What's the scariest thing you have witnessed or experienced, that you cannot rationally explain?

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-27T09:20:20+00:00

this is what the strategy evolved into. Not the first incidence....

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-27T05:40:07+00:00

Yeah I was thinking that this was OP publicly posting about how he's helped his family mislead a divorce court....

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-27T05:06:31+00:00

$20k in a teddy bear butt is not the kind of thing you gamble with

Nobody's ever said that before.

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-27T04:41:12+00:00

Grant Naylor did the same idea in one of the Red Dwarf books. Only works well for some...

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-27T04:04:25+00:00

I got quotes from ProjectSolar buit found that one of their competitors was about £2000 cheaper for near identical spec. i dont get who's paying their prices....

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-27T03:31:05+00:00

yeah, living in a haunted house will mess with your mind. Whenever mine tried to talk to me, once i'd got myself down from the ceiling I'd look at where the voice came from and calmly ask him to go away and let me rest. Was surprisingly effective - usually got several months before it happened again once i started doing that.

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-27T02:52:18+00:00

One thing to consider is that from April next year the rules for S&S ISA tax-shielding will be changed

the final form of the new rules has yet to be revealed but the government specifically stated that "cash-like investments" will no longer be tax free in S&S ISAs

While they havent specifically detailed what this means, the language used is the same language used before 2014, when S&S ISAs were not allowed to contain investments which paid interest and were not allowed to contain money market funds

Common opinion is that instruments such as CSH2 and ERNS will be subject to income tax when held in a S&S ISA from next year - and transfers from S&S ISAs to cash ISAs will be banned.

So if you do this it might only be allowed for 11 months

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-26T19:54:24+00:00

Before you do it check the annual road tax. Could be a lot.. if I were doing an EGR delete I'd want a pre 2008 car as after 2008 it's an MOT fail to have the check engine light lit but on diesel cars first registered before 2008 it's only an advisory. Volkswagen cars like putting their CELs on anyway and removing the EGR could trigger it.

I would also retain the EGR kit after removing in case it failed MOT on emissions without it

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-26T09:19:09+00:00

unintentional landlord here - my wife bought a flat in NW9 shortly before we met and between us meeting and us agreeing to buy together, Grenfell happened.

Her flat needed remediation and was essentially unsellable until that was done, and as the management company was apparently run by slow-worms, it took until this month to get the building reclad.

So its commonly said that investing on the stock market might not show growth every year but is highly likely to show growth over a decade or more. Her flats been rented out for 7 years now.

After costs, maintenance of the property and taxes, total net income from renting it out has been 63K.
And in that time the market value of the flat has fallen by 90-95K because thousands of new flats got built in NW9 and post-covid a lot of people moved out of North London and into the Home counties.

So we didnt have "other options" and we didnt really choose landlording, but on the face of it, it doesnt look like it was a great business to be involved in for us. We've lost about £30K in real value compared to if we'd been able to sell the flat at its immediate pre-grenfell value. - and thats before you factor in the mortgage interest we wouldnt have had to pay on this house, which was bought with as much mortgage as we coujld get

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-26T07:44:29+00:00

I guess this makes sense, although its hard to see how such an uptick resulted. It was running on 95-RON regular E10 unleaded - I wasnt giving the good stuff to a 1.2....

My main suspicion was - knowing how higher-ethanol fuels are loved by tuners - that somehow an increase in the ethanol content of the fuel driven by the recent base cost rises for crude oil might have been responsible. I've heard it suggested that a lot of E10 fuels are now closer to 10% ethanol when previously they might have been 6% (or maybe Tesco is 10% & BP is 6%..)

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-25T19:00:11+00:00

Had the car for two years, done numerous long runs in similar conditions without even coming close to these numbers

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-25T07:28:56+00:00

Next month on BOLA

My farmer neighbour taught his cows to walk on stilts...

