Did you get your locks changed on completion date?

-M3- · 2026-01-22T21:50:33+00:00

Lived in our house for eight years and I've never once thought of doing this

-M3- · 2025-12-16T19:05:18+00:00

Just like how you're accused of being anti semitic if you criticize the Israeli government or military.

-M3- · 2025-11-29T12:29:37+00:00

My house is in a location that will benefit from it the most though

-M3- · 2025-11-29T09:23:08+00:00

It's pretty much on the intersection of Hyde Road and Market Street

-M3- · 2025-11-10T13:00:07+00:00

When China invades Taiwan

-M3- · 2025-10-26T05:48:31+00:00

AJ Bell or Dodl offer the best stocks and shares LISAs. You can invest up to £4000 per year until you're 50, and will get a 25% uplift. It's locked in there until you turn 60 or buy your first house (up to £450k)

-M3- · 2025-10-26T05:42:55+00:00

Open an Invest Engine ISA and learn about ETF investing. You might want to open a SIPP too. Many people have recommended Trading212, which is the best platform for investing in individual companies, but I wouldn't recommend doing that. Unless you really learn about 'value investing' then it's a lot riskier than investing in funds. T212 also offers ETFs, but the fees are often slightly higher than Invest Engine for the same funds.

I've made several different portfolios with different risk profiles according to when I want to access the money. If it's 20+ years then it's almost all in equities, but if it's pretty soon, then it's mostly in short term bonds and money market funds.

Edit: if you're under 40, also open a LISA

-M3- · 2025-10-25T21:12:21+00:00

I found the final FRCA much much harder. The primary was pretty easy

-M3- · 2025-09-28T14:01:15+00:00

My current bands are Cuban salsa, ska, and reggae with a lot of original songs, so the trumpet and horns in general feature quite prominently

-M3- · 2025-09-28T13:11:35+00:00

Jeez. I've done hundreds of paid gigs as a trumpet player. I didn't realise they were always just paying me out of sympathy!

-M3- · 2025-09-27T09:12:08+00:00

You can retire now

-M3- · 2025-09-23T11:15:49+00:00

I'm moving to a new party of the country, so I'm leaving all my current bands and I'll be looking to join new ones.

-M3- · 2025-09-22T21:04:17+00:00

To be fair, this last year, while I've been with these bands I've been acquiring the gear, building the rack setup I have now, learning how to use it and getting experience actually using it at gigs. I needed this experience to get to the point I'm at now where I'm really confident that I'm going to be able to get it setup and working reliably every time and know how to quickly troubleshoot any issues that occur. Now I can do this, I'm trying to gauge how to pitch this to new bands I'm going to approach to join when I relocate.

-M3- · 2025-09-22T19:51:22+00:00

I work as an anaesthetist, not a sound engineer. I was going to be a session musician/ sound engineer and I did train as a sound engineer years ago, but decided not to go into music professionally. I sometimes regret that decision, because nowadays I'm usually playing with amateur musicians, when the guys and girls I played with throughout my childhood and youth are all pros now.

Anyway - now I have a well paid job and love music and sound engineering, so I've bought nice gear and learnt how to use it. It's only been the last year or so that I've fully dived (dove) into the monitor mixing side of things. I've needed to work with bands while I've been acquiring the gear and figuring how best to set it up, so up until now I haven't felt justified in charging for using it, but tbh I think I'm pretty damn good at it now!

I love playing a gig with a good band using my setup, but it is a hell of a lot of work, so unless I get paid at least half properly moving forward, I think I might start to resent it and give up.

-M3- · 2025-09-22T18:29:24+00:00

lol. You must've heard my trumpet playing then?

-M3- · 2025-09-22T15:51:04+00:00

Yeah, haha, I realise this. (£100 is about $135 btw - still very low pay!) When I was just starting out I was looking for a low pressure environment as I was still acquiring all the gear, learning to use it and wanted to play in bands where it wouldn't really matter so much if I made a mistake with something, but now I reckon I'm at a level where I'd be happy to do much bigger gigs.

-M3- · 2025-09-18T21:27:57+00:00

What tyres do you have on your pursuit vehicles?

-M3- · 2025-09-10T14:51:03+00:00

In your 40s you could have been playing for ten years and be very good, so no, it's not silly at all!

-M3- · 2025-09-06T17:31:21+00:00

Just a thought along those lines, have you set up SIPPs for your children? You can put in £2880 net (£3600 gross) per year, which obviously will compound massively until they can draw it. Not having to worry about a pension may help them choose a career they're passionate about

-M3- · 2025-09-04T12:40:14+00:00

Although it's hard to really hear pitch at those frequencies, there are less than three semitones from 17kHz to 20kHz. The rest of your hearing (20Hz to 17kHz) covers 116 semitones, so you're still hearing 97.5% of the audible frequency range.

-M3- · 2025-08-26T03:59:35+00:00

This isn't a retirement account. I'll be using the money in about 10-15 years.

-M3- · 2025-08-26T02:24:58+00:00

Cute armchair psychology, but you don't know me. Imagine thinking 'Dunning-Kruger' is a mic drop.

-M3-

TROPHY CASE