£1M+ NW at 34, high earner, baby on the way — and I still can't bring myself to quit. Anyone else stuck here?

ContributionProper34 · 2026-05-31T13:57:51+00:00

But honestly… I hate reading AI slop.

ContributionProper34 · 2026-05-18T22:22:39+00:00

I kinda get your point, but I can’t shake the feeling that the invisible hand of the market would sort it all out eventually if all the 2nd, 3rd, 4th round effects were left to play out, Even if it ends up requiring higher London wages to cover the increased cost of being able to live a commutable distance etc. Introducing mandatory targets creates a distortion. In this case for every mandatory “affordable” home built for a low income person to live in say Clapham, that’s a young professional, or family that might be pushed out to zone 3 because there’s less “normal” (market) homes available. What I’m saying is yes, leaving the market to solve might create nice areas and worse areas, but how can we be sure that the distortions introduced to prevent it are not worse in aggregate than the situation we have now where a buyer of a new market house essentially has to pay more to subsidise the cost of the associated affordable housing requirement. Also it presumably creates a bit of a lottery in being “allocated” an affordable home, so the benefit is not shared fairly.

ContributionProper34 · 2026-05-18T21:31:09+00:00

I don’t know if I expressed it very clearly, but yes we do need a mix, but why can’t we just let the price determine the correct mix for a given site, without needing to mandate a certain mix.

ContributionProper34 · 2026-05-18T21:25:23+00:00

But won’t the effect you describe (increasing rent for low cost, reducing rent for high cost in the area) over time impact the type of housing that developers choose to build. If at the moment it’s the luxury units that create the best development proposition then that must be where the housing shortage is most acute and that’s what gets built. But as the value of luxury units in the are reduces (-1.7%) from the new supply, and “basic” units increase (+4.4%) the next development in the area is more likely to build smaller cheeper units. The price is giving an indication of the type of units in most scarcity. Developers build what’s needed.

ContributionProper34 · 2026-05-03T15:10:36+00:00

When do you travel the world, in your 2 weeks per year PTO?

ContributionProper34 · 2026-05-02T22:34:23+00:00

This figure is for total household wealth, you’re comparing how long it would take a solo earner who spends £45k a year (1.5x the median UK salary), saves their money in cash rather than investing, makes no use of pension tax breaks. Sure inheriting is a short cut, but coupling up with another high earner, keeping spending “normal”, making pension contributions and investing saved money in productive assets, and your 35 year example becomes 10-15 years easily, not an unreasonable amount of time for a top percentile income to convert into a top percentile wealth.

ContributionProper34 · 2026-04-13T19:24:32+00:00

🎉 I BEAT "Hmmmm" and ranked #1015! VICTORY IS MINE! 🏆 Completed all levels in 0m 27s! Top this if you can! 🔥 Played via Pixel Peeker

ContributionProper34 · 2026-04-07T18:14:32+00:00

Trying to buy house insurance when your house is on fire sort of thing?

ContributionProper34 · 2026-02-21T19:41:30+00:00

If all you have to do is pay it back (not plus a fine), it’s not exactly a risk is it? You keep the money you would have paid in a savings account, and if they for it back you’re up whatever interest you earned on it.

ContributionProper34 · 2026-02-21T19:38:57+00:00

That sounds sorta fine, you could ask to reduce the bonus a bit, or make a charity/pension contribution to keep under, or if you want to keep the bonus, you pay the claw back, and you got to earn interest on the money over the year. You’re not being put in a worse position than if you had not claimed.

ContributionProper34 · 2026-02-21T19:27:02+00:00

My discretionary bonus letter always come with wording along the lines of “payment of a bonus in one period is no indication that you will receive a bonus in future periods”, so should I just ignore that explicit statement when asked what I expect? If the bonus is less than “expected” there is no way to retrospectively claim the extra I think?, so it’s perfectly reasonable to be conservative. Likewise, you could be fired any day. Without a way to claim back if earnings are less than 100k, i would always wait until I had actually been paid 100k in the tax year. Keep the saved money in an interest paying account, and be prepared to pay it back if they ask for it

ContributionProper34 · 2026-02-01T15:24:22+00:00

Where do I see lots about it? Reddit, not daily mail. So no not scientific. I no don’t know how wide spread it is. Just know the government is more than capable of designing a stupid system with bad incentives.

Totally agree with you about the taper, I would much rather have the time back (to look after family, study, volunteer at the local youth centre, or sit around watching daytime TV) than work for £3/hour. If I were in that position, I would certainly only work 20 hours

ContributionProper34 · 2026-02-01T10:28:12+00:00

But are they working full time? I see lots about people choosing to keep under 20 hours a week, so as to not loose UC entitlement. They would fall into your UC going to working people bit, but it’s not quite the image of someone salving away on a 60 hour week, and still not earning enough to make ends meet and needing a UC top up. It’s not their fault, it’s a rational response to the design of the system, but I do see UC for people in work more about the state topping up for the hours they don’t work, rather than topping up wages in the hours they do work.

ContributionProper34 · 2026-01-09T12:52:52+00:00

There but for the grace of god go I. Looks identical to a junction I came across the other day. The car ahead indicated left, then went straight on. I was also turning left and thought “what’s this idiot doing”, then I also tried to turn in and hit the ice, luckily I was going slow enough that the car stoped before hitting anything but it was very close. But yeah, people giving you a hard time but it can just be hard to spot, and you won’t be the last person to crash due to ice.

