George - £134k 🇬🇧

I lost my dad in 2024. That changed everything. I’m George, 32, an accountant from the UK 🇬🇧. After years of watching friends and family live paycheck to paycheck with no emergency fund, I decided I didn’t want that life for my family — especially now with my 1-year-old son. My current net worth is £115k. I started investing in 2017, and my goal is simple: grow it every year while still enjoying life — not just grinding. Money isn’t the end goal. Freedom, time with family, and peace of mind are. I want to set my son up for a stronger future. Inflation is quietly stealing our wealth, houses are getting further out of reach, and wages aren’t keeping up. ‘Playing Monopoly without investing is a guaranteed way to lose.’ I’m resetting my page to document my real journey to financial freedom — practical investments, useful tech, and lessons learned along the way. If you’re also trying to build a better future without sacrificing today, drop a 🔥 or comment “Let’s go” below. Welcome to the journey.

Controversial opinion: High earners shouldn't lose Child Benefit. High earners shouldn't lose funded childcare hours. Earn over £60k and Child Benefit starts being clawed back. Earn £80k and it's all gone. Earn £100,001 and you lose your funded childcare hours. That's one extra pound. And it's based on one person's income, not the household. Two parents on £59k each keep everything. One parent on £80k gets nothing. I'm nowhere near these limits. But high earners already pay the most tax. Why are they punished for having kids? Agree or disagree?

I tried to book my son a Doctors appointment today. He’s 1 year old. The only way to get one at our practice is to join the telephone queue at 8am on the dot. Everyone spam phoning the same number from 07:59. Get placed in a queue, 57th place. By time I reached the front of the queue there wasn’t a space. ‘Call back tomorrow at 8am and try again’ Is this normal?

My son is 19 months old and his portfolio is worth £5,480. I put in £100 a month. Child benefit puts in £100 a month. His 3 grandparents give me £20 a month. Portfolio Value at 31/10/26: S&P500: £2,132 $BTC: £1,770 Cash: £1,578 Assuming 5% growth he will have £91,600 at 18 years old. He'll never remember me starting it. But he'll be glad I did. Are you investing for your kids?

My mortgage payment goes from £1,170 to £1,321 a month in March. That's an extra £151. With nothing left over each month, what goes first?

I take home £2,993.27 a month. Here's where every pound goes: Joint account: £1,400 (Mortgage and bills) Loan: £247 Son's investments: £100 Car parking: £50 Car insurance: £48 HMRC debt: £22 NHS: £11.45 Phone insurance: £6.99 AMEX: £1,107 (food, fuel and random things) That leaves 83p. Investing: £0 Savings: £0 The joint account keeps a buffer each month, ready for our mortgage going from £1,170 to £1,321 in March. This month I went to Amsterdam for ADE and spent a fortune. But my son's Christmas presents are all sorted. How do you split your pay?

I lost £7,801 in October. Let's assess the damage: Property 🏠 House: +£0 (per Zoopla) Mortgage: +£307 (this is capital repaid) Pension 💰 Fund Movement: -£5,533 Investments 📈 Portfolio Movement: -£2,822 Debts 💸 Loan repayment: +£247 Total: -£7,801 From £142k down to £134k. Nearly all of September's gains, gone. How did October treat you?

I've pieced together every student loan statement I've ever had. To the penny. Borrowed: £35,171 Interest added: £25,332 Repaid: £8,078 Balance today: £52,425 (SLC hasn’t added the full interest yet) I've been repaying since 2019. My balance has gone up every single year. £7,084 of interest was added before I made my first repayment. £4,172 of that was while I was still studying. In 2023/24 I repaid £1,320. £3,371 of interest was added. If my pay just keeps up with inflation, I'll repay about £57,500 in total. About £79,800 will still be written off in 2046. More than double what I borrowed. Where is the ‘breathing space’ for Students?

Trading Allowance £1k to £3k Can a couple get £6,000 a year tax-free from side hustles? Yes. But not the way most people think. The Budget tripled the trading allowance from £1,000 to £3,000 from April 2027. Earn up to £3k from a side hustle and it's tax-free, with no tax return needed. It's £3k per person, not per business. So a couple running two genuinely separate side hustles gets £3k each. £6k between them, tax-free. But set up a 50/50 partnership and you get nothing. The allowance can't be used on partnership income at all. Same couple, same money, very different tax bill. £6k tax free in today’s economy makes it worth considering. Speak to an accountant if you are unsure on anything. Would you start a side hustle for £3k tax-free?

Autumn Budget - My Summary What we needed vs what we got. Needed: Personal Allowance unfrozen. Got: Frozen at £12,570 until 2031. Needed: Plan 2 student loans fixed. Got: Not a word. Needed: The 60% tax trap at £100k sorted. Got: Nothing. Needed: Real help with energy bills. Got: £100 one-off for bands A–D, gas standing charges scrapped (worth about £45 a year). My council tax is £2,700 a year. £100 back barely touches it. Needed: Stamp duty changes for first-time buyers. Got: An equity loan, announced pre-Budget. More debt, not a lower bill. A new first-time buyer ISA too, but the detail will decide if it’s any use. Needed: Savers rewarded. Got: Cash ISA kept at £20k, but savings income tax up 2% from April 2027. Needed: Help for side hustles. Got: Trading allowance tripled to £3,000. (Something genuinely good.) Needed: Something for mortgage holders. Got: Nothing. My mortgage alone is going up £150 a month. The Budget saves me about £145 this year. What was on your ‘needed’ list?

