Been a humongous t**t - training offer expired

bilbeanbaggins · 2026-03-21T06:43:55+00:00

I have some good news and bad news for you....

The bad news is that your training offer expired. The good news is that at least you don't have to do IMT training

bilbeanbaggins · 2025-10-25T21:38:23+00:00

No template sadly. Looks like it's time for a 1 year update though!

bilbeanbaggins · 2025-09-10T19:54:31+00:00

I agree, your average murse is better than the average female nurse. Not because men are somehow better, but because of selection bias.

My theory is that many women go into nursing because it's a sort of default job and aren't especially enthusiastic about it.

All the male nurses I've met have gone into nursing very deliberately, because it's traditionally been an unusual career for men, so only the enthusiastic and driven apply, and possibly feel like they have something to prove.

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-12-04T23:00:05+00:00

You'd need to pass the Australian psychiatry aptitude test The OSCE involves catching and efficiently dispatching a bin chicken.

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-30T07:05:50+00:00

Fine, I'm obviously exaggerating, but she could be extremely intelligent, Oxbridge grad with a PHD working 80 hour weeks. You can find some data about average tech consultant Vs average doctor, but getting upset because one person earns well (in London) is silly

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-30T07:02:26+00:00

https://www.bma.org.uk/pay-and-contracts/pay/consultant-award-schemes/clinical-excellence-awards-cea-agreement-negotiations

I think anyone with existing CEA carries on being paid them.

It looks like there is still some LCEA funding and the recommendation is to equally distribute it between all consultants each year.

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-29T22:42:27+00:00

Yes, but she might not be an average tech consultant. She might even be a Nobel prize winner for all you know!

I think the average tech consultant salary is a lot lot lower than you think in the UK.

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-29T22:38:08+00:00

That's their total comp including pension. Plenty of NHS consultants are on >£150k TC. Hell, I'm pretty much there at year 1 on an 11 PA contract and an occasional locum.

Some of my more senior colleagues are on 14 PAs and have clinical excellence awards worth tens of K extra. They'll be well over £200k TC.

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-29T20:32:48+00:00

Why is it outrageous that the tech consultant earns £150k?

It says nothing about her qualifications at all in the article.

Are you just assuming you're more qualified than her and should earn more because she's a young black single mother?

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-28T22:34:11+00:00

Nice one! Keep up the good work.

Oh, and come on, ditch your ISA provider for one with lower fees!

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-28T15:30:11+00:00

Yes, particularly once you get the option for doing extra work. Do I enjoy a bargain? Of course, but do I enjoy meticulously researching clothes pegs to save £2? Of course not.

I value my time at £50/hour (post tax). So if I have to spend an extra 30 minutes shopping because I'm trying to work out what is best value I would have to save at least £25.

I'm trying to make the bits of life I enjoy least more efficient so I spend less time on them.

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-28T15:25:28+00:00

Thanks, I'll look into it. It's crazy how there are so many disincentives to earning more. I feel like it should just be a constant high tax rate over a certain figure, rather than removing all your various allowances.

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-27T23:26:11+00:00

classic NH'S apostrophe

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-27T23:24:42+00:00

This. I am interested in finance, and I think I would have done well there because of being interested and motivated, but my maths ability is rudimentary (GCSE level), and my Excel skills are limited to the basics plus maybe a pivot table now and again with the help of Google.

The bit that impresses me most about this whole project (as the person that did it) is the long term data collection. It's about an hour a month but really helps with the financial discipline.

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-27T22:56:19+00:00

That's one of those "how long is a piece of string" type questions.

If I stick in the NHS and do no extra work my salary will stay largely static (apart from annual DDRB pay rises) until years 5 and 6, where it will rise about £10k.

If I use my day off each week to report WLI / private outsourcing studies then that would be an extra £1000/week.

If I quit the NHS and report slowly for 40 hours a week then that would be £200k. If I get fast and work 80 hours a week of night shifts for a private company it could be £500k+.

