investing gods.

Older and colder

Since I declared myself FIRE – and declared to my bosses where they could shove The Accumulator’s Personal Growth and Development Plan V4.6 – I’ve found it easier to leave my portfolio to do its thing.

I suppose the same fully-funded sangfroid that enables me to do some work on the side without getting sucked back into the office is also helping me to ignore the market noise.

Have I then reached some state of investing transcendence?

Doubtful. So far so good, but I’m regularly tested and I’m still only a passive investor.

I stayed the course during the Covid crash, true, and I learned more than I lamented during the recent bond-a-geddon.

But who knows how a real humdinger of a bear market would hit me?

Better to stay humble and self-aware.

Automatic for the people

If you recognise these frailties in yourself, then there are various tools you could explore to take the human edge off – from automatic investment plans at online brokers, to all-in-one personal finance apps that limit your investing choices but also your horizons.

They can still be enablers when it comes to self-destructive fiddling, though. And they can be relatively expensive.

These days there’s a lot of talk that AI agents will soon do everything for us. In theory it sounds like automatic investing nirvana. But when you think about how obsequious the typical chatbot is, would you really trust one not to egg on your worst impulses?

Besides, from what I can see AI is so far mostly being deployed to tempt investors off the rational path.

All-in-one not one-for-all

Perhaps the closest proxy for a truly hands-off investing robot is a good multi-asset fund.

Made popular in the UK by Vanguard’s LifeStrategy products, a multi-asset fund is an index-tracking, fund-of-funds with built-in rebalancing features – truly automatic investing.

All you need do is pick the asset allocation of your choice, set-up a direct debit to keep it oiled, and then let the program run.

With this sort of investing the human being is taken off the table – which is the point of the exercise after all – and everything is left to the robot. No more pesky emotions.

Of course, you might eventually start to worry that your multi-asset fund hasn’t got all the assets you want. Not in the right doses, anyway.

Perhaps you’re being greedy or fearful, or perhaps you’ve become better informed. Humans are not incapable of judgement, after all. It’s the rash decisions we want to tamp down, not the strategic thinking.

At least with your investing machine whirring away in the background, you can take time to explore your options with the serenity of a wannabe Cyborg Buffett.

Batteries not included.

Take it steady,

The Accumulator

The post I, Robot appeared first on Monevator.

What caught my eye this week.

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A recent Monevator piece about Gen Z and pensions quoted a young reader stating flatly: “I don’t believe that I’ll be a recipient of a State Pension.”

I’ve read a lot of responses to that sort of line. Mostly they’re some variation of “don’t worry, it’ll be fine”, which is unconvincing and slightly patronising because nobody actually knows the future.

Indeed while the recently-mooted shake-up of the State Pension’s triple-lock from 2030 is pitched as making it more sustainable for the long run, some people will instead see it as proof that politicians will always be tempted to tinker it away, or at least introduce means-testing for what’s now a universal benefit.

So let’s take concerns about the future of the State Pension seriously. Because if you genuinely think the State Pension won’t be there for you, the useful question is what your alternative plan will cost you if you’re proven right. Work that out and you’ll find out what you’re really arguing about.

I run a free pension calculator, which is how I ended up doing this arithmetic in the first place.

Be warned: the number is bracing!

What you’d replace with a DIY State Pension

For the purposes of this article we’ll assume the pension triple-lock continues in its existing form. We don’t know who’ll be governing the UK in 2030 – and thus we can’t be sure if and how the triple-lock will change. Modest tweaks don’t alter the central premise, anyway.

The full new State Pension is currently £241.30 a week for 2026/27, or £12,547.60 a year (Source: GOV.UK). Call it £12,548.

We should focus on the State Pension’s specification rather than that number, though, because the specification is the expensive part:

• The State Pension is paid for life, however long you live.
• It is currently uprated every year under the triple lock, by the highest of earnings growth, CPI, or 2.5% (Source: House of Commons Library).
• You’re not relying on an insurer or an investment fund to deliver the income.
• It isn’t means-tested.

If a private company sold this as a product, it would be the most conservative one on the shelf.

The market price

The nearest alternative to the State Pension you can buy is an RPI-linked annuity.

Hargreaves Lansdown publishes best buy rates. As at 17 September 2026, a single-life RPI-linked annuity with a five-year guarantee paid £5,566 a year per £100,000 at age 65. ¹

Hargreaves Lansdown doesn’t quote for age 68 – the State Pension age a 25-year-old is currently legislated to reach. Its table runs 65 then 70, at £5,566 and £6,338 respectively.

However interpolating those two numbers gives us roughly £6,029 per £100,000 at 68. (That’s my arithmetic, not a quote, so treat it as indicative.)

• Divide £12,548 by 6.03% and you get £208,000.

Thus £208,000 is what it costs, today, to buy the income the State Pension gives you, at the age you’d get it.

Note that a few weeks earlier the same table showed £5,585 at 65. The rate moved by around a percentage point over that short period, and the replacement cost by thousands of pounds with it. So please do take every number in this section as just a snapshot of one week’s pricing.

For more context, replacing the same income three years earlier at age 65 would cost about £225,000.

Or – if you’d settle for a level annuity that never rises – £156,000.

That last figure is the one people quote when they want the State Pension to look cheap. But it’s not a fair comparison, because inflation will eat a level annuity alive over a 25 year retirement.

And £208,000 is a low-ball estimate…

An RPI-linked annuity tracks RPI. But the State Pension currently tracks the triple lock, which is the highest of the three measures cited above. The State Pension has therefore generally run ahead of prices since the triple lock was introduced.