Nothing in the Budget for Plan 2 student loans. Not a word. My balance is £51,726.40. It will increase every month until April 2046. Plan 2 takes 9% of everything I earn above £29,385. That’s £1,668 a year. £139 a month. Interest on my loan is 6%. That’s the cap. Without it, I’d be on 6.8%. And from April 2027 the repayment threshold is frozen for three years. So every pay rise I get, more of it goes to the Student Loans Company. The Education Secretary called the interest ‘egregious’ in July. MPs said ministers had a ‘moral obligation’ to act at this Budget. Today: £100 energy payments, cheaper food tariffs, business rates cuts. For graduates: nothing.

Budgets shouldn’t be tested through ‘leaks’ to see how the public reacts. If you need a focus group to work out how a policy lands, you’re too far removed from the people it hits. Take the minimum wage. Raise it, and the lowest-paid workers take home more. Good. But a small cafe can’t just put a flat white up by 50p overnight. Higher wages + 15% employer NI from £5,000 = a much bigger staff bill. So they cut hours, stop hiring, or close. Every policy has a second-order effect. The people running the country should be able to see it before they announce it, not after the headlines. Small business owners, how are you feeling about today?

Breaking down my October payslip 📊 Payments • Monthly salary: £4,206.90 • Pension contribution: –£210.35 Total: £3,996.55 Deductions • Tax: £628.40 • Employee’s NI: £235.88 • Student loan: £139 Total: £1,003.28 Other (employer) • Employer’s NI: £536.93 • Pension: £210.35 Net Pay: £2,993.27 Notes: • My pension is salary sacrifice allowing me to go slightly over £50k salary without going into higher rate tax.

Budget Week. With the Budget coming this week, here is why a £50,000 salary in 2026 feels nothing like £50,000 used to, and the numbers to explain it. My salary is £50,483. Since I started as a trainee accountant on £20k in 2017: Personal Allowance frozen at £12,570 since 2021.
Dividend allowance cut from £5,000 to £500.
Capital Gains allowance cut from £11,300 to £3,000. Employee NI was actually cut from 12% to 8% in 2024. While this seems to be positive for the employees, it was a backhanded change. The rise was on the employer side in April 2025, and the threshold where it starts cut from £9,100 to £5,000. On my salary it’s roughly 2% extra my employer has to cough up. That’s money that could have gone into pay rises
 Plan 2 Student Loan takes £139pm each month while adding £225pm in interest
 Our household bills jumped from £1,241pm in 2020 to £1,695pm in 2026
 Our remortgage is jumping from 4.49% (£1,170pm) to 5.52% (£1,321pm) from March 2027 Every pound I earn above £50,270 is already taxed at 51% before it touches VAT, Council Tax, or fuel. Which allowance do you think gets raided next in the Budget: Pensions, ISAs, or CGT?

The replies opened my eyes to how broken the ‘30 free hours’ scheme is across the UK. Parents with 2+ funded days still pay £350–£450 a month due to mandatory consumables and meal charges (£10–£25 a day) and term-time stretching (30 hours become 22 across 51 weeks). Nurseries say council funding doesn’t cover minimum wage or business rates. My partner works at our son’s nursery, which isn’t at capacity, so blocking us from using 5 of our 20 unused funded hours helps no one. If your child is in nursery, how many days do they attend and what’s your actual monthly bill after funded hours?

BoE rates could increase, but Fixed Rate Mortgage rates decrease. How? UK interest rates are based on the swap rate. The swap rate is essentially the market’s view of the average base rate expected over the fixed period, plus a margin for risk and lender costs. If rates do not go up as much as market’s expect then we could be in a perverse scenario. What does this mean? Base rates go up, but because they don’t go up as much as expected, fixed rates get a little bit cheaper.

Funded Nursery Hours. My son is at nursery 2 days a week, for 10 hours. We get 30 funded hours a week. These hours can only be used as blocks of 8am-1pm, or 1pm-6pm. If we wanted him to do 8am-2pm then we would have to pay for the extra hour, even though we have 20 funded hours left. Why do they make these systems so annoying to use?

Was going to full port into SATS but can’t get it in a UK ISA. A huge opportunity missed to get 15.7% fixed yield. $ASST pumped today but guess in keeping my money in $STRC and $SATA for now.

AI is revolutionising accounting and Data entry/analysis. Bookkeepers are becoming irrelevant. Part time bookkeepers are even less efficient. AI is always available. If you want to streamline your bookkeeping process and leverage AI, let’s have a chat.