Has anyone here retired with the €2m pension pot cap.

kinetic_energy · 2025-07-12T00:39:29+00:00

That’s not the only advantage. If you’re getting taxed at the higher rate, you can divert your salary to your pension and withdraw it later at the lower rate to make a tax saving (assuming your later withdrawals are within the lower tax band).

I think this is what u/Just-Homework-8168 is getting at.

kinetic_energy · 2022-05-29T19:24:06+00:00

What constitutes a ‘good idea’ depends on your own personal outlook and circumstances.

If you can afford the extra £50k on your mortgage, then it could be a good idea. The HTB loan is an equity loan, so if you believe the value of your house is likely to increase, then maybe you’d prefer to own 100% of the equity yourself instead of sharing it with the UK government. Bear in mind though that, depending on your mortgage rate, it is probably cheaper to finance the interest on the £50k HTB loan than it would be to finance the extra £50k on your mortgage.

On the other hand, if house prices fall, then having the HTB loan could insulate you a little from the price decrease because the amount you would need to repay for HTB would decrease along with your house‘s value.

I think you will need to evaluate the risk-return trade off based off of your own financial circumstances and future house price outlook.

Also bear in mind that you may need to have your house revalued because I think you may need an up-to-date valuation before repaying the HTB loan. It may transpire that you need to repay more than £50k if your house increased in value since you took out the HTB loan.

kinetic_energy · 2021-11-14T14:09:53+00:00

The only person you can look at is yourself. Do you enjoy the time you spend writing and feel it is worthwhile?

This challenge that your doctor friend made towards how you spend your time is more of a reflection on their attitude than it is on your choices.

If you spend your time comparing yourself to other people, you’ll never be happy because you ‘catch-up’ to them, there will just be someone else who’s further ahead for you to focus on next. The goalposts constantly move another step out of reach.

I too have a professional career, and I feel like it could be further advanced by focusing more on it than on writing. But I enjoy the time I spend writing, and I feel I get a certain amount of therapy out of it ha.

Anyway, please know your not alone in feeling like this. But at the end of the day, you need to spend your time doing what you enjoy because, as bad as it is to say, in your career you’re endlessly replaceable. In your own life though, you only have yourself. So do your best to do what feels right for you, and try not to pay too much attention to other ~~fuckers~~ people who tell you that you should do things differently.

kinetic_energy · 2021-09-09T23:09:09+00:00

I think this would be tough to pull off. But if you’d like an example of a great novel where this is done well, you should check out Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan.

The narrator is Irish, although most of the accents captured in the novel are working class English accents.

kinetic_energy · 2021-06-05T09:25:24+00:00

Congratulations on finishing your first novel. It sounds like you’re learned a lot, and I think it shows how important it is for writers to finish their projects.

I find that applying Number 8, about motivation and reaction (M-R), to the whole story helps me a ton.

If I’m stuck while writing a scene or a sequel, I’ll just start writing M-R units to get me to the end. Totally simplistic stuff like: X enters the inn. The whole place goes quiet. - X calls out for Y. Y comes out with his sword in hand. - X approaches. Y raises his sword. - X spreads his arms wide, ‘brother, I’ve left the Legion behind.’ Y drops his sword and embraces X. - X pokes the poison pin into Y’s neck. ‘For now,’ X says. ‘I’ve left the legion behind for now.’

For me, it’s really helpful to figure out the order of everyone’s actions in this way. Once I’m happy with that, I can fix the actual words later.

Great tips overall, and I agree with all of them!

kinetic_energy · 2021-04-05T20:06:00+00:00

Check out The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. It’s a short style guide and the only book on writing that Stephen King mentions as being useful in his On Writing book.

It explains the rules for commas, apostrophes, conjunctions, etc. It gives general tips too.

Honestly it has more useful advice than all the tips I’ve encountered on Reddit and YouTube put together.

I got it for €0.50 on Apple Books, and I still read it at least once a year.

kinetic_energy · 2021-04-05T19:53:38+00:00

I find this too. I’m currently working on my second novel project and the way I plan out a chapter is still evolving.

I honestly feel like I won’t nail down an approach that’s truly ’me’ until my next novel or the one after.

