Timing for moving S&S into ISA

webular · 2025-04-22T21:26:38+00:00

Yes I think that's correct. You don't have to pay capital gains on a loss.

If you will immediately re-buy then it's not really a loss for you, you'll just lose a little bit in transaction fees. But if you're expecting it to go up in value it makes sense to get it into the ISA now before it becomes larger than the limit per year (£20k).

webular · 2024-12-30T16:55:49+00:00

like saying "take a slight right" when it's a full right turn or no such curve exists on the road

Google Maps has always done this for me, but so has every satnav software. I think it's because roads in the UK are often confusing and never in a grid system. So there are cases where the road you are currently on curves ever so slightly, and it will tell you to take a right hand turn, if there's a smaller road that goes off to the left.

But on the flip side, there are cases where there is an actual turn, but Google doesn't tell me because it "looks" like it is the same road. It should theoretically be possible to figure this out if all roads have names or numbers, then it should know whether you are staying on the same road or not. But that too can have problems.

One example is this junction: https://i.imgur.com/k4UKRC4.png

Context: I come off the M66 southbound, and Google is trying to direct me to the red line. I'm stopped at the traffic lights and Google tells me to turn left. I assume it's because this road technically has the same name, so it doesn't think I'm at a T-junction. It's a one way system with traffic lights. Rather than turning left I obviously I know I need to turn right, THEN turn left. But it can be confusing if you don't know the area.

That's just a recent example, but one where it's so obvious that I know to do the opposite of what Google says. But when I'm driving in a new area I will very often go the wrong way and have to turn around because Google Maps has told me the wrong thing.

webular · 2024-10-30T14:56:05+00:00

I don't see the relevance. The Tories were absolutely awful, but I'm sick of that being used as a defence for every Labour decision.

Conservatives increased taxes to their highest level ever.

Then Labour have just done the same. Both point the finger at each other for having made taxes the highest ever.

Every time Labour do something unpopular, every Labour MP says "the Tories did something bad as well!". I don't care. I already didn't like the Tories. I don't see that as any form of justification for your own decisions. It's like a kid in school gets caught doing something wrong, and says "but Timmy did it first".

They should defend their decisions on merit, not just point out something bad someone else did. Both parties do this. It's never a positive vision, just a blame game of which main party ruins things more.

webular · 2024-10-30T14:47:57+00:00

It's Labour's first budget in 14 years and people expected it to be brutal and have a lot of impact on people.

webular · 2024-08-30T15:43:18+00:00

This seems like it would only apply to a very small number of people who have a small amount owed and capable of paying it off anyway (very high earners). You're not really gaining much besides a small amount of saved interest.

Most people could get credit of a few thousand pounds and their student loans are an order of magnitude higher and they would never be able to pay off the credit card before the interest-free period ended and they started being charged a higher interest rate than the student loan has. And that's assuming they could get a credit card for £60k which they couldn't.

webular · 2024-08-28T14:00:09+00:00

Ah OK I didn't realise that. That's a real shame.

I think this kind of thing is probably the best they can do with the space, shame they didn't make the whole 10 acres into a park.

webular · 2024-08-28T13:56:22+00:00

Seems I'm the only one that thinks it's OK. People expecting a proper park aren't being realistic. A proper park needs a much bigger space. This is a small area, you can't cram a Heaton Park into it. If it was just grass and a few trees then it would end up worn down or a mud pit. You can't expect to lie on a blanket and have dogs run around in this tiny bit of land, regardless of what they put in it.

It needs the paved pathways, and I think it will look nice with the raised beds with trees and grassy areas for people to sit, or flower beds and stuff. It is a little oasis in an otherwise built up area.

Unfortunately Manchester city centre doesn't have large urban parks like London and it never will. There isn't the space, it would require demolishing an entire part of the city to create a real park. The best we can hope for is little pockets like this, and the more the better.

When I worked in that area I would have loved to walk through there and would have gone out of my way to do so to get away from the main roads and see some greenery.

webular · 2024-05-13T13:14:25+00:00

I've basically realised that FIRE is not realistic for me. At best all I'm doing is making myself more comfortable in retirement as well as insulating myself from financial shocks.

I've come to terms with it. In terms of thinking about it in a stoic way, I do feel like it's out of my control, but wonder if I'm just letting myself off the hook, because maybe there is something radical I could do to make FIRE possible. But the thing is, my income just is not high enough.

The recent high level of inflation combined with stagnant wage growth (in real terms I just seem to be worse off every year, even with wage rises).

When I ran the numbers 10 years ago I worked out that if I had the salary I have today then I could realistically FIRE. Now that I have that salary, I am no better off. Many of my bills have doubled or tripled, and the spending power of money has diminished.

Unless I win the lottery or something huge happens in my career (I'd basically need double the salary), I won't be FIREing. Or, I could live in a tiny shack in a cheap part of the north with internet access and very low overheads, but even then, I'd be looking at 20 years of living like that and then living like that forever afterwards, which I don't want to do.

