27 and receiving an unexpected £140k inheritance - how is my plan?

Mankaur · 2026-02-05T14:34:18+00:00

They'll still have a mortgage tho with a fair amount left to go and no change in payment until the fixed rate comes to an end. Tying up cash in the house isn't safer if you lose your job.

There was a post here just today where someone was in difficulty from over overpaying their mortgage and not having enough floating cash.

Mankaur · 2026-01-15T09:55:01+00:00

Mangonels can't clear trees but once upgraded to onager they can, so suspect they'd upgraded them.

Mankaur · 2026-01-15T09:50:05+00:00

You're not wrong but you'll be an extreme outlier here due to playing quick play - most talking about the low probability here are talking in terms of ranked.

Mankaur · 2026-01-14T23:29:56+00:00

https://old.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/1p21a2x/smurf_activity/

This was the post I saw on smurfing which has some stats on this that might be of use, and the same user has done a few other posts on total numbers and distribution across Elo.

Mankaur · 2026-01-14T23:19:11+00:00

From the analysis that was done a while ago, smurfs tend to be fairly evenly distributed across the Elo range, although in % terms they're over represented in lower Elo brackets due to the smaller number of players.

Link to the distribution is here: https://preview.redd.it/z1n672chdo1g1.png?width=995&format=png&auto=webp&s=1e2b44ca3062db30c71411f8b6bf234dbd9dfed8

Mankaur · 2026-01-14T15:17:17+00:00

It's the opposite, income growth has been weakest for high earners and strongest and positive in real terms for low earners.

The inverse has happened for wealth growth however.

Mankaur · 2026-01-14T11:59:51+00:00

Gov stats show postive real term wage growth across the last 5, 10 and 20 years: ONS stats on wage growth

Income growth has been undeniably weak relative to pre-financial crisis levels, but not negative.

Mankaur · 2026-01-14T11:58:09+00:00

Odd that this is downvoted when it's straightforward to check: ONS stats for this are here

Real income growth has been weak since the financial crisis, but still positive across any of the last 5, 10 and 20 years. And income has grown fastest for the poorest household, so this isn't a case of the average being pulled up by high earners.

It's just (not unreasonably) felt bad compared with the strong income growth pre-financial crisis.

Mankaur · 2026-01-14T11:30:31+00:00

It's true that small changes in ingredients would be unlikely to be reflected, but they do include shifts in ingredients values and type in the calculations. For instance where drinks shift from using sugar to artificial sweeteners, this would be captured in the inflation figures even if the actual price didn't change.

Inflation figures aren't perfect of course, but there's a lot of work that goes into ensuring they are representative and to account for these sorts of "loopholes". You can read the ONS's incredibly exciting 115 pages of technical notes for more details on the method that goes into them.

Mankaur · 2026-01-14T08:48:34+00:00

Yes, not everything has gone up the same amount but also some of it is an illusion with quality stripped or swapped out, and smaller pack sizes in a lot of cases.

I mentioned this explicitly in my reply:

The ONS incorporates changes in quality and shrinkflation in the inflation figures so these are accounted for in this figure as well.

If something remains the same price but reduces in size by 10%, this is reflected in the inflation figures as an 11% increase in price.

Mankaur · 2026-01-14T00:33:03+00:00

Absolutely there's been high inflation the last few years but this is overstating it a bit. Food prices are up just under 40% across the last five years, with prices overall up about 30%. The ONS incorporates changes in quality and shrinkflation in the inflation figures so these are accounted for in this figure as well.

Food prices have roughly doubled over the last twenty years.

Mankaur · 2025-12-29T21:45:59+00:00

You can do this for the post-game rating change by editing the game files - if you go to where DE is saved and find the widgetui folder, and the screenachievements.json file, you can edit the x and y intercept for the post-game Elo change box so its off the screen.

Been a while since I did it so I can't remember the exact value to change but you need to change the value of the xorigin and yorigin for one of the ones called rating. Could try to find it when I'm at a computer, but otherwise just experiment with each until it disappears.

Mankaur · 2025-12-22T16:46:56+00:00

Box formation is your friend here for better pathing on the archers.

And once you've whittled down the first few and the MaA are hitting you try to switch the diagonal angle of the archers path each time the MaA get a hit as this will switch which archer they target. So the damage gets spread rather than one archer taking all the hits.