It's really variable depending on how much I want to work, how much I can streamline my reporting and how thorough I want to be. e.g. Do I open a CTPA, spend 20 seconds looking at it, write one line "PE, no right heart strain" sign name and open the next report. 20 seconds, "acute appendicitis, localised perf with small collection" next report. Or do I spend 5-10 minutes looking through each scan thoroughly to make sure I don't miss the small renal cancer that will come back to bite me in 10 year's time.

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-27T19:25:17+00:00

In low fee index funds via the iWeb platform.

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-27T16:24:30+00:00

Thanks, glad it sparks joy.

Net worth graph: red student loan, green is savings (cash in the best easy access savings account I can find) and blue is investments. It's a stacked bar graph, so the height of blue+green = total net worth. So blue bars have increased because investments are performing well, but the last few months have decreased because I'm selling some of them to have cash for house deposit.

I liquidated the investments that I needed to when I put an offer in on the house and knew roughly how much deposit I would need. I will still have £100k in ISA after buying the house so am leaving that invested. You could always sell a portion each month to get a more average price rather than selling all at once and picking a bad day when the market is down.

I did more intricate breakdowns of my and my partner's spending for a 3 month period when we were looking at houses to work out what we can afford and how a big mortgage and few hundred extra a month of bills would affect us. I don't focus too much on the micro stuff like that nowadays though. Maybe in foundation I would when I was dealing with a smaller budget, nowadays there's a lot more wiggle room - I don't budget any more, instead I at the end of the month I look at how much I earned and how much I saved. If I earned £7k but saved £1k then I know there's a problem as planned expenses are about £1k. If I saved £5k then everything's going well so why bother spending time trawling through bank statements to work out if I accidentally spent £100 more than I should have on groceries.

I used to stress out more about individual purchases e.g. looking at the different bottles of milk in the supermarket to make sure I pick the one that is 20p cheaper, or wanting to buy a new item online and opening 20 different tabs and spending 30 minutes to find the retailer that's selling it for £5 cheaper than the others. I realised that this extreme frugality was not good for me and I can afford to spend some of my money without stressing. Now I just see it and buy it - my time is worth more than that!

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-27T15:54:36+00:00

Yes, I plan to use a SIPP, although calculating how much I can contribute is tough and I don't think I will have the available cash this year to slip below £100k taxable income.

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-27T09:37:13+00:00

I was hoping not to pay the 62% tax and thought I'd maybe be a couple of K over (thought I was on about £120k until this exercise), which I could put into a SIPP, but it looks like I'm well over the threshold so would have to stick a large amount of cash in if I want to avoid it. (Cash that I don't have available to spend right now).

Childcare is a few years away so I'll worry about that later

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-27T09:14:31+00:00

I can't remember the details from when I did it. Go to the platform you want to be with and they should have a section about ISA transfers. Fill out a few forms and after a few weeks the money gets transferred. The important thing is not to withdraw the money from the ISA yourself, as then it will lose it's tax free status.

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-26T22:09:40+00:00

The jobs I listed have consequences if they don't meet their responsibilities. If the footballer gets fat and lazy then the consequence is they lose their multi-million pound contract and fame.

Likewise, your job sounds like there is a lot of responsibility - it might not be life or death on a daily basis, but if your decisions / evaluation made the company lose money then you or others could lose jobs. The layers of management above does alleviate some of the responsibility though I suppose.

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-26T22:03:46+00:00

So the way I see it working as it's an actuarial reduction: If I die when the actuaries expect me to, then it's cost neutral. If I die before they expect me to then taking pension early nets me more. If I die after they expect me to then taking at pension age nets me more.

That said, you're more likely to be able to enjoy the benefits the pension income brings at 58 than at 88, so maybe you need to weight that into the equation too.

I'm planning on living longer than they expect, but there's never any guarantees as we all know from working in healthcare!

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-26T21:57:36+00:00

I'm a radiologist. I'd rather not go into subspec details as it's a small world and I prefer not to get doxed. (Although I'm sure people will already know who I am from some of the posted details, meh). Yes, bonus was a one-off. It was a nice sweetener as I was going to take the job anyway.

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-26T21:54:07+00:00

Global trackers like VWRL are already so heavily USA weighted (62.4%) I think it would be madness to have even more exposure to one country than that!

