BoringMath

If you earn between 100,000 and 125,140, you lose 1 of personal allowance for every 2 you earn over 100k. That creates an effective 60% tax rate on that band. Someone earning 125,140 takes home only about 3,500 more than someone on 100,000. Salary sacrifice into your pension is the main way to dodge it, because it brings your adjusted net income back under the threshold.

Your NI number is on your payslip, your P60, or any letter HMRC has ever sent you. You can also find it through your personal tax account on the HMRC website (not the app). Worth keeping a note of it somewhere safe because you'll need it every time you start a new job or claim any benefits.

The uk gov app is fucking hopeless . Apparently I don’t have an National insurance number and apparently my face isn’t real 🫩

Average UK credit card balance is about 2,300. At 22% APR, paying the minimum takes 27 years and costs over 4,100 in interest alone. Switching to 100/month clears it in 2 years and saves you 3,500. The avalanche method (highest rate first) is mathematically faster, but the snowball method (smallest balance first) has a higher completion rate because momentum matters more than maths. boring-math.com/calculators/de…

@TaviCosta Interest payments at 5% of GDP is the part nobody wants to talk about. The US government now spends more on debt interest than on defence. Every rate cut makes inflation worse, and every hold makes the debt spiral worse. No clean exits here. boring-math.com/calculators/in…

Inflation surges due to oil shocks. None of the prior episodes had U.S. interest payments reach 5% of GDP. None. Expect inflation to surge again, with the Fed having to justify a rate cut. That is certainly not priced in markets today. open.substack.com/pub/tavicosta/… Great chart from @leadlagreport

@Cointelegraph 5.2% expectations means people think a dollar today will be worth about 95 cents next year. Sounds small until you compound it. At that rate, your savings lose half their purchasing power in under 14 years. boring-math.com/calculators/in…

🇺🇸 NOW: US 12-month inflation expectations have surged to 5.2%, the highest since March 2023.

If your employer offers pension matching and you're not taking the full match, you're turning down free money. A 5% match on a 40k salary is 2,000/year. Over a 30-year career at 7% average returns, that employer match alone grows to roughly 189,000. Most people leave tens of thousands on the table because they never checked their scheme booklet.

Worth noting what this means for ordinary people: the UK government currently pays around 90 billion a year in debt interest. That's more than the entire defence budget. Every basis point increase on gilts adds roughly 900 million a year to that bill, money that comes straight out of public services or future tax rises.

NEW: UK govt borrowing costs have reached their highest level since 2008 Markets are responding to the energy shock and likely higher interest rates It also comes after @Steven_Swinford reported Lisa Nandy urged cabinet to rethink the fiscal rules, which investors will not like

On a 50k salary, putting 5k into your pension via salary sacrifice saves you roughly 2,000 in tax and NI. Your employer saves about 690 as well. Your take-home only drops by about 3,000 but your pension gets the full 5,000. Two weeks left before the tax year ends on April 5th. boring-math.com/calculators/uk…

@Jeremybtc 30% gone in a decade and most people wouldn't notice until they tried to buy something with it. Even a basic index fund averaging 7% would have turned that same cash into 197% of its original value. The gap between "safe" and invested is brutal over time. boring-math.com/calculators/co…

If you kept your money in a savings account for the last 10 years, you’d have lost 30% of its value to inflation. You didn't lose it in the market. You lost it by doing nothing. Turns out the safest option was actually the most expensive one.

@NormanBrennan That £100 fill-up would have been £58 five years ago. Inflation has quietly eaten 42% of fuel purchasing power since 2021. Worth checking what it's doing to the rest of your spending too. boring-math.com/calculators/in…

Folks last night I went to bed & thought can we afford to wake up; today I woke & thought can we afford to live; £100 to fill a car; Interest Rates to go Up; Gas Up Electricity Up Aviation fuel Up Food Up; Britain was already struggling; are we facing a>1929 GREAT DEPRESSION?🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Your ISA allowance resets on April 6th. If you haven't used this year's £20,000, you lose it forever. There's no rollover. Someone maxing their ISA every year from age 25 to 55 at 7% average returns would have roughly £1.9 million completely tax-free. The allowance is the same whether you earn £25k or £250k.

@2147mill £8.40 for two coffees is £4.20 each. One a day, five days a week, that's £1,092 a year. Over 10 years invested at 7% that's about £15,000. Nobody's saying don't buy coffee. But it's worth knowing that the small daily numbers are where most budgets quietly fall apart.

Paid £8.40 for two coffees in Richmond this morning. Money doesn’t go very far in the Uk. Spain that would be €4.50 for two and be considerably better coffee

Average UK driver does about 7,400 miles a year. At current petrol prices that's roughly £1,500-1,800 in fuel. An EV doing the same miles on home charging costs about £400-500. The upfront price gap is shrinking fast but most people never bother running the 10-year numbers. boring-math.com/calculators/ev…

@2147mill £32,000 in free contributions is hard to ignore. You don't even need to max it. Put in £200/month, the government adds £50. Over 30 years at 6% that's roughly £190,000 in a tax-free wrapper. Worth setting a savings target and working backwards. boring-math.com/calculators/sa…

The Lifetime ISA adds £1,000 free money per year until age 50. That's £32,000 of government contributions for a 18-year-old. Plus decades of tax-free growth. Most people will never open one.

77% is grim but not surprising. Most people's only exposure to investing is whatever their employer auto-enrolled them into. Even £50/month into a global index fund from age 25 grows to roughly £95,000 by 55 at 7% average returns. The barrier isn't money, it's knowing where to start. boring-math.com/calculators/co…

The UK does NOT invest their money 77% of the UK does not put their money to work outside of their pensions… The whole country is financially illiterate.

Student loan repayments in England are 9% of everything above the threshold. Plan 2 threshold is 27,295. So on a 35k salary you repay about 58/month. On 50k that jumps to 110/month. The loan gets wiped after 30 years regardless. If you never earn enough to pay it off, you never pay it off. It's closer to a graduate tax than a real loan.

Worth noting this only applies to a lump sum invested at the peak in March 2000. Someone putting in $500/month from 2000 to 2013 would have roughly doubled their money because most of their purchases happened at lower prices. Dollar cost averaging exists specifically because nobody can time the top.

If you invested in the S&P 500 in 2000 and held it until 2013, you broke even. 13 years, no profit, and you lost 50% to inflation. Think about it for a second.

Average UK wedding cost is now around 20,000. Most couples underestimate by about 40%. Venue is typically 30-40% of the budget, but it's the small stuff that kills you. Photography, flowers, favours, the DJ, the cake topper nobody asked for. Build your budget before you book anything. boring-math.com/calculators/we…

@hewantswealth 2 months to find new accommodation in London, where average rent is over 2k/month. That's deposit + first month + moving costs, so roughly 5-6k needed at short notice. The average UK renter has about 1k in savings. boring-math.com/calculators/em…

More than 100 tenants renting homes by billionaire landlord Asif Aziz company are slapped with a section 21 EVICTION notice just weeks before new Renters Rights Bill comes into force! They have less than 2months to find new accommodation👨‍⚖️ This is what you all wanted and voted for right? 🏡

@theficouple $8,100/mo in fixed obligations on a $100k salary is roughly 97% of take-home. That's not a trap, that's a spreadsheet screaming for help. The credit card line alone could take 15+ years to clear at minimums. boring-math.com/calculators/de…

The middle class trap: 1. $3,000/mo house payment 2. $1,200/mo car payments 3. $2,000/mo childcare 4. $900/mo student loan payment 5. $1,000/mo credit card payment ...This is why so my 6 figure households feel broke.