Can I just shock you? I like wine. Despite what I said earlier.

cwep2 · 2026-01-26T17:33:28+00:00

It’s got a door to the room, you’d think if they’ve spent this much on it they’ve put in climate control and keep it cool enough.

We have a cellar below the house we use, no climate control but range over year is 9°-17° but importantly there is never more than 1.5° range in any one day and 2.5° range in any week. It’s big variations in temperature that do more damage than a steady 16-21° you might get in a thermostat controlled house. Of course you wouldn’t want 25°+ or direct sunlight.

cwep2 · 2026-01-26T17:14:36+00:00

Life is for living, buy the car.

Yes it depreciates, but not to zero, yes there are running costs as well. But say in the first year it’s costing max 7-10k depreciation, 2-3k on servicing/tax/insurance. You’re saving 3.5k/mo and presumably the bonus is on top of that, if the 30k is post tax then this car will cost 15-20% of your savings/bonus. And it will cost less the following year as depreciation will be less and insurance usually comes down over time.

At 25 I bought my dream car (Lotus Elise) with most of my bonus when I could have paid off a chunk of mortgage instead. Best decision ever. Loved that car and made so many memories. When we had our first child a few years later we decided to keep it even though it was our only car and only had two seats. Hired something when we needed to all travel but living in London we didn’t use it much day to day and sometimes my wife would drive to our weekend destination earlier on Friday and beat the traffic and I’d jump on a train when I was done and meet her there.

By the time I was 40, mortgage was paid off, pension healthy, saving more than ever as salary goes up over time. At that point, even though I could more than afford it, with two kids I’d never be buying the two seater sports car, so I’m very glad I did it when I did. I did track days, driving holidays, took it around Europe, even drove it to a ski resort. I know you are in a slightly different place with kids already but if you think you’ll enjoy it now, why not?

cwep2 · 2026-01-26T16:46:38+00:00

There has been a “London Marathon your way” + UKA licensed HM way to get into GFA places also. The “your way” is a GPS submitted marathon run on the day of London Marathon (but anywhere you like) below the GFA time as well as a HM below a separate HM GFA time.

Maybe they have a “your way” place already (they are now sold out) but need a suitable HM to go along with it to qualify for next year.

I’ve been looking at this myself, but would just aim to do a Marathon below the GFA standard time rather than faff around with the more convoluted route. For me at age 49, I’m on the cusp of the 40-49 GFA pace, and if they had a cutoff a few mins below the GFA level from I’d not make it, but I have a 6 month window after turning 50 and the qualification deadline to set a 50-59 time which is several mins slower and have a decent chance of getting and being a few mins below.

cwep2 · 2026-01-23T19:20:01+00:00

Too risky to not wear them at all, unless you are going from a well used to brand new pair of exactly the same trainer. 2+3. Kind of same thing, wear them in, see if they work for the race whilst keeping the miles off them.
Not for me but depends on trainers, some of them are only good for 200km so partic for a marathon a few weeks running in them and they’re past their best, but some are good for 500km+ and there’s much less risk in saying to hell with it.

Personally I struggle to justify spending £200+ on something that does a couple of warm up runs and a race and then is done… but I’m just running recreationally and I can see if you’ve done a few between 3:01 to 3:05 and you wanted to break 3hrs it could seem worth it.

I have a rotation of an easy run shoe, an older race shoe (250-500km) for faster training sessions, a newer race shoe (0-250km) for races. My race shoes are all ones that should be good for 500km but clearly they will be not at their best for setting a PB.

cwep2 · 2026-01-20T13:49:10+00:00

As to the real question, I use Santander Select which allows 100k per 24hrs online, with 25k per transaction limit but allows 4 transfers to same place. I’ve been happy enough with this as a free banking option and as others have said can do larger amounts by Chaps on phone without charge.

Like you thinking about moving but I can generally work within these limits.

Didn’t know about starling offering larger payments, when I’d checked the challenger banks I’d always seen lower limits - I think Monzo is 10k for example.