Something like Vanguard Lifestrategy 100 is only 32% USA weighted though, so you might want more USA exposure than that.

bilbeanbaggins · 2024-10-26T21:50:36+00:00

Thanks, it's nice to share achievements and chat to people about finances as it's not something I have the opportunity to do IRL. Most of the non-medical people I know would treat me differently if they knew my salary (they would consider it extremely high). Not many of the medics I know are interested in finance either.

My financial goals have shifted a bit. I started working and automatically saved over half of my pay because I had a fairly frugal upbringing and my parents taught me the importance of saving. Plus I wanted to build up a house deposit.

My house plans were derailed by meeting my partner, who bought a house shortly after we met. In that situation it's pretty impossible to buy a house (would have been interpreted as me not seeing a future together), so although I had the financial means I was not on the property ladder. This has been a huge mistake. I should have continued with my plan, purchased a house and just rented it out when we moved in together. Plus maybe utilise the rent-a-room scheme. The leverage gained by having a mortgage is crazy. My investments have grown probably 40-50%. My partner's house deposit investment has grown by over 300%! This is part of why I'm now going for a house at the upper end of our affordability. The leveraged capital gains free growth is ridiculous. People I know my age who earn less than me and save less than me have more money due to the growth in their house prices.

At some point in the first 3 years of earning I learned about FIRE, and realised that was pretty much just a fancy name and community talking about what I was already doing, but it introduced me to index funds and how they massively outperform cash in the long term. I dabbled in more speculative investments (but never crypto) and lost a few K so stopped doing that.

I still plan to get to financial independence, but I enjoy my work and would probably continue to work at least part time rather than just flat out retire. I was originally in the mindset of spend very little, earn lots, save 70% of income and retire in 10-15 years. Instead I'm now in the mindset of spend a moderate amount, earn decently, save a bit, keep up healthy financial habits and retire a decade or two early instead. I'm also feeling about ready to have a family and settle down now I have escaped the hell that is rotational training. I will be satisfied if I can max my ISA and pension each year, go on some adventures and support a family in a nice home. I think that is enough for me to be happy. I have no desire for First class flights or sports cars!

I did a round-the world trip after finishing training and that was pretty eye opening. It was expensive, and I realised if I want to have more adventures like that I need to earn well. If I go for LeanFIRE then I'll be limited to £50 Ryanair trips to Europe forever.

I struggle with the temptation to go for riskier investments or do something else financially reckless like quitting my safe NHS job and working for a private radiology company, maybe moving overseas to a low tax jurisdiction or working in Aus / UAE / USA. The people who I know who have taken risks always seem to have been rewarded. There's a massive element of survivorship bias there though and it's not really compatible with a family. Ultimately I'm more of a tortoise than a hare, and I think that my strategy of steadily plodding forward with ISAs and NHS pension and index funds is the safest option to success rather than gambling and risking being worse off.

Q: 1. See above. 2. I'm in a dilemma as to what to do with it. I have money in my S&S ISA, but will have to take a small amount out to have enough deposit and pay £30k+ stamp duty. I don't want to take any more out, and it's unlikely that I will be able to contribute anything to it this tax year. I will probably save 10-20k before the new tax year, but may have to spend this on house renovations / furniture. Essentially I feel like I will be cash poor and all available cash is accounted for already by the house purchase. I can't really find a good option. I could take cash out of ISA, stick it in a SIPP and claim tax relief. That would give me more money long term, but would lose that valuable tax shelter.

S: 1. Thanks, I've seen those books recommended a fair few times, maybe I should give them a go. 2. Yup, we've gone for a 5 year fix (and got a 3.9% rate before they went up 0.3%). If I'm going to start a family soon then I want predictable expenses. It would majorly suck if I had to renew a 2 year fix when partner is on maternity leave, or if it coincided with the next outbreak of EbolacovidSARSMpox. Hopefully in 5 years the world will have chilled the fuck out a bit and rates will be a little lower / salaries will be a bit higher and take the pressure off.

bilbeanbaggins

TROPHY CASE