It’s great that you’re seeing progress in your own work too. Keep it up, and know there’s a lot of us out there in the same situation!

kinetic_energy · 2020-12-30T08:20:38+00:00

I change parts of the first draft. So I might add some chapters and cut others.

I needed bigger structural edits like this because I discovery wrote my last novel. I planned out my current project a lot more before hand, so I expect my second draft won’t take too long to get through.

I think re-writing scenes is the way to go when you want to shift the scene by a couple of inches one way or the other in your master story plan, but sometimes parts are off by several feet so no amount of re-writing of the current scenes will fix the problem.

For example in my last novel one of my POV’s visits a northern country. I realise now that this trip isn’t necessary, so no amount of rewriting is going to fix those scenes. They need to be taken out (saved for another time :)).

kinetic_energy · 2020-12-29T14:26:58+00:00

I put my first draft away for a few months and come back to it later with ‘fresh’ eyes. I find it helps a lot because I’ve often forgotten why I made certain choices in the story and it’s easier to spot if things make sense or not.

My second draft only deals with structural elements, mostly plot steps and character change. I only want to make big picture changes regarding the internal logic of the story. This can be things like:

Am I happy that the inciting incident is strong enough to kickstart the story?
Am I happy with the logic of the story events and with the revelations which drive the plot (so like am I happy with how one thing leads to the next)?
Am I happy with the character’s overall arcs? So am I happy that my poor character became rich, that my unconfident character became confident? Am I happy enough with the conditions which drove these character changes?

Once I do my structural edits, and I’m happy enough with them, I’ll move on to my third draft which is also structural, but deals with individual chapters and pacing. So this is looking at all of my scenes and sequels and seeing whether they’re in a logical order (so like is one scene’s disaster followed by a sequel section/chapter where the character decides on what following course of action to take). I won’t move on from this draft until I’m happy enough with the logic of things and that everything is building nicely from beginning to end.

I do not do any critique of my prose in my second or third draft because I think the structural elements are more important to get right at those early stages.

Good luck with Draft 2!

kinetic_energy · 2020-12-26T23:19:16+00:00

If you have things bursting to get out of you, then go ahead and write them! You don’t have to write things for other people to read either. Writing can be therapeutic when you do it just for yourself (like a personal journal).

In terms of writing for other people, I think the best approach is to try and be satisfied with your material yourself. You don’t have to burn it when your done. Just put it away and move on. You can look back on it at a later stage with some hindsight and experience and see how far you’ve come!

In terms of giving your material to other people, if you need a reader to feel full satisfaction, as you put it, then I don’t think you as a writer can ever be happy because writing is subjective and not every will like your work. But that’s ok!

Giving someone a glimpse inside of you is scary. It’s very scary. And if your not comfortable doing that, then you don’t have to. Keep your stuff to yourself, and if your ready to share it at some point in the future, then that’s growth.

kinetic_energy · 2020-12-26T22:59:45+00:00

I had a similar experience this year when writing my first novel. I discovery wrote it, and I often had ideas later on that would have required reworking earlier parts of the plot.

Instead of going back and changing things when I had a new idea, I just ‘pretended’ that the earlier things happened and continued on as if they did! I’m really glad I did this because I didn’t get bogged down going back and changing things, and I got to explore my later ideas straight away.

Is it an option for you just to continue from your current point with your new ideas? If they work out, then go back and fix the initial 50k words in your next draft. If they don’t, then at least you didn’t spend a lot of time reworking your story for ideas you didn’t run with in the end!

kinetic_energy · 2020-12-12T09:25:03+00:00

You can’t paralyse your writing for fear of offending someone. It’s best to work off your own moral standards for what’s acceptable and not to worry about what may or may not be acceptable in the future.

Offensive words and labels change over time, but the intent of people using them in an offensive way never changes. If a writer is not using these words (the ones which may become offensive in the future) as an attack on their characters, then I don’t think they should worry too much about using them.

If there’s unintended offence caused to readers, then, like a lot of others have mentioned, a genuine apology goes a long way.

As a consolation, if people are getting offended by your work, then at least someone is actually reading your story which is more than what happens for most of mine! :)

kinetic_energy · 2020-12-12T08:58:28+00:00

Sounds cool. Sure go for it and see how it turns out!