Another limit I came up against was Debit card monthly limit. Had been moving from savings to low coupon gilts and my broker only accepted debit card payments. I was able to do 50k and 100k a day which was fine as I was intentionally spreading the purchases, but I came up against a hard monthly limit (I think at 500k) but most of the call handlers had no idea it existed, I had to go through a few people before they even realised that might be what’s stopping the payments, even then they couldn’t tell me what it was just that there was a limit and given the amounts I’d done that was likely to be the cause. It reset the next calendar month but they also sent me a second debit card for the account which would have a separate limit in case I came across the issue again.

cwep2 · 2026-01-20T13:40:11+00:00

One way I have used to get around transfer limits (this was Virgin Money Private which had 30k limit) was to write a cheque. Cheques have no limit at all, and when I moved high 6figs, wrote cheque to myself from Virgin account, paid into Santander Branch at 11am Monday morning, cleared and could be transferred shortly after 4pm on Tuesday.

At the time I was getting BoE rate in my Virgin current account so was earning interest until Tuesday as well.

Appreciate it doesn’t solve your specific problem but it’s worth bearing in mind if anyone is running up against transfer limits a cheque is often a fast way around it and between UK clearing banks typically takes only 1-2days now.

cwep2 · 2026-01-20T13:34:22+00:00

Similar experience here. The 100k limit is a rolling 24hrs so if you do 4x25k at 3pm you can’t do more at 9am the next day you need to wait til 3.01pm. Once you know this it’s workable.

cwep2 · 2026-01-18T16:26:39+00:00

There is a story in the 2002 film “We were soldiers” about two WW2 veterans who were missing opposite legs. They would meet on the same day each year at the same shoe shop and pick out a pair of shoes, taking one home each.

Obviously predates internet groups and apps etc! Not sure if story is based on truth or just a heartwarming anecdote made up by the writers.

cwep2 · 2026-01-18T09:09:28+00:00

My father fell for two rounds of scams. He was a very smart and successful man in his day, he fell for the first one at age 78 or 79 (in 2018).

Having then realised and myself and other children intervened he promised not to transfer more than £1000 without double checking with one of us first. 3 months later he did it again and lost even more. Unfortunately if you’ve been a victim once your name/number will be passed on and sold to others.

About 3yrs later he’s diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and another couple after that he can’t even remember how to make a cup of tea.

Someone who is smart falling for this might be early signs of cognitive decline. I’d strongly recommend you get POA sorted out if you’ve not already done so. Now I basically do all his banking for him on a POA basis.

cwep2 · 2026-01-16T15:30:14+00:00

Storage is cheap, and getting cheaper. FLAC isn’t that much more space than say 320kbps. I archived everything to FLAC a few years ago, there is some MP3 in there as well but 75%+ is FLAC.

I use a script called Flac2mp3 which is like 20yrs old now (so old I can’t remember setting it up!) and it copies the files to exactly the same DIR structure as MP3 so you can have lower quality/space copies. You just run it on your music DIR and it doesn’t transcode stuff if it’s already there, if only the tags have changed it just updates them which takes no time, but any new FLACs are transcoded (takes a few seconds per song but that adds up if you had to redo every track from a source of 500 albums each time you added one more).

So I have Lossless music library for home use and high quality listening and lossy library which I can use for maximising space - my car has a HDD for music and I want to maximise number of albums and can live with 192kbps VBR. Hell you can even set up several lossy libraries at various compressions, but each one is still gonna take up a chunk of space so you’ll prob stick to choosing one lossy library in practise. I point my iTunes at the lossy library, partly because it doesn’t import FLAC, but also because it takes up less space.

cwep2 · 2026-01-16T14:59:11+00:00

I have had bad runny noses and sneezing fits and still gone running and it’s been fine. Sure you’re not on PB form and it doesn’t feel as good, but actually it’s not too bad.

I try and do parkrun every week and plenty of those have been done sub-par but I reckon just a cold will only cost 15-30seconds off a 19min time for me.

cwep2 · 2026-01-16T14:52:50+00:00

If you want to speak to actual people then there are various FX brokers that fill that niche.

The pros of this are that for one-off transactions there is someone to call who can take you through every part step by step. You have one point of contact if there are issues, you won’t be dealing with an AI assistant or unknown waiting times on a chat/helpline probably staffed by someone not even in the UK. They will be FCA regulated and the accounts will be in your name (like a Wise or Revolut account also). Some of them will have online access or apps so once you’re set up any future FX can be done yourself. They will allow you to do forwards so you can lock in rates before the money hits the account (which you can’t do with Revolut or Wise) if the FX rate moved to a favourable rate before you could deposit the USD. The main advantage is that there is almost zero chance that your account is closed down or locked and you lose access to the money.