The Commons Library notes that the basic State Pension’s value relative to average earnings climbed from around 16% in the 2000s to roughly 26% under the triple lock. So an annuity that merely keeps pace with RPI is a worse product than the thing it’s replacing.

Also, RPI itself is changing.

From February 2030, RPI will be aligned with CPIH, which has historically run about a percentage point lower. Anyone buying an RPI-linked annuity today is therefore buying an index that is scheduled to become less generous within four years.

I suggest then it’s best we treat £208,000 as a floor.

What this all means if you’re 25

Here’s where the analysis gets more cheerful.

That £208,000 – in today’s money, 43 years away – is not an unthinkable number. You can achieve it through a monthly direct debit, wise investing, and a lot of patience.

How much your direct debit – your contribution – needs to be depends on what you assume about returns:

That’s a spread of more than two to one – from £90 to £205 – in terms of how much you’ll need to put away each month, just from changing the growth assumptions.

It’s an open question as to what the most accurate figure is to use. Anyone giving you a single number is probably trying to sell you something!

Many happy returns?

It’s worth saying where the return assumptions in my table above sit compared to the regulator’s:

• The FCA makes providers project pensions at 2%, 5% and 8% a year, with inflation assumed at 2%.

• That is roughly 0%, 2.9% and 5.9%, after inflation.

• My calculator’s ‘cautious’ 4% therefore sits above the regulator’s central case, and its ‘optimistic’ 6% sits above the regulator’s top one.

I’d rather be upfront about this here than have it pointed out in the comments.

Again, please read the three settings as a range to think about, not a forecast.

Tomorrow’s DIY pensioner today

Let’s now consider a 25-year-old on £39,000 (the ONS median for full-time employees in April 2025) who pays the auto-enrolment minimum of 8%, and who retires at 68.

Firstly a few things about how my tool turns the resultant pension pot into an income:

• The calculator assumes that you take the full 25% tax-free lump sum at retirement and then draw 4% a year from what’s left.
• The resultant retirement income figure includes a full State Pension.
• Everything is in today’s money.
• The tax-free lump sum sits outside this income figure, so it would be money on top.

Here’s the money shot:

Source: Pension Sprout

A pot of £620,000 could produce a retirement income of about £31,000 a year. Of this income, £12,548 – roughly 40% – is the State Pension.

That £31,000 is the number I’d put in front of anyone who thinks the State Pension is irrelevant to them. On this central case, it makes up two-fifths of their retirement income. Moreover it’s two-fifths that’s inflation-proofed and can’t run out.

Switch the same person to the cautious 4% setting and the pot falls to £488,000:

Source: Pension Sprout

We haven’t changed the contributions, but the final sum used to buy an income is £132,000 smaller due to lower investment growth. The State Pension share of our pensioner’s resultant income climbs to 46%.

What if our 25-year-old wants to self-fund the whole thing, so that losing the State Pension entirely wouldn’t change their retirement income?

In this case they will need to lift their own contribution from 5% to about 7.8%, which takes the total from 8% to 10.8%:

Source: Pension Sprout

The higher contributions add about £212,000 to the final pot in this forecast, which covers the £208,000 extra the market would charge. It would cost around £90 a month at today’s salary, rising with pay.

I think that’s manageable beginning at age 25. (It’s brutal if you’re starting at 55 – which is a whole other lesson!)

Buying into what the government is selling

Now we get to the comparison that made me want to write this article.

You can buy extra State Pension. A year of voluntary Class 3 National Insurance costs £18.40 a week, or £956.80 for a full year. For someone who needs 35 qualifying years for the full new State Pension, one additional year adds 1/35th of the full rate.

So £241.30 ÷ 35 = £6.89 a week, or £358.50 a year, index-linked by the triple lock, for life.

Work out the implied rate:

• £358.50 of annual income for £956.80 of capital is 37.5%. That is, it pays for itself in two years and eight months.

The open market offers around 6% on the equivalent product, whereas the state charges a price that implies about 37%.

We can push this further. If you could buy all 35 qualifying years at the price of voluntary contributions (spoiler: you can’t!) then it would cost just £33,488. The annuity market will charge you around £208,000 for the same income.

On this crude but illustrative comparison, the State Pension is available at roughly a sixth of what it’s worth, which is a strange thing to describe as the benefit nobody expects to receive.

But before anyone rushes off to their online banking, some important caveats:

• You cannot buy 35 years of State Pension. You can normally only fill gaps in the last six tax years. And only years that aren’t already qualifying.

• Paying doesn’t always increase your pension, particularly for anyone with a pre-2016 record or a history of being contracted out.

• Check with the Future Pension Centre before doing anything. These payments are an easy way to waste a four-figure sum on a pension decision.

My comparison is just made to show you again what the State Pension is really worth.

So is the Gen Z reader wrong?

Not exactly, but I’d argue their fear is aimed at the wrong target.

• “The State Pension will be abolished” is a low-probability outcome. Mostly because pensioners vote.
• “The State Pension age will keep moving” is already happening in legislation.
• “The triple lock should get watered down” is now the stated goal of our prime minister. It’s previously been suggested by the OBR and various think tanks, too.

In my opinion then, it’s the risk of changes to the State Pension rather than it going away entirely that we might want to plan for.

So what would I say to a 25-year-old who doesn’t believe in the State Pension?