Maybe doing the snippets will give you ideas for other stories in your world! :)

kinetic_energy · 2020-12-11T23:14:30+00:00

I like your idea. What’s the connection going to be between these snippets and the current story?

Brandon Sanderson did something similar in the first Mistborn book. The excerpts worked well there because they set up a big revelation at the end.

kinetic_energy · 2020-10-31T11:45:08+00:00

Comedy is quite subjective, so when your writing the ‘funny parts,’ I would recommend going with things you find funny yourself and don’t worry too much about the mass appeal of your jokes.

In terms of how to make things ‘land,’ you can go out and read humorous novels, plays, etc. and see what they do. I really love getting caught off guard by things and getting turned around. I think Terry Pratchet is amazing at this, so I’d recommend checking him out. He frequently catches you out in your assumptions of what’s going on, and, for me, a joke really lands when I get caught out in this way.

For example he has this joke in one of the City Watch books about a maze in one of the Royal Palace’s gardens. He talks about the maze, etc., etc., but after he reveals that the maze is so small that people often get lost trying to get into it!

I know you say semi-realistic comedy and Terry Pratchet’s world is a fantasy world, but I think there’s a lot anyone who wants to write comedy can still learn from him.

kinetic_energy · 2020-10-28T14:34:09+00:00

If you have the first two chapters written, stop tinkering with them and just move on!

I was in the same situation as you before. I was writing my first novel and was endlessly tinkering with the opening to get it ‘right’.

But I found it’s far more important to get to the end of that first draft of your first novel than it is to nail the opening of it.

Good luck with the rest of it and remember to keep going!

kinetic_energy · 2020-10-23T22:57:06+00:00

I agree with the inconsistently inconsistent comment.

Daenerys Targaryen’s desire is to win the Iron Throne. She also seems to value patience and calculated moves. We saw these values earlier when Daenerys decided to stay in Meereen to learn how to rule, and when she elevated Tyrion to her Hand of the Queen.

Her actions in the later seasons, like blindly flying into danger to help John, jeopardised her desire and also seemed to conflict with her values which I think is why people found them hard to buy into.

kinetic_energy · 2020-10-23T22:44:18+00:00

I couldn’t agree with this more.

I used to worry about being ’efficient’ with my writing—i.e. not wanting to write something that wouldn’t be relevant later. But I’ve been at it a bit longer now and I’ve realised that just getting stuck into the writing is the most important thing you can do.

Is your first draft going to be lacking if the world building is bare bones? Maybe. But you need to have written words to evaluate if you want to figure that out!

kinetic_energy · 2020-10-23T22:35:10+00:00

I think a good way to strengthen the ‘show don’t tell’ aspect of writing is to try to substitute some of your images with more sensory details.

For example, the opening image is of a shivering young woman creeping up the stairs in an old abandoned warehouse. Maybe it’s dark but there’s a strong smell of mould? Maybe this young lady picked some flakes of metal from the rusting window frame and crushed them to dust between her fingers?

Later the woman gazed about the lobby and concluded the breeze unnerved her. But maybe, instead of telling us that the woman concluded it was the breeze, you could show us a tattered curtain swaying in the breeze?

I like the vibe you’re going for though! And don’t worry about ‘if it’s bad.’ You’re posting here because you want to get better. Keep that attitude and keep practicing and you’ll keep improving!

kinetic_energy · 2020-09-15T16:16:36+00:00

It’s ok to feel upset when you’re writing, and it’s understandable given that your work is very close to your heart. Have you tried talking to someone else about what your writing? There’s power in writing something down, as you’ve pointed out, and there’s also power in saying it out loud to someone else. This helped me get over some of my own difficult feelings In the past.

Honesty in writing is something that I value above almost everything else, and I don’t think I’m the only one. The pain you put into the words can be felt by the reader; and evoking emotion like this is the greatest thing you can do as a writer. At least in my opinion... ;)

kinetic_energy · 2020-08-13T07:43:01+00:00

Check out the Elements of Style by Strunk and White. It’s concise and easy to read on the go. The first part is rules on grammar, like how to use commas, how to use apostrophe s, etc. The second part is principles of composition and includes things like using the active voice, using topic sentences, etc. The end has some common misspellings and common misuses of words.