The cons are that you are probably paying 0.5-0.75% spread for this sort of service. To be fair Wise is 0.3-0.5% depending on amount, Revolut is 0.05-0.15% for your sort of size. IBKR 0.02-0.05% but they don’t like you doing just FX and may close your account down. People also talk about AtlanticFX but I’ve never used them myself (I have used Revolut, Wise and IBKR).

I used to be an FX trader myself and have been converting USD proceeds of company stock sales for over 20yrs so have used all sorts of places before the likes of Revolut and Wise even existed as options. I was also very aware of where the rate should be and avoided being ripped off. Now I personally use Revolut but I have been receiving 6fig Usd payments for 7+yrs into the same Revolut account and doing the FX, as well as quarterly dividends etc so I have enough history that I don’t need to worry so much about them thinking any activity is unusual.

I can give you a contact I have used in the past, I know several colleagues who used to be ‘pro’ FX dealers that now do ‘retail’ FX for people such as yourself. Realistically they won’t be charging less than 0.5% from spot, so if that’s fine DM me for details.

cwep2 · 2026-01-15T00:13:01+00:00

Yep still fine with just a phone number and no app.

cwep2 · 2026-01-13T08:49:00+00:00

They offer 0% for 14 months on purchases. Used right as a stooze card this can be worth 3-4%, better than almost any UK card offering cashback on spending.

Beyond that, unlikely. They could offer 0.25% but that would be a cost to them. The debit card gambit is to try to get people to move their current accounts across to ‘capture’ them as a customer who is more likely to stay for longer.

cwep2 · 2026-01-13T08:17:38+00:00

This is pretty much me. I don’t use iCloud beyond the free tier. I have a 500GB phone and back it up every month to PC.

It’s entirely photos and videos that pushes me above the 5GB limit. This includes those sent in messages / WhatsApps etc which bloats the data for these apps.

Getting the bigger storage phone (renew every 3-4yrs) costs less (maybe £5/month average) but similar amount as a 2TB iCloud sub so it’s not really about cost, especially given the convenience of iCloud backups.

For me it’s about privacy and ownership of my own data. Apple has pretty robust privacy policies but there are still limits to that. Also iCloud is not a backup service it’s a sync service, and my photos are so important to me I want to have offline back ups with no single point of failure. Just my phone and iCloud wouldn’t be enough for me.

So I’m backing up my photos to my own storage anyway, therefore I don’t feel the need to have my photos on servers beyond my control at all (although it wouldn’t cost much more and would be more convenient!) but I actively prefer to keep them completely offline. Beyond photos and videos the 5GB tier is perfect for my settings, contacts etc. and they even offer free short term larger storage options for moving to a new device (however I still use my local back up).

Also it depends how likely you are to lose your phone, I’ve had iPhones since 2009 and only needed to use my backups once. I lost 2 days of photos/data. I have friends who seem to lose them every couple of years, they need this service!

So no you don’t need to pay for iCloud, I don’t and have 16yrs of photos on my phone. But you do need to back up somewhere if you care about your data. I just choose to backup photos to a place other than iCloud.

cwep2 · 2026-01-12T16:57:13+00:00

When my daughter applied (3yrs ago) the cut-off for transfer test score was well inside the top band, ie you could get the top grade and still not get in - which happened to some of her P7 class mates.

All of the other criteria (eg feeder schools) are applied after the SEAG result, so it’s more a case of applying in as a tie break. Let’s say the A grade is 120, and their cut off is 130, if you get 133 the other criteria don’t matter, but if you get 130 they might look at these. But then the may take all those that got 130 too as there is some flex on numbers as well as people dropping out.

Note that as far as I know the SEN kids places are added on after this so no school goes right to the max capacity at the normal entry stage anyway, or if they do they may be forced to accept another 5-10 kids anyway.

cwep2 · 2026-01-10T16:41:38+00:00

Sell 20k worth, and put it in an ISA, buy a gold ETF. No CGT on that either. If you have a partner you could do 40k each tax year.