Fine. Work out your plan as though you’ll never get it. My sums suggest this will cost you about £90 a month on the central case. Or £206 if you use the regulator’s return assumptions instead of mine. You can make up your own mind and do the maths for yourself.

Suppose you’re wrong about the politics and the State Pension endures?

Then you’ll simply retire considerably richer than you planned. There are worse mistakes!

Just don’t confuse “I don’t trust it” with “it isn’t worth anything”.

For most of us the State Pension will be the largest guaranteed ², inflation-linked income we will ever have.

That was why I built my calculator – to put the number on the screen so people can argue about it.

If you want to run these figures with your own assumptions, you’ll find it at Pension Sprout.

Sam Parkinson built Pension Sprout after failing to find a pension calculator that didn’t ask for his email address. Sam is not a financial adviser and none of the above is advice, just information for your ongoing research. Figures correct as at 17 September 2026. They will need rechecking against the current tax year whenever you read this.

1. Note: The State Pension doesn’t come with a five-year guarantee, which is an additional useful benefit to the annuity.
2. i.e. Government-backed.

The post What would it cost to replace the State Pension yourself? appeared first on Monevator.

The tale is one of double-digit equity gains, dragged down by bond fund ankle weights:

Actually, the story of 2026 is the story of the portfolio’s lifetime.

The equities bloc (in the green zone below) has performed creditably to amazingly. The 13.7% annualised return of Developed World ex-UK going back well over a decade is extraordinary:

However nominal UK government bonds have almost single-handedly stolen the icing on the cake. The gilty party has lost 3% per year, leaving the Slow & Steady with a 7.6% annualised return since launch.

(Which I’m happy with, to be clear. The objective was only ever to be average.)

The Slow & Steady is Monevator’s model passive investing portfolio. It was set up at the start of 2011 with £3,000. An extra £1,360 is invested every quarter into a diversified set of index funds, tilted towards equities. You can read the origin story and find all the previous passive portfolio posts in the Monevator vaults. Last quarter’s instalment can be found here.

All returns in this post are nominal GBP total returns unless otherwise stated. Subtract about 3% from the portfolio’s annualised performance figure to estimate the real return after inflation.

Too good to last

There was a plot twist in the story that led us to this chapter.

You may recall bonds had a remarkable ten-year run from 2010. But they then fell off the cliff, down 39% from the high point:

Data: Vanguard U.K. Government Bond Index Fund: 31 Dec 2010 to 02 Oct 2026.

Here’s an action-replay of the upward leg of the chart above:

Vanguard’s gilt tracker racked up 6.6% annualised returns from 2010 until its peak in March 2020.

Now for the shocker:

The same fund has dished out a -5.7% annualised loss in the six-and-a-half years since.

Bonds have recovered a little since their October 2022 trough – picking up 2.8% annualised to-date since then. Still, that’s little consolation when inflation has averaged 3.4% and World equities 13.5% in the meantime.

Are bonds broken? Is it a buying opportunity? I’ve read commentary that cuts both ways.

But…

I wouldn’t start from here

If I were starting a similar passive portfolio from scratch, then nominal bonds would be allocated a reduced role compared to the Slow & Steady, given what I know now.

I’d likely split the defensive allocation evenly between gold, commodities, short index-linked bonds, and nominal bonds.

If I rerun the historical tape from the end of 2010, that alternative Slow & Steady earns 8.2% annualised instead of 7.6%.

The difference isn’t huge. The portfolio is about 10% bigger. So it’s less about what could have been and more about what may come next.

A multi-layered defensive array is better fitted for the range of threats that menace passive investors. Not least the storm clouds of inflation and economic uncertainty.

This portfolio only has four years to run, so I should think about making those changes anyway.

New transactions

Every quarter we blow another £1,360 on the market dice and hope to roll sixes. Our stake is split between our seven funds, according to our predetermined asset allocation.

We rebalance using Larry Swedroe’s 5/25 rule. That hasn’t been activated this quarter, so the trades play out as follows:

Emerging market equities

iShares Emerging Markets Equity Index Fund D – OCF 0.18%

Fund identifier: GB00B84DY642

New purchase: £108.80

Buy 39.4804 units @ £2.76

Global property

iShares Environment & Low Carbon Tilt Real Estate Index Fund – OCF 0.18%

Fund identifier: GB00B5BFJG71

New purchase: £68

Buy 27.9077 units @ £2.44

Developed world ex-UK equities

Vanguard FTSE Developed World ex-UK Equity Index Fund – OCF 0.14%

Fund identifier: GB00B59G4Q73

New purchase: £503.20

Buy 0.5395 units @ £932.72

UK equity

Vanguard FTSE UK All-Share Index Trust – OCF 0.06%

Fund identifier: GB00B3X7QG63

New purchase: £68

Buy 0.1833 units @ £370.90

Global small cap equities

Vanguard Global Small-Cap Index Fund – OCF 0.29%

Fund identifier: IE00B3X1NT05

New purchase: £68

Buy 0.1188 units @ £572.42

UK gilts

Vanguard UK Government Bond Index – OCF 0.12%

Fund identifier: IE00B1S75374

New purchase: £285.60

Buy 2.1336 units @ £133.86

Global inflation-linked bonds

Royal London Short Duration Global Index-Linked Fund – OCF 0.27%

Fund identifier: GB00BD050F05

New purchase: £258.40

Buy 237.9374 units @ £1.09

New investment contribution = £1,360

Trading cost = £0

Average portfolio OCF = 0.17%

User manual

Take a look at our broker comparison table for your best investment account options.

Or learn more about choosing the cheapest stocks and shares ISA for your situation.