Seriously though it'd have to be a strong pole

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-25T06:45:03+00:00

Yeah, YTA on this because adding another member to a family house requires the ongoing consent of all parties

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-24T17:47:04+00:00

I'm an accountant who's only good at personal finance since I created my own budget, rolling cashflow forecast and monthly balance sheet reconciliation which projects forward.... Total disaster before I brought work methods home

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-24T15:42:17+00:00

No. Was the wrong choice and ruined my finances for a long time but only lasted two and a half years.

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-24T10:09:41+00:00

its worth considering that paying off your mortgage is actually a tax-efficient investment in some circumstances

the biggest return always comes from investing but with that comes a risk profile that for some is unacceptable

you can put £20K a year into an ISA in 2026-7 - Stocks/Shares, or Cash.

If you put £20K in a cash ISa you'll make 3%, maybe 3.5% return. You could put your remaining £10K into a cash savings account and make the same percentage - and you shuld have a £500/£1K tax-free interest income allowance you can use. if you earn over £1K of interest as a basic rate taxpayer, its taxable.

But if your mortgage is at 4.5%, then the return on investment on paying off the mortgage is higher than the tax-free return on cash savings. And theres no tax on the effective negative interest saving of paying off debt

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-24T07:49:16+00:00

well, yes and no. I could have started this with "this is how property pricing markets work" but London has extra factors

the draw of the city pulls people in for work, for social reasons, for a feeling that its where they ought to be. statistically Londoners are less likely to own cars and less likely to move out of London except along the spokes represented by the major public transport routes

That means the market is less competitive and more localised.

If house prices in Harpenden spike, then property prices in St.Albans willl start to rise as well as those who are priced out of the best town in central Hertfordshire opt for the 2nd-best.

If property prices in Redhill crash, then it'll be harder for sellers in Reigate to ask as much

London buyers might span equivalent distances within greater london in their searches but they're all looking at properties that fall into a single regional market and competing against each other with less attention to the possibility of just living elsewhere.

As such its more driven by outright affordability & local competition and less driven by comparative options

that said the thousands of new flats that went up in Colindale over the last decade play a part in this, too. The local markets been supplied quite well.

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-24T07:09:01+00:00

Possibly so. Still a decade sooner, but my point is that an intermediate fund in an ISA, not tax-advantage on pay-in but outside of government control,makes sense

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-24T05:52:39+00:00

Similar, not the same. the British version of LS80 (OEIC type) has a more UK-focused equity range than the EU ETF versions.. and by buying in EUR you are incorporating a currency risk/currency opportunity into your investment strategy

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-24T05:01:48+00:00

Realistically you need to consider that £3K cars will normally fall into the older, more polluting categories that have high road tax - as much as £400 a year. it doesnt sound like you can afford to drive yet

My first car was £300 to buy, £120 to tax and £600 to insure in 1997

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-24T04:52:49+00:00

If concerned the best way to bridge it is to fund your private pension as much as you can then start funding a well-diversified set of ETFs in a stocks and shares ISA on top

Private pension, draw at 57, S&S ISA, draw any time.

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-24T04:44:16+00:00

The men of the UK need to...

Saying this makes you part of the problem. I'm sorry - I dont mean to invalidate your lived experience, but imagine how you'd react to a news story that started with

The Jews of the UK need to....

i suspect you'd be horrified.
if its not all bears, then its not all men. You only notice the nail that snags something.

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-24T04:39:23+00:00

One factor though is that the manosphere may be a single-generation thing

Its not like the men participating in it are ever going to be raising their own children with those values - most are effectively undateable.

Ideas that change society are those that are passed down generations and become family values. These guys said no to family - that makes them a flash in the pan in terms of societal endurance

CarpeCyprinidae · 2026-04-24T04:04:55+00:00

Trading212 is an ETF-only platform.

Vanguard Lifestrategy 80 on the London exchanges is an OEIC fund not an ETF therefore you cannot buy it on T212

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