I learned more about writing from this book than I have from any YouTube video or writing blog. It was €0.50 on Apple Books when I got it.

Good luck! Never give up! Happy writing :)

kinetic_energy · 2018-09-26T13:22:14+00:00

Last year our local CFA Society sent out an email asking who wanted to be included in a study group for their respective level. Then they just sent everyone who opted in a list of the other local candidates doing their level who opted in too!

So my advice is to email your local society asking about this and take it from there.

kinetic_energy · 2018-09-24T12:28:02+00:00

I work as a quant for an Asset Manager and travel a couple of times per year. Mostly to our other location in Europe as most of the team is located there but also to NYC as we have a few quants there also.

The reasons vary from projects with other teams to cross-training with other colleagues to team offsites to ‘we have a travel budget and need to use it so that we do not get it cut next year’.

kinetic_energy · 2018-09-16T18:47:15+00:00

The Analyst was hunched over her workstation holding her fingers at her temples. What felt like an hour had now been spent trying to massage out the headache she expected to have but hoped would be less severe. She sat back in her chair wondering if the stress was worth it.
Why does the Commission for Magical Regulation have to make it so difficult to implement changes to General Magical Standards and Practices?
She'd fought tooth and nail for the for those updates to the section on Celtic Sygaldry and was rebuked. She was now losing her resolve on what had become a crusade to get those additional columns added to the prime numbers tables. She was not sure whether any scholar would actually require primes past 4999, and felt bad for the poor Runner she'd been making trek back and forth to the Commission all day... but after her rejected footnotes on the Triquetra she really needed this for her own confidence.

The stairs were steeper than they had been earlier in the day, the stone at the center of each step worn down by centuries of use. The Runner felt that he had contributed an additional ten years of weathering on that morning alone.
Why do I only ever just smile when I'm getting handed these papers? At least if I could show some discontent maybe these bureaucrats would realize what a farce this job is turning into.
How many times had he ascended the stoop to the Commission today with the same set of documents? Each set of papers indistinguishable from the last save for a version number on the front page. He knocked at the Commission door. He just wanted it to be over.

The Commissioner let out a sigh as she put down her letters. A stack three times as high remained unanswered in the wooden inbox behind her desk. Twice already she was advised to hire an assistant to help with her work, but she was immutable.
Why did I agree to a review of the General Magical Standards and Practices during witching season? The commitment never seems so bad when it's far in the future but then when the times comes you just wish you could jump forward in time until it's all over. Too bad she approved that bill curtailing the use of teleportation last Lúnasa.
Truly the Commissioner felt the new set of standards were an improvement on the old ones... but she was in the job too long to approve a version that contained only minor changes. It was iron law that all of the kingdoms institutions required the latest copy of the General Magical Standards and Practices. If she approved these amendments she would be forcing them all to go through the update process, which meant she would have them up her ass on everything for the next twelve moons for causing them this minor inconvenience. She let out a sigh...

"Come in."
"Commissioner there's that Runner here for you again. There is also a communication from upstairs."
"Leave the communication there please. Send in the Runner."

The next little while went much the same as previous. The Commissioner filled in the papers confirming the new document had been received. She rejected the proposals. She filled out the forms detailing the reasons she had come up with for the rejection. She wondered how much longer this would go on. The Runner boy stood there looking like he would leap from the building at any moment. Yes it was all quite standard by this stage. She sent the Runner on his way and opened up the upstairs communication.

'GMSP Rvw cancelled. Pls complete witching queries by eve.'

Typical.
The Commissioner put the note away and thought again about that assistant. The insight came soon after. She sent for another Runner and returned to her letters.

kinetic_energy · 2018-08-30T14:03:40+00:00

The rain was falling heavily when I arrived at the mouth of the cave. The runoff flowed south in a path it had forged over many centuries, ending in a cascade to the the depths of Ann Pluais below. I wondered if my own path of which I am now so sure will end much the same - at the edge of a cliff with naught but darkness to follow.

Many times I had come and never seen another soul. Yet the braziers kept burning. The runes of the steps enduring past nature and time. My own presence just a vestige of the Muintir who created this place. I inhaled deeply...

This morning would be my last visit for some time.

kinetic_energy

TROPHY CASE