You might also enjoy a refresher on why we think most people are best choosing passive instead of active investing.

Take it steady,

The Accumulator

The post The Slow and Steady passive portfolio update: Q3 2026 appeared first on Monevator.

The first Weekend Reading every month can be read by anyone on the Monevator website. Subscribe for free to our email newsletter or become a member to ensure you see the rest.

I thought it notable there wasn’t more pushback in the comments last weekend, when I cited a growing consensus that something must be done about the pension triple-lock.

A few of you raised thoughtful questions, mostly about what really drove the convergence of pension-age income with that of the rest of the population.

But there were no pitchforks, no curses. No shaking a fist at the unfairness of it all.

With hindsight, this eerie quiet further suggested that most of us can see the pension triple-lock is fair game – unsustainable in its current form.

And sure enough, on Tuesday the Prime Minister pulled the bandaid off.

The triple lock would be tweaked to reduce its long-run cost, Andy Burnham said, and any savings used to fund later life social care.

Triple-topped

As the BBC recaps:

The triple lock was introduced in 2010 by the coalition government and designed to ensure the value of the state pension was not overtaken by the increase in the cost of living or the incomes of working people.

It means the state pension rates rise every April by either inflation, earnings growth or 2.5% – whichever is the highest.

Burnham said this will stay in place until 2030, at which point he would like to “adjust it”.

He said: “The state pension will continue to rise every year at least by prices or 2.5%. And it will hold its value relative to earnings over time so that pensioners will always share in the rising prosperity of the nation.

But this change will generate significant savings which we will use to build up our national care service.

Some may not realise it but older people with nothing more than the state pension, or only a little more, can find themselves paying care charges today from that small income. Under my plan, this will no longer happen.”

On first blush it looks a sensible compromise. I think most people support a reasonable State Pension, if only because we’ll benefit from it ourselves.

But its ‘every way’s a winner’ ratchet made the old triple-lock system increasingly unviable. It’s already forecast to cost around three times as much by the end of the decade as originally expected.

Burnham’s tweak should reset the built-in escalation. According to the IFS:

The new, reformed version of the triple lock still contains three parts.

Inflation, earnings growth and 2.5% are all important.

But the new mechanism means that each year the state pension will instead increase by the maximum of:

• CPI inflation
• 2.5%
• the amount needed to ensure the state pension keeps up with average earnings growth since the introduction of the new policy.

Essentially Burnham is saying enough is enough on the catch-up we saw last week. The new tweak effectively cements the status quo, relative to average earnings, in the long run, while still providing protection against everyday inflation.

Here’s an illustrative scenario:

Source: IFS

Sense and sensibility

At first blush it looks like a good change to me.

The old mechanism was becoming too expensive. This new triple-lock will still protect the real value of the State Pension – and it will still be increasingly costly to fund. But the revised link with average earnings at least ties that cost implicitly to the taxes that will pay for it.

The tweak also seems like a pragmatic one – announced without bombast, a sensible timeline to delivery, and made in the face of some political risk.

Finally, funding social care for the elderly is a huge issue, as anyone who worked through my co-blogger’s deep dive a few years ago knows.

I don’t like the means-testy sounding way that Burnham is pitching his fresh look at the issue. Ideally I’d prefer some kind of paid-in insurance system that meant everyone would get to live in a care home for free in the end if they needed to. This would remove the lottery element to end-of-life planning, making it much easier to save (and spend) accordingly.

But at least it’s a real and weighty problem to tackle, unlike the phoney wars of the past decade.

Obviously it’s too early to declare that UK politics has returned to a reasonable centre ground. But might this too be a tweak in the right direction?

Have a great weekend!

From Monevator

Our updated guide to help you find the best broker – Monevator

Their first home: the next buying opportunity? – Monevator [Mogul Members]

From the archive-ator: FIRE-side chat: domestic geo-arbitrage made it possible – Monevator

News

Relaunch of Help to Buy with new Your First Home scheme – This Is Money

Crackdown announced on ‘cowboy’ leasehold property agents – BBC

UK borrowing costs up as gilt yields hit 6% for first time since 1998 – Independent

Average homeowner mortgage rate doubles to 4% for first time since 2009… – T.I.M

…but house prices are the most affordable since 2015 – This Is Money

UK disposable income rises as benefits payouts soar ahead of wages – City AM

Jaecoo 7 UK’s best-selling car as Chinese brands take nearly 25% of market – Autocar

TPG joins race for Monzo stake after end of £10bn bid talks – Sky

Barclays softens return-to-office plans for UK staff after backlash – Guardian

London’s Oxford Street to be pedestrianised from October – BBC

UK diesel price hits record of £2 a litre – Guardian

EVs up to nine times cheaper to drive than petrol cars in UK – Carbon Brief

Products and services

^{Disclosure: Links to platforms may be affiliate links, where we may earn a commission via a tracking cookie. This article is not personal financial advice. When investing, your capital is at risk and you may get back less than invested. With commission-free brokers other fees may apply. See terms and fees. Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results.}

Three major lenders lift mortgage rates as sub-5% deals disappear fast – This Is Money

Barclays switch offer: Get up to £300 – Be Clever With Your Cash

Get up to £1,500 cashback when you transfer your cash and/or investments to Charles Stanley Direct through this affiliate link*. Terms apply – Charles Stanley*​

The zero-bills home: how one family is beating the energy price hikes – Guardian

Dine at Michelin-starred restaurants across the UK for as little as £20 – Which

Get up to £3,000 cashback when you open an Interactive Investor SIPP via this affiliate link*. Terms apply – Interactive Investor*​

Is Amazon Prime worth the money? – Be Clever With Your Cash

Seven things to know before taking advantage of Free Wills Month – Which

Homes for sale in landmark towers, in pictures – Guardian

Comment and opinion

Index investors probably aren’t missing much in private markets – A.W.O.C.S.

