BoringMath

Most people on auto-enrolment are sitting at the legal minimum: 5% from them, 3% from their employer. After 30 years that gap between minimum and something sensible is massive. Government direction risk is real, but for most people the bigger problem is contributing too little. boring-math.com/calculators/uk…

The Lords were absolutely right. Government should NEVER have the power to force how your pension is invested. Your retirement is not a political piggy bank. Labour can’t be trusted with our pensions. #HandsOffOurPensions

@MyArrse Five years abroad feels long enough to escape UK CGT. It isn't. HMRC's non-residency rules mean assets sold while you were away can still be taxable when you return. The bill arrives years after the sale. boring-math.com/calculators/uk…

British expats fleeing the Gulf War are being hit with huge tax bills after returning to UK. HMRC is hitting them with unexpected Capital Gains Tax after falling foul of UK’s five‑year temporary non‑residency rule, which is an anti-tax avoidance measure. uk.yahoo.com/news/british-e…

If you pay into your workplace pension via salary sacrifice, you avoid 12% employee NI on those contributions. A £5,000 contribution costs you £4,400 take-home rather than £5,000. Most people treat pension contributions as a full cost. They aren't.

@2147mill Worth noting this only works in a Stocks and Shares ISA. The same £1,000 in a Cash ISA at 4% grows to about £45,000 by retirement, not £400k. Same tax wrapper, completely different outcome. The vehicle matters.

The S&P has grown at a rate of 10.5% each year on average since the 1950s. Assuming that growth rate continues, a single £1,000 deposit into a Stocks and Shares ISA at birth will grow to over £400,000 by the age of retirement That right there is the power of compounding.

The FIRE number rule of thumb is 25x your annual spending. Spend £30,000/year and you need £750,000 invested. At a 4% withdrawal rate that portfolio lasts indefinitely. boring-math.com/calculators/fi…

@themotleyfool £100/month at 22 grows to £270k by 65 at 7% average returns. Start at 32 instead and you end up with £130k. That 10-year delay costs £140,000. boring-math.com/calculators/co…

The most powerful force in finance: compound interest and staying calm.

@2147mill The bit the £1,200 vs £1,000 framing misses is the opportunity cost of the deposit. A £60k deposit invested at 7% for 25 years grows to £326k. Run the full buy vs rent numbers including that: boring-math.com/calculators/bu…

Binary choice: Own a £300k house with a mortgage or own £300k of dividend stocks in an ISA? One costs you £1,200/month. One pays you £1,000/month. Both can appreciate. Only one is liquid.

If you're self-employed in the UK and earn £30,000, you pay Class 4 NI at 6% on profits above £12,570. An employee on the same income pays 8% in that band. Less NI is one reason contracting can make sense on paper. But you also lose sick pay, holiday, and any employer pension contribution. The headline rate hides the full trade-off.

The £3.5 trillion figure is one of the largest private pension pools in the world relative to GDP. The tradeoff is that market risk sits with individuals, not the state. Final salary schemes that guarantee a fixed income are now almost entirely public sector. Everyone else is betting on their pot lasting.

But Norway has a sovereign wealth fund... So? a communist pot controlled by the Government, can you imagine what our Government would have done with it? They only have £27bn of private pension assets as opposed to our £3.5 trillion, and £5 trillion in pension assets overall. Largerly funded through tax relief which North Sea Oil provided. A decentralised pension system out of the reach of greedy socialists. Don't bemoan that.

Earning £100,000 sounds like a win. Between £100,000 and £125,140 your marginal rate is 60% because you lose £1 of personal allowance for every £2 earned above £100,000. Add a Plan 2 student loan and it's 71%. Salary sacrifice can bring you back under. boring-math.com/calculators/uk…

@rand_longevity Someone holding a £250,000 mortgage at 4.5% over 25 years pays £145,000 in interest even if they pay every month. If you're waiting for it to disappear, the cost of waiting adds up faster than you'd think. boring-math.com/calculators/mo…

i really dont think you are gonna have to pay off your mortgage

@stuey_beef HMRC doesn't send you a bill. If you earn salary plus any side income, dividends, or rent, it's on you to declare it and work out what you owe. 10 million people filed self assessment last year. boring-math.com/calculators/uk…

So Labour can find tens of thousands for a top barrister to sort Angela Rayner’s tax affairs… But working families are expected to navigate HMRC alone. This is exactly why trust in politics is collapsing.

@paullewismoney The £204bn NI figure matters but there's no actual pot. It's pay-as-you-go: contributions today fund someone retiring now. By 2030 the worker-to-retiree ratio drops to around 2.8. That gap is what most pension reform debates are actually about. boring-math.com/calculators/uk…

The other huge error in what he says is that it ignores the national insurance receipts of £204bn which are in fact used to pay state pensions and a small number of other benefits. So the cost of much ‘welfare’ spending does come out of the £331.4bn income tax receipts.

@DavidMcGregorBN The first-time buyer stamp duty relief goes to zero on 1 April, which is tomorrow. On a £350k purchase, that's £5,000 extra from Tuesday. Anyone completing next week has already paid the higher rate. boring-math.com/calculators/uk…

You have to admire the brass neck of the Tories complaining about stamp duty. They made it almost impossible for young people to own a home, sold off our council houses for nothing and created the housing crisis. Now they want to sound outraged that buying a home is expensive.

UK auto-enrolment minimum is 5% employee, 3% employer. But many employers will match higher if you ask. Going from 5% to 8% on a £40,000 salary with a matched employer contribution adds about £130,000 to your pension pot over 30 years. That's roughly £400/month in retirement income you left on the table by not reading your pension scheme booklet.

Worth noting that in 2008 the average US mortgage was around $200k. Today it's over $400k. So even if the same percentage of homeowners are in trouble, the dollar amounts at risk are roughly double. A 1% rate increase on a $400k mortgage adds about $250/month to payments. That's $3,000/year people didn't budget for.

Google Searches for "Help With Mortgage" have soared to the highest level in history, surpassing even the peak of the Global Financial Crisis 🚨😱👀

A new EV at £35,000 saves you roughly £1,200/year in fuel vs a petrol car doing 10,000 miles. But depreciation on EVs is brutal right now, 40-50% in the first 3 years. So you save £3,600 in fuel while losing £14,000+ in value. The maths only works if you keep the car 7+ years or buy used. boring-math.com/calculators/ev…

@GuyTalksFinance $10,000 in the S&P 500 in 1996 is worth about $220,000 today. Same $10,000 split across 10 individual stocks and you'd need every single one to survive and outperform just to keep up. Most don't. boring-math.com/calculators/co…

Selling all of your single stocks to go all in on the S&P 500 is one of the best decisions you can make as a new investor.

@2147mill That £6,000 year-one hit is bad enough, but add 8% PCP finance over 4 years and the real cost of that £30k car is closer to £35k. Meanwhile a 3-year-old version of the same car costs £18k and the depreciation curve has already flattened. boring-math.com/calculators/ca…

Buying a new car is the worst financial decision most people will ever make. It loses 20% of its value the moment you drive off. £30,000 car = £24,000 in 12 months. £6,000 gone. For nothing. The rich lease or buy used. The middle class finance brand new and wonder why they can’t get ahead.

Most people know the ISA allowance is £20,000/year. Fewer know that if you withdraw from a flexible ISA and replace the money in the same tax year, it doesn't count against your allowance. But if your ISA isn't flexible (many aren't), a withdrawal permanently eats into your limit. Check your provider's terms before moving money around near April.