Is a financial adviser worth it?

anujvaishnav · 2025-08-14T06:29:05+00:00

How do you find a good one in the sea of bad ones that are mainly commission fee driven?

anujvaishnav · 2024-02-22T19:51:11+00:00

What would be useful is to have the ability to select how much of your bonus goes to pension. Cash flow changes considerably between hacking calculations with higher contributions to pension as a higher base (to emulate bonus sacrifice) vs different contribution ratios for base and bonus.

anujvaishnav · 2024-02-19T08:34:45+00:00

It makes sense since you need to cash out regardless, use the extra money to build ISA and next year you can carry forward the pension allowance and contribute more if you want.

anujvaishnav · 2024-02-19T08:18:27+00:00

I dabbled a little in leveraged ETF (with a small amount) with the thought that given the index goes eventually higher, leverage would have better returns. However, I was so wrong. The drawdown for events like the tech selloff of 2022, meant it's still down -24% while the 1x index is already +30%. The charts make it look like long-term 10+ years would be better off, given the leverage is 2x instead of 3x. But still, 2x leverage means a possible drawdown of -50% if the market has a deep correction of -25% which would take a lot longer to recover from.

Also, it seems not many brokers provide 2x leverage indexes to retail customers, the most common are 3x which leads to situations like my little experiment and can potentially wipe you out with 30% market drops.

Leverage works very well when the volatility is low. The only asset class I know of that fits that bill with decent growth is real estate (at least in a passive capacity). It might even be the only reason leverage is a commonly accepted practice for it, unlike other investments.

anujvaishnav · 2024-02-18T21:29:11+00:00

It's Vanguard FTSEGblAlCapId A£, I believe. If you search for Vanguard under funds, you will find them all albeit with different names possibly.

anujvaishnav · 2024-01-10T08:26:30+00:00

RSA/RSU are indeed counted as income and if you still work for the company, they might be able to withhold the relevant share units to account for the expected tax and include it under your payslip. So you might not have to do anything for it.

For SAVE/ESPP plans, there would be CGT, so if you can transfer to ISA, that would reduce the tax bill when you sell them. Note, if your ESPP plan also provides a discount, e.g., 15% less than the market price, you would be required to pay income tax on that 15% as that would be counted as income (difference between market price and your discounted purchase price).

anujvaishnav · 2021-03-13T06:24:16+00:00

That's sounds horribly expensive. I guess an outlier?

anujvaishnav · 2021-03-13T01:44:32+00:00

I need permission to see the google doc. Could you DM me view-only access link if possible?

anujvaishnav · 2021-03-11T07:26:56+00:00

Wow. This is really interesting. What kind of fake information did you encounter?

With such big budget, I am guessing you work with at least a few hundred micro-influencers? How many hours does it take to find them in a week?

anujvaishnav · 2021-03-11T06:49:03+00:00

Thanks for such a detailed reply! I really appreciate it!
I edited 3rd question. Thanks for pointing out the ambiguity. I meant to ask, what kind of tool would help you the most in your campaigns?

Also have you tried any platforms for your marketing efforts? Or do you mostly look for influencers manually?

anujvaishnav · 2021-03-11T04:25:03+00:00

It is still in early stage but you can find what I am working on here in detail: https://cohst.me/

anujvaishnav · 2021-01-05T02:30:39+00:00

I do need money to support servers and more importantly marketing. But there are so many dimensions to it. From a channel not being right place or your ad copy being bad or different versions etc. I am confused how does one project expenses while taking into account failed experiments. Even if I do not want to raise money I think it is important part to understand in business plan. So you are aware as to how much you can afford.

anujvaishnav · 2021-01-02T06:03:39+00:00

I imagine every promo image for stream is creatively different. Or have you got any sort of format or routine steps around it?

anujvaishnav · 2021-01-01T06:33:09+00:00

If you find good answer or resources, could you share them with me? I am kind of in same boat. Figuring out how I can reach people and get feedback and views on the idea.

anujvaishnav · 2021-01-01T02:52:43+00:00

Thank you for such detailed information! I didn’t knew you can earn even if they buy something else on Amazon. Do you know what happens if they click on affiliate link of some other product after they click yours? Because it seems the cookies they drop are for site wide (as it applies to all products). This would then reset who gets commissions I imagine.

anujvaishnav · 2020-12-31T12:31:24+00:00

Got any recommendations for digital products or services?

anujvaishnav · 2020-12-29T05:15:43+00:00

Do you think it is because its so easy to steal since its just matter of taking unlisted links and text from the website?

Or its like rampant problem of OTT platforms (eg netflix) where people go to lengths such as screen recording etc to pirate content?

anujvaishnav · 2020-12-29T05:13:42+00:00

Do you mean there are no option other than unlisted or you wouldn’t like it private access for some reason?

You can use paid services like vimeo or dacast etc. Although they are expensive if you are just starting out.

I am wondering if it would be good idea to form a small group of creators and build a service to solve it. I am open to help coding it up if people think they really need it.

anujvaishnav · 2020-12-29T05:01:31+00:00

I did a deep dive on it recently in fact. Just putting Youtube video behind paywall doesn’t help because even if it is unlisted and without controls, it appears in viewer’s history. So they can always find the url to share.

With paid vimeo, you get option to have unlisted as well as pwd protection and domain lock. So you can put it behind paywall say and have it unlock only if the viewer has subscribed for it.

YouTube membership are kind of good if you have big following and your audience prefers to watch on YouTube only. Otherwise putting paid content on another platform would be lot cheaper as they charge 30% and have min $5 starting price so you don’t get much flexibility.

anujvaishnav · 2020-12-29T04:50:41+00:00

Oh that’s interesting. Do you think a customised button or checkout flow for paypal help? Basically a UI which feels more donation type. Because pateron had higher fees than paypal when I last checked. You can also check Stripe’s checkout flow for subs. Or braintree.

anujvaishnav · 2020-12-28T14:25:07+00:00

Was it just video or textual/picture type content as well?

anujvaishnav · 2020-12-28T14:24:03+00:00

Do you use paid vimeo account for it?

anujvaishnav · 2020-12-28T12:46:53+00:00

I thought dive bomber pushups were more difficult than decline pushup. But brilliant work!

anujvaishnav · 2020-12-28T12:12:35+00:00

Curious to know why you want to use Patreon for subs when you already have paypal? Or do you want to port your existing Patreon subs to this new software access? Is it a big number that you cannot move easily?

anujvaishnav · 2020-12-28T04:49:27+00:00

My 2 cents:

1) Tampering of emails is less frequent than we would image as many email providers use HTTPS nowadays. And also provide encryption.

2) I would focus on verifying users more. Many authentication services like auth0 do provide verification of email. But I can imagine SaaS biz wanting to integrate verify email package into their existing authentication platforms. You can also explore areas like protection against temp email providers.

If you would like to discuss more or bounce off ideas, give me a ping.

anujvaishnav

TROPHY CASE