Ten ways to feel rich – White Coat Investor

People are too worried about the bond market – Fortunes & Frictions

A brutal bond market [US but relevant] – A Wealth of Common Sense

Financial lessons – Humble Dollar

FIRE makes taking on more debt a non-starter – Financial Samurai

Exponential wealth: centuries of stock and bond returns – CFA Institute

Five things worth paying for – Dan Haylett

Stop obsessing about the safe withdrawal rate… – Use Your Wealth

…though here’s yet another way to improve on it if you do [Research] – SSRN

More recent academic research – Alpha in Academia

On the job mini-special

Work hard – and be less precious – when you’re young – Slow Boring

What’s eating the office? – Dror Poleg

The invisible way companies are using AI to set salaries – W.S.J. [h/t Abnormal Returns]

Naughty corner: Active antics

Steps to take if you own a lot of stock in your employer – The Joint Account

What makes Warren Buffett unique – Jason Zweig

Shopify, the snowboard shop that redefined e-commerce – Fiscal.AI

The looming AI earnings and accounting headwind – Tker

Most stocks are losers – A Wealth of Common Sense

AI is boosting interest rates, not inflation – Morningstar

Anthropic’s S-1 pre-IPO filing mini-special

The numbers behind Anthropic: an FAQ – The Ringer

Anticipating the risk factors in Anthropic’s prospectus – Shivaram

Kindle book bargains

The Man Who Solved the Market by Gregory Zuckerman – £0.99 on Kindle*

Money: The Story of Humanity by David McWilliams – £0.99 on Kindle*

The Price of Money by Rob Dix – £0.99 on Kindle*

Risk and Reward by Ben Carlson – £0.99 on Kindle*

Environmental factors

Heat pump sales soar across Europe after states cut electricity taxes – Guardian

The US state replacing power plants with home batteries – BBC

Wolves did not save Yellowstone – The Conversation

A conservation success story for New Zealand’s heaviest insect – Phys.org

Racing to save the Florida orange industry from collapse – WSJ [h/t Abnormal Returns]

Robot overlord roundup

Where’s the ‘intelligence explosion’? – Ramez Naam via Noahpinion

How Anthropic and OpenAI got serious about business models in 2026 – Tom Tunguz

Apps, agents, and aggregation – Stratechery

More words that explain AI – Dror Poleg

A critique of Ed Zitron’s AI prediction track record – Dan Luu

AI risks and you mini-special

Will AI agents cause the next corporate bank run? – Treasury Spring

Why many people fear AI will ruin their retirement… – Mr Money Mustache

…and why many people don’t fear AI enough – Behavioural Investment

Not at the dinner table

Brexit referendum ‘possible’ in Labour election manifesto, says Burnham – BBC

US-China trade is unravelling as American’s deficit shifts to other partners – Econovis

The US “Who You Gonna Believe?” election – Paul Krugman

Off our beat

Random is as random does – Tim Harford

A brief history of the Bloomberg terminal – IEEE

The 12th-century military disaster that forever changed global finance – Big Think

Treat your to-read pile like a river, not a bucket – Oliver Burkeman

How Japan’s geography determined its history – Uncharted Territories

Men are having a purpose crisis, and things are getting weird – Next Big Idea

People who walk more or walk faster live longer, study finds – Harvard Medical School 

M&S Custard Cream Spread: Britain has completed food – Central Bylines

And finally…

“A world equity index tracker is the only equity investment a rational investor ever needs to own.”
– Lars Kroijer, Investing Demystified*

^{*Links marked with an asterisk are affiliate links.}

The post Weekend reading: State Pension to fall out of lock step appeared first on Monevator.

All economies are cyclical. But in recent years the UK economy has been like a baroque town clock – one where a cuckoo pops out every 60 minutes, a peasant girl emerges every four hours to chase the geese, and at midnight the clock face spins wildly around before ending up exactly as it started.

The post Their first home. The next buying opportunity? [Members] appeared first on Monevator.

Vacuuming Buck House with a straw would be more fulfilling. But it would not have produced a quick and easy overview of all the main execution-only investment services.

Investment platforms, stock brokers, call them what you will… we’ve stripped them back to basics for you to eyeball over a cup of cocoa and a handful of your favourite stimulants.

What’s changed with this update?

^{Disclosure: Links to platforms may be affiliate links, where we may earn a commission via a tracking cookie. This article is not personal financial advice. When investing, your capital is at risk and you may get back less than invested. With commission-free brokers other fees may apply. See terms and fees. Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results.}

Not a vast amount of movement, pecking-order-wise. The main players are as you were.

Still, Chip has chipped in with a SIPP, continuing the trend for fintechs to round out their packages with pensions as their user base develops grey whiskers.

Quilter Invest has SIPPed up, too.

In both cases, the choice is restricted to essentially a single multi-asset fund brand.

That’s a pretty good idea in my view, given how analysis paralysis stalls many a budding investor. (Including my twenty-something self).

Who’s the best broker?

It’s impossible to say. There are too many subtle differences in the offers. The UK’s brokers occupy more niches than the mammal family. And while I know which one is best for me, I can’t know which one is right for you.