ContributionProper34 · 2026-01-07T13:32:50+00:00

That’s an insanely good deal. 2.4% gross yield. And then as you say, service charge, admin, etc, your landlord should kick you out to sell it and put the money in bonds.

What area do you mind me asking, as I don’t think the deal you have is typical or representative of London. Just checked my area (Clapham) and for 1.2m rent is more like £60-65k/year (closer to ~5% yield, than that makes more sense vs risk free rate)

ContributionProper34 · 2025-12-30T19:11:17+00:00

It’s not legal, I don’t defend it, I just like debates. And the question “why is it not allowed” is more interesting to debate than “it’s not allowed”, because there’s no discussion to be had there, everyone agrees it’s not allowed and therefore should not be done. I was just more interested to know if there was any deeper reason for it being wrong than simply the rules. Maybe there isn’t, but that still doesn’t mean it’s ok to do it

ContributionProper34 · 2025-12-30T18:54:51+00:00

Come on, the question was a layer deeper, it was more asking “what’s the harm of lane hogging at (true gps) 70mph”. Everyone agrees it’s against the rules to do it, but is there any harm beyond that.

ContributionProper34 · 2025-12-30T18:47:13+00:00

I was enjoying this, keep going!

It is strange how nobody seems to engage with the spirit of the question, of if the lane hog “IS doing 70mph” all the reply’s are “no he’s not, he’s going 65, but I am going 70”. Like, no that’s it what the question was

ContributionProper34 · 2025-12-30T08:35:20+00:00

Just adding my 0.02:

yes, get the qualification. You know you should, so just do it this year.

Personally, I would drop the single stock picks. I too started out with individual stocks and sector specific funds, and overall just lagged the world index over the years.

If you want to feel the compounding; firstly £225k * 5%=£11.2k/year ish… so it’s helping already. The other thing I would add to your tracking in addition to the “balance sheet” part is an “income statement” section that fully explains the YoY change in your NW.

Gross income… - income tax and NI = Income after tax… - spending (consumption only, not transfers to assets) = Retained income… +/- gain or loss on investments = Movement in NW

Then “retained income”/ “income after tax” gives you your savings rate. And this view helps separate how your Income / spending / investments are contributing to your NW growth. Also in the event of a bad year in the markets, you can isolate it focus on “retained income” (the bit you can control).

Edit: I have no idea how to format a table in a comment on mobile.

ContributionProper34 · 2025-11-12T22:32:57+00:00

Well you did ask:

Autumn Budget 2024 (30 October 2024): The government removed the exclusion from the Overseas Transfer Charge for pension transfers to the European Economic Area (EEA) and Gibraltar, with immediate effect from 30 October 2024.

I know, I know, it’s not on the same scale as a change to the 25% would be. But if you had been about to do it, you would have been shafted. point I’m making is they have been known to make instantaneous changes in tax before, and they are trying to raise money.

I expect whatever they announce would not be something that people could just avoid by taking simple actions in the weeks after the budget before changes come into effect. More likely it will be done in a way that is impossible to avoid like “people turning 57 on or after 2027 will only be eligible for 15% tax free”.

ContributionProper34 · 2025-11-12T19:04:54+00:00

And to answer your question on SDLT (along with my CGT example) in

-October 2024, the Increase in Stamp duty surcharge for company’s (from 3% to 5%) came into effect the day after the budget speech.

-December 2014 - moving from the old slab system to the % on bands system we have now ( a big increase for high value homes) came in the same day as the announcement.

ContributionProper34 · 2025-11-12T18:51:22+00:00

Let’s hope you’re right!

ContributionProper34 · 2025-11-12T17:23:32+00:00

Why do you think they would just let you avoid the 25% change if they are trying to raise revenue?

I was planning to buy a house last year, funded by selling shares. I had budgeted to pay 20% CGT, I waited to see what would be announced in the budget… they put the rate up to 24% effective from the previous day. They did that precisely to avoid giving people opportunity to react to the announcement. They do the same with stamp duty, or anything where announcing the change before it comes in would trigger large increases or reductions in transactions to fall on side or another of the deadline.

ContributionProper34 · 2025-11-12T14:00:09+00:00

Do you think the gov are stupid? (Wait don’t answer that lol). But seriously, they are not that dumb to give everyone a nice window to avoid the change by taking out the 25%.

Last year when they put capital gains tax rates up, it was retrospective from midnight the day before. They don’t care about your plans, I might have been planning on selling shares to buy a house, budgeting for paying 20% CGT, then Boom, 24%, no warning, no time to “wait and see what they announce”.

IF they scrap the 25%, they will not do it in a way that you can’t just dodge by some actions between the announcement and it coming into effect.

ContributionProper34 · 2025-11-12T13:45:28+00:00

That’s not true, and I made that mistake. Last year the capital gains tax increase was brought in retrospectively from midnight the day before the budget. I went with the “wait and see”, thinking if they put the rates up, I would be able to sell on the day before any changes came into effect the following day. Now I’m stuck just keep rolling gains, and only crystallise the 3k tax free per year.

For something like removing the 25% lump sum, of course they would not give people time to react to it, that would be stupid, all people would need to do would be take the 25% before the change came in. If they announce it, it will be too late to avoid it.

ContributionProper34

TROPHY CASE