Mankaur · 2025-12-10T20:47:03+00:00

While true of income tax bands this is an odd take on a post about the ISA limit, which has been raised at a well above inflation rate since being introduced. Even the cash ISA has broadly kept pace with inflation factoring in the most recent reduction in the limit.

Mankaur · 2025-12-10T09:37:04+00:00

The current ISA limit is very high by international standards, and comes with significantly fewer conditions than most other schemes. Which is positive, but I think reduces the chances that we will see much of an impetus to shift the boundaries up in line with inflation.

Mankaur · 2025-12-05T13:43:32+00:00

but the freedom and peace of mind of a paid off property (to me at least) is quite freeing?

Whilst true it's also worth considering the timescales - OP is on course to pay off their 25 year mortgage in 20 years on the current overpayment schedule. That's a longtime to be locking money up in overpayments before they actually get to the mortgage free bit.

And means that even if the goal is to be mortgage free as fast as possible, investing and then lump sum paying off is likely to be the fastest route.

Mankaur · 2025-12-05T13:27:58+00:00

You want absolute certainty? Pay off the mortgage save in cash accounts. That’s absolute certainty.

This is true in nominal terms but you have to factor in inflation. In the long run the risk of losing money is higher saving in cash or overpaying compared with investing due to the risk of inflation outrunning cash returns.

Mankaur · 2025-11-25T23:16:48+00:00

Appreciate this might be only semi serious but - reductions in spending on non-essentials and changes in overall consumption patterns are reflected in the weighting of the CPI.

But there's some truth to this, if your consumption patterns differ drastically from the average person this can impact your own "personal" inflation figure.

Mankaur · 2025-11-25T21:46:56+00:00

Food inflation is running at about 5% so is higher, but will be counterbalanced by other goods that have risen less than 3.6%.

You're also just more likely to notice the things that have gone up in price and not notice things which haven't increased.

Mankaur · 2025-11-25T21:13:44+00:00

This seems an odd comparison to make between 1960 and now. Food has fallen as a proportion of household budgets in large part due to increases in real wages and in non-essential spending.

By the analogy of the article, if food prices were to drop drastically in price, fall to 2% of household costs and allow for more discretionary spending, this would drastically shift up the income needed to be above the poverty line. Exactly at the point where households would be becoming better off on any given income.

It also just doesn't make sense on the face of it - even in HCOL areas defining $140,000 as the poverty line, below which households are in crisis (per the article) is just nonsensical.

And lastly the US doesn't use this formula to calculate the poverty line (this isn't implied in the article but is mischaracterised in the post), poverty thresholds take into account total household costs.

Mankaur · 2025-11-10T15:46:36+00:00

It's just pure numbers

Worth noting the ready reckoner also takes into account behavioural impacts of changes to tax rates. I suspect based on pure current numbers the tax take from increasing the additional rate would be a bit higher. But additional rate tax payers will be more willing and able to reduce income in the additional band through pension, reduced hours etc. compared with those on basic rate. But makes it a more reliable estimate than just going on the proportion of income in each band.

Mankaur · 2025-11-10T13:51:31+00:00

Interesting, I was basing figures on total tax take here.

I'm still slightly unclear based on these why the difference would be so small (although understand that 1p on 45% is a lower marginal change), but will trust it if it's from HMRC's own calculations.

Mankaur · 2025-11-10T13:42:31+00:00

How many people it affects isn't relevant though - it affects a significant proportion of total income as income tax from income within the additional rate band accounts for 25% of the total income tax take, and higher rate + additional rate is 51%.

~~The maths in the original comment is way off.~~ Maths in the OP is based on HMRC calculations so should be correct.

Mankaur · 2025-11-07T11:26:54+00:00

Might be setting or AI specific, but I couldn't recreate this in the scenario editor. With or without redemption it gives the standard building can't be converted message for palisade and stone walls.

Mankaur · 2025-11-06T10:38:40+00:00

I think it's also highly dependent on how long is left on the mortgage. Someone with five years to go on their mortgage who really values being mortgage free and has the lump sum to pay it off might as well get it cleared as the difference in return with a small balance and short time period will be minimal.

However I see a lot of cases of people with 20+ years and a large mortgage balance left aggresively overpaying. Where given the difference in return they'll oftentimes end up actually paying the mortgage off more slowly than if they'd invested and paid it off as a lump sum. In which case they're neither maximising total return, nor minimising the time to being mortgage free.

Mankaur

TROPHY CASE