What we have done is laser focus the comparison onto the most important factor in play: cost.

An execution-only broker is not on this Earth to hold anyone’s hand.

Yes, we want their websites to work. We’d prefer them to not screw us over, go bust, or send us to the seventh circle of call centre hell. These things we take for granted.

So customer service metrics are not included in this table. It’s purely a bare-knuckle contest of brute cost for services rendered.

On that basis  our ‘Good for’ column reads as below.

Commission-free brokers

• InvestEngine, Freetrade*, Lightyear*, Prosper*, Trading 212*, and IG

These are commission-free brokers. It’s always worth looking at a commission-free broker’s ‘How we make money’ page because – rest assured – they will be earning a buck, one way or another.

Just search that topic on their websites.

If you find commission-free brokers unsettling, then stay under the FSCS £85,000 investor compensation limit or use a broker that charges fees directly. You’ll find some very competitive offers in our table.

Prefer paying directly?

ISAs and GIAs

• Scottish Widows

SIPPs

• Vanguard up to around £60K portfolio value
• Interactive Investor* £60K – £100K
• Fidelity* and AJ Bell* £100K+ (ETFs only, not funds)

The best choice for you depends on how often you trade and the value of your accounts, plus your personal priorities around customer service, family accounts, flexible ISAs, multi-currency accounts, and so on.

Our ‘Good for’ choices are cost-based. We assume 12 buy and four sell trades per year. Buy trades use a broker’s regular investing scheme when available.

Using the full table

We divide the major UK brokers into four camps:

• Flat-fee brokers – these charge one price for platform services, regardless of the size of your assets. In other words, they might charge you £100 per year, whether your portfolio is worth £1,000 or £1 million. Generally, if you’ve got a large portfolio then you definitely want to look here. Bear in mind that fixed fee doesn’t mean you won’t also be tapped up for dealing monies and a laundry list of other charges.

• Percentage-fee brokers – this is where the wealthy need to be careful. These guys charge a percentage of your assets, say 0.3% per year. For a portfolio of £1,000 this would amount to a fee of £3 – but on £1 million you’d be paying £3,000. Small investors should generally use percentage-fee brokers. However even surprisingly moderate rollers are better off with fixed fees. Many percentage-fee brokers offer fee caps and tiered charges to limit the damage.

• Commission-free brokers – these upstarts apparently don’t charge you at all. Their marketing departments have it easy, simply pointing to £0 account charges and trading fees costing diddly squat. So why don’t these firms go bankrupt? Because they make up the difference using other methods. Revenue streams can include higher spreads, no interest on cash, and cross-selling more profitable services.

• Trading platforms – brokerages that suit active investors who want to deal mostly in shares and more exotic securities besides. Think of noob-unfriendly sites like Interactive Brokers*, Saxo, and friends.

Our table looks complex. But choosing the right broker needn’t be any more painful than checking it offers the investments you want and running a few numbers on your portfolio.

Help us find the best online broker for all of you

Our table’s ongoing vitality relies on crowd-sourcing.

We review the whole thing roughly every three months. But it can be kept permanently up-to-date if you contact us or leave a comment every time you find an inaccuracy, fresh information, or an investing platform you think should be added.

Thanks to your efforts as much as ours, our broker comparison table has become an invaluable resource for UK investors looking to find the best online broker.

Take it steady,

The Accumulator

*Links marked with an asterisk are affiliate links.

The post Our updated guide to help you find the best online broker appeared first on Monevator.

What caught my eye this week.

The post Weekend reading: Make mine a triple, but what about the hangover? appeared first on Monevator.

A friend of mine expects to receive a modest windfall from an inheritance. Their now-deceased relative was sufficiently twice-removed to make the money both unexpected and also unencumbered with emotional baggage. (Notwithstanding my envious side-eye…)

“Well, I’d put it in a pension,” I said.

Just because the money had effectively fallen out of the sky, that doesn’t mean they should flush it down the toilet.

“Of course,” I continued, “I am not your financial advisor. Everyone’s situation is different so seek professional advice if you need it.”

Now it was my turn to get the side-eye.

“Also,” I whispered, leaning in, “Your capital is at risk, and you may get back less money than you started with.”

My friend did not get the joke. But they did buy me a coffee to hear more.

Why invest an inheritance in a pension?

My friend expects to receive about £30,000. That’s a significant amount of money for most people, but not a life-changing one.

Certainly not if they blow it on a car and a luxury family holiday to St Lucia.

For perspective, the average inheritance in the UK is around £11,000. Those average folks will have to pick either the car or the hols, I guess.

None of these sums will seem very big to Monevator readers well on their way to financial independence.

Indeed even if you’re younger, assuming you’ve calculated the vast wodge you’ll need to create a post-work income, you’ll know £11,000 doesn’t touch the sides.

However we should never underestimate the power of time, global equities, and compound interest:

Yes yes, 10% is an optimistic return. And that £191,943 will probably be worth only £100,000 or so in three decades’ time in today’s money, assuming vaguely on-target inflation.

Then again, global equities have done about 10% over the past few decades.

What’s more, if you think returns are going to be a lot lower, then that’s even more reason to invest the money. You’ll need it!

Fun-sized frittering

A quick note before we get into taxes – I know, contain yourselves – on the hedonistic alternative to investing an inheritance in a pension.

I’m talking about the holidays, the conservatory, and the fancy cars.

I get it. Yes, I’d invest the money. But I said that’s what I’d do. I know myself!