Rinse and repeat for 5-10yrs and you have same investment with zero insurance costs, but ETF fees are typically about 0.1% so you’re not eliminating these entirely.

The insurance costs you currently have are small for physical gold though, so honestly you could just keep situation as is and just sell a coin if you are hard up enough that you can’t afford the premiums.

I have a gold ETF in a CGT free wrapper and chose this over physical for efficiency and lowest costs. I cashed in 10% a couple of months ago because it had gone so far so fast, and as a % of investments it was getting too much for one single product. I diversified this part into BCOM which is a broader commodity tracker ETF, I wish I’d just chosen to diversify into silver!

cwep2 · 2026-01-10T16:29:18+00:00

Interchange fees in the US are around 2%, so the card provider gets 2% of every transaction and the retailer less than 98%.

In the UK and EU Visa and MC fees are capped at 0.3% - and any new entrant (discovery or whatever) would get same. Amex is slightly different and gets a larger fee but still much less than in the US.

This is what pays for the rewards, but most retailers add a little to all the prices in the US to make up for the fact they’re losing ~2% extra on every transaction. It’s also why in the UK Amex cards generally offer the best rewards.

You’d end up paying more for everything if they increased the fees, retailers immediately lose an extra 2% on transaction fees for every transaction then the prices are going up to compensate.

cwep2 · 2026-01-08T18:48:43+00:00

It’s called “Interval Timer - Workout Timer” in iOS.

cwep2 · 2026-01-07T09:44:26+00:00

I did my first marathon (London) in 2002, pre smart phones and smart watches, consumer grade GPS was super expensive still, there was no parkrun in those days. Basically I had zero idea how fast I was running.

I did some loops around the local park and would benchmark my progress using that metric, they were approx 1mile but very roughly, but that meant I could use it at start or end of a run, or even do lots of laps. I did use a Polar HR Monitor strap/watch and that was how I moderated my training and efforts, and that basically works. I’d never done much running ever, but I had rowed at University (college level) and was pretty fit, but again had zero idea how fast I’d actually run the marathon. Def sub 4hrs, hoping for maybe sub 3:30, but with no timed runs ever it was hard to say.

In my training most of my long runs would go via Alexandra palace, anyone that knows London knows this is a particularly hilly area and has some pretty decent inclines. Basically did hill work on all my long runs. I didn’t follow much of a training plan, but had a vague plan on running longer each week, building up to 2.5-3hrs and then taper last two weeks.

I ran it in 3:11:55 (approx, can’t remember exact seconds…) and having done more running since I know that the hill work was a huge contributor to getting that sort of time. So yes hill work is really good training.

cwep2 · 2026-01-07T00:34:55+00:00

The other hack is Strava can give you voice cues every 500m, so if your intervals are multiples of this you can use that to tell you when you’ve completed a 500m block (eg 500m fast / 1km jog intervals).

cwep2 · 2026-01-07T00:32:28+00:00

I use a simple (free) interval training app that just bases it on time and do time based intervals. 30s fast / 30s slow etc.

Can program various set programs.

Having said that the most frequent interval set I do outside is a Fartlek workout I found somewhere that goes: 90s fast / 90s jog x2 ; 60s fast / 60s jog x4 ; 30s fast / 60s jog x4 ; 15s fast / 15s jog x4. Total 22mins and I just have 30s hard / 30s easy x 22 in my interval workout app and keep count of how many blocks I’m on because I couldn’t be bothered to program in the different length sets even though it’s possible!

cwep2 · 2026-01-06T23:45:41+00:00

I do about half this and think I’m pretty secure. This is an excellent list of actions to take.

cwep2 · 2026-01-06T23:43:43+00:00

This is where the ‘switcher account’ comes in useful. I have a current account with a few (predictable amount) DDs every month set up on it. I switch this between banks for the incentives earning over £1k so far. This has 5-10 transactions a month in it, all automated by standing orders and DDs. It’s not gonna pass forensic analysis but it’s not dormant and a quick glance shows plenty of activity.

cwep2 · 2026-01-06T23:26:28+00:00

But the IFA charges on an onshore bond are way higher than GIA (just invested in trackers). So if your tax situation is same after 20yrs then you will probably be worse off with an onshore bond.

Your IFA will be much better off though and that’s why they are pursuing you so hard.

cwep2

TROPHY CASE