For many people, spending an inheritance on something fun or meaningful – or both – will seem like a bigger bang for their buck than watching it vanish into a SIPP.

You might even decide that’s what the money was meant for. Especially if it’s something that enhances your quality of life on an enduring basis. Say a house extension, or a trip to see much-loved but far-flung relatives.

We all tend to mentally bucket money. Windfalls and inheritances for most people will land in a different – and perhaps entirely new – receptacle.

A compromise could be to tithe off some of the windfall for these non-investing purposes, then resolve to invest the rest. I’d suggest a percentage rather than some arbitrarily-sized fun fund. Cut your cloth, in other words.

Then again, you might know that your relative would have preferred you to save or invest the windfall. In that case investing will come easier.

What about the mortgage?

Sensible money goals like paying off your mortgage or – heaven forbid – any other outstanding debt sits alongside investing in the sound choice bucket.

Paying off your mortgage or investing is a live decision for anyone seeking financial independence. Especially so if you’re on a quick march.

But you should revisit your plan after a chunky windfall.

You might decide the lump sum gives you the luxury of being more risk averse, and hence paying down the mortgage.

On the other hand, perhaps it gives you the confidence to invest more instead?

Only you can decide what works best for you.

A puffed-up pensioned legacy

Let’s get back to doing something really fun with your money – like investing it in a pension! (Hey, this is Monevator. We do things differently here…)

The big bonus of putting your bequest into a pension is the immediate boost you’ll get from tax relief.

(I’m assuming here you’re still in your working years, rather than that you’re passing down wealth through a family of Methusalehs…)

Getting tax relief on pension contributions is the nearest thing to free money since, well, an inheritance.

Say you’re a higher-rate taxpayer. In this case your £11,000 pension contribution gets 20% tax relief upfront (£2,750).

That’s now £13,750 invested inside the pension.

As a 40% taxpayer you can then claim another 20% tax relief via self-assessment or your PAYE tax code. This will effectively refund you another £2,750 in cash.

Show me the money!

All told, your £11,000 inheritance has already ‘returned’ 66.67%:

• You have £13,750 inside your pension
• This cost you £8,250 (£11,000 minus the £2,750 higher-rate relief)
• Turning £8,250 into £13,750 is a 66.67% return

We have a choice as to how we model the subsequent return in the pension over the next three decades. That’s because we technically only have £13,750 in the pension pot. The rest of our initial return came as 20% cash tax relief.

To keep things simple, here’s how £13,750 would grow, again at 10%:

You won’t need to sit down with a stiff drink when you see that putting more money in upfront means you end up with much more at the end.

However, this understates the benefit of making the pension contribution as a higher-rate taxpayer – because of that additional £2,750 in tax relief from HMRC.

Let’s say by reinvesting the relief (which would generate more tax relief) and/or contributions from a salary, we are able to put the full whack into a pension.

We saw that the initial tax relief amounts to a 66.67% uplift on our net outlay:

• £11,000 increased by 66.67% is £18,333.70

Rounding down and redoing our table based on that figure:

By investing the £11,000 inheritance over 30 years we’ve 30-bagged it. If anyone is looking down from anywhere fluffy and beatific, they’d surely be proud.

There will be taxes to pay when you withdraw the money from the pension, of course.

But that’s always true with pensions. Most people pay a lower tax rate in retirement.

Yeah but…

Of course, caveats and sidebars abound.

Besides the later tax you’ll have to pay, you might argue some people are already maximising their pensions, or that it’s a faff to fiddle with your schedule when you’re an employee versus a freewheeling self-employed type like me.

But there are ways to manage all this.

For example, you might have to increase your contributions from your salary to get the full benefit in the final table above, but you could use the tax relief as spending money in the meantime.

You’re saving on income tax in this case.

What’s more, if you’re able to use the contribution to reduce your salary below key thresholds then you might avoid nonsense like the £100,000 tax trap or losing child benefit, depending on your situation. Your effective return will therefore be even higher

Again, everyone’s strategy will need to be different. We’re talking big picture.

Rich but not dead yet

Perhaps you’re retired and you think none of this applies to you?

Remember you can still contribute £3,600 a year to a pension. If you’re under age 75 you should get 20% tax relief.

More importantly, this discussion might help frame how you think about giving.

I’ve put a 30 year row into the timetables above. But most inheritance receivers would be lucky (or perhaps more tactfully: unlucky) to get their money so early.

Gifts are different. If you’re 60 and you have 30-year old children, then passing on wealth now to go into their pensions could be far more effective than leaving them to inherit money that’s much less valuable in a couple of decades time, with all that potential tax arbitrage having flowed under the bridge.

It’ll also help with inheritance tax planning, if that’s something you worry about.

Naturally you’ll need to trust them and explain the plan if this is your goal.

Big boys trousered

Of course some lucky people will receive inheritances far in excess of the modest five-figure average we’ve considered above.

If you’ve found you now own the big house, a parlour full of Joshua Reynolds and George Stubbs knock-offs, some 5,000 acres, and a coterie of staff headed up by a man called Jeeves – or more likely these days an efficient Polish lady – then your mileage will vary. Not least the long crawl down the drive getting back from the funeral.

I’m sadly unqualified to offer much useful insight in this case, though I would love an invitation to the opening day after you’ve turned the whole lot over to the National Trust on seeing the first winter’s heating bills.

I suppose you could read this dusty article on the wealth preservation strategies of the rich.

What if your inheritance is chunkier than the usual, but not boosted up to Bertie Wooster levels of wonga?

Well, there are limits to how much you can put into a pension each year. You’re probably already contributing to a workplace pension or SIPP too (if not, why not?) and so stashing away, say, £300,000 is going to take some time.

Should you invest in buy-to-lets, or something even sillier like a start-up or a restaurant?

I probably wouldn’t. I’d put the money somewhere safe – cash, multiple FSCS protected bank accounts and National Savings & Investments – and have a ponder.

Firstly, look into carried forward allowances for pensions. This enables you to make use of unused previous pension allowances from the past three years. You might be able to pension away more of the windfall than you realise.

Once you’ve done your sums, you could find that between ISAs and your pension, you can get all the money into tax shelters within a decade or so, say.

That’s a long time, but remember the rest of your inheritance isn’t doing nothing while you wait.

On the contrary, it’s providing a rock-solid safety cushion. One that should be earning a respectable rate of interest at the time of typing.

This means you can probably adjust your asset allocation inside your tax shelters in the meantime, while you gradually move the money across over the years.

Let’s say your pensions and ISAs are currently tilted towards something like a 60/40 portfolio. So 60% in risky assets, and 40% in less risky stuff.

Factor in the newly-acquired six-figure inheritance onto the safety side of the ledger, and you might now effectively be running a 40/60 shares/bond split, for instance. That is, you’ve got much more in safer assets than had you targeted.

In this case you might ramp up your risk exposure in your invested portfolio in the tax shelters, by selling some bonds and buying more equities.

You can do this because the cash waiting to be invested is substituting for some or all of your previous safety cushion.

Your money, your problem

Of course your percentages will be different. I’m deliberately being vague throughout this piece because:

• Inheritances vary wildly
• Effective tax rates vary wildly
• The pension rules are fiddled with far too often
• Investment returns vary wildly, at least in the short term
• Risk tolerances vary wildly…
• …and might change after you inherit a life-changing sum
• Everyone’s goals are different

I’m afraid there’s nothing else for it but to roll up your sleeves and dig into the Monevator archives to work out your own plan.

I’m sure it’s what Great Uncle Reggie would have wanted.

The post Why you should invest an inheritance in a pension appeared first on Monevator.

I am writing this at 9.30 on a Monday morning, sitting in the garden. Mrs Accumulator has just waved to me through the window and I can scarcely believe she’s there.

The past year has been strange, full of awkward trials and tiny tribulations, but the moment that’s just passed between us – well, it doesn’t get better than that. ¹

About five years ago, ² I’d have been desperately fighting bin-fires at the office, with no Mrs TA within a country mile. 

Work would have felt like one of those mad videogames where pointless cack (pizza, pies, U-boats, whatever) hurtles at you down a conveyor belt while your energy bar ebbs away. 

Now I’m in a soggy garden with the scent of pine resin up my nose. It feels like heaven. 

God, that went fast

I haven’t had much time to reflect of late. To think about how chuffing lucky I am. Though the feeling bleeds through my every day. 

From one perspective, the past year has felt like an extra level in that crazy conveyor belt game: 

• Here comes a devastating diagnosis. Scratch one parent! (It’s not the end yet, but it’s the beginning of the end.)
• Now incinerate hundreds of hours on a communal endeavour with no ‘We’ in community. 
• Next, feel the spread of aches and pains that likely can’t be ignored much longer, nor fixed. Goddamn age. 
• Watch people you love trapped in torment. Feel powerless to help them.  
• Fail to fulfill some promises to good friends while you arbitrage the above. 

Yet from another perspective, I’m happy I met the challenges that came my way. Whether they’d feature among the golden beaches and labradors of a retirement brochure is beside the point. No-one else fancied it, so it had to be me. 

Perhaps I made a difference to my loved ones. And others further down my contacts list. Either way, it made me feel useful. That’s pretty vital for a retired male. 

Much of what I’ve done has no place on a CV, or Linkedin. It probably won’t make my memoirs (available soon!), or even a FIRE post about how amazing FIRE is. But I’m still glad I did it. 

It meant something to someone. It meant something to me. Certainly it was waaaay better than hitting the Q3 stretch target for BastardoCorps PLC. 

Virtually none of it was in the plan. 

This was the plan

Before I retired early, I sketched out an idealised structure for my week because I feared I might otherwise just lie in bed: 

• Monday – Walk, read, all day
• Tuesday – Monevator
• Wednesday – Monevator
• Thursday – New skill
• Friday – Volunteer
• Saturday – Day out with Mrs Accumulator
• Sunday – Day out with Mrs Accumulator

It all happens, but fragmented and frittered across formless weeks and months. No week looks like this. Also, the volunteer part has not featured me giving my time to a worthy cause, so I need to sort that out. 

Here’s a list of activities five-years-ago me thought I’d try with my oodles of spare time:

So there you go. I award myself a First Class Honours in pottering, prevarication and lack of application. 

Take that Mr Money Mustache! This is how you start a movement. (Time-wasters only, please.)

Take it steady, 

The Accumulator

P.S. Our FIRE budget for 2025-26 was £29,366 for two. Actual spend: £29,432. Ooh, so close.

1. The knowledge that it doesn’t get better than that was passed on to me by The Investor, quoting the wise words of a text message from his late father: “Eating fish and chips from the best takeaway in the world. Mum only ate half hers. Had to finish it off. It doesn’t get better than that.”
2. This update is late!

The post FIRE update: year five appeared first on Monevator.

What caught Frugalist’s eye this week.

The post Weekend reading: Well, that escalated quickly appeared first on Monevator.