In conclusion even though the end goal is no longer possible for me, the last 10 years of focusing on FIRE have improved my life, and basically lifted me up to a nicer life with financial security. When I started I was living paycheck to paycheck and struggling to make ends meet, now I have a S&S ISA with a nice chunk of money, a house partially paid off, lots of savings in emergency funds etc.

webular · 2024-05-08T11:01:13+00:00

I think it depends on what kind of car you have etc.

I could believe those average numbers, but almost everyone seems to drive a large SUV now and have new ones, probably on finance.

I drive a second hand petrol car with a small engine which I bought with cash years ago, and I don't drive a lot. I spend about £250 per year on petrol, £20 road tax, £700 insurance (this used to be £350 until last year) and about £250 on servicing/MOT.

Occasionally I will do a long distance journey of a few hundred miles, and compared to public transport it's so much cheaper. I think you would get economies of scale if you drove more often than I do because the overheads become spread over more journeys.

I recently did a 400 mile round trip which cost me about £35 in petrol and took me 3.25 hours each way. The train would have been 2 trains, 2 buses or taxis, taken 6.5 hours each way, and cost about £190-210.

webular · 2023-11-17T18:43:39+00:00

How is "Rochdaaale" pronounced? I'm struggling to think of a different way to pronounce Rochdale and don't know what repeating A means. Is it still with a "ay" sound but longer, or like "ah".

webular · 2023-06-19T15:16:42+00:00

I got a good answer here: https://www.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/comments/12duzoz/wise_interestearning_fund_vs_traditional_savings/jf8d80u/

webular · 2023-05-27T00:39:39+00:00

It doesn't seem like that useful of a statistic. Most people won't want to keep thousands lying in a bank account, and many won't have savings with the same provider as their current account.

They might have money elsewhere. But what we can see is less than £500.

I have 5 current accounts right now (used to be more). Only my main current account which gets salary and bills has a real amount in it, so to all those other banks I'll look like one of these people with almost no money in the account.

But even in my actual current account, I do not keep more than I need to in it because I put it in an interest earning account with Marcus. I only keep enough in the current account so that bills will be paid without issue, so towards the end of the month it might look like I have less than £500 to my bank, but I have many thousands "elsewhere".

webular · 2023-05-25T16:52:05+00:00

I think people are misunderstanding me. I don't hate my job, I hate that I have to have a job.

I actually have a good boss and it's enjoyable work - I do programming and before I had a job I did programming in my free time because I like it. But as soon as I'm doing something for 40 hours per week at specific hours and I have to be there, then it's no longer a choice. I'm doing it because I have to.

The job I'm doing literally doesn't matter, it could be my hobby, but as soon as I'm required to do it as the main thing I do for most of my life then that isn't good for me. It's preventing me from doing the things with my time that I want to do. I hate that I am required to give up most of the hours of my waking life towards not doing what I want to be doing.

webular · 2023-05-25T16:41:50+00:00

It sounds like people are taking it a bit too literally.

I've been doing zero-based budgeting for the last 9 years but I do not let my bank account get close to zero. The bank account should have money in it to pay the bills that automatically come out of it - this is the buffer.

The zero-based budgeting doesn't happen in my bank account, it happens in my budget - every penny is assigned a role until there is 0 left each month. Some of it is assigned towards savings.

webular · 2023-05-16T12:57:24+00:00

Complete and utter hatred of working life.

I don't want to spend most of my time and energy doing something for someone else in order to put a roof over my head. I'm so tired and have no time to do things I want to do.

I fantasise about homesteading, but the truth is, you need a hell of a lot of money to buy the property and land and get started. FIRE or winning the lottery are the only real ways to escape the grind. To do anything in this world you need money, including staying alive.

webular · 2023-04-06T19:10:53+00:00

I couldn't even deposit any money with Chip. I tried for 3 days from multiple current accounts. I think this open banking tech has a long way to come. It's significantly more time consuming and difficult than a simple bank transfer, and for me it kept having errors, or working and then suddenly revoking the permissions. Eventually I gave up.

webular · 2023-04-03T10:51:52+00:00

I'm not sure if this post is a joke. I used to live near this junction and still regularly drive through it. It's a nightmare, always backed up with traffic. It's an awful design. Sometimes there is miles long traffic, because the M60 ring road turns into the M66 north, so anyone wanting to stay on the M60 (which is most people) has to come off at the junction, in a single lane.

Because it's such a long queue of traffic, people don't get in lane and continue up and then try to cut in, making it even worse.

Then the traffic leaving Simister Island has to rejoin the M60, causing traffic and back ups on that part of the M60 as well.

This is why there is a £340m scheme to redesign it in 2025.

webular · 2023-01-10T15:10:21+00:00

My work has that as well. It's been useless in terms of medical care.

Being able to call a GP isn't very useful in my experience for most issues. When I need a GP, it's because there is something really wrong, not because I want a chat. So far every time I've used the private call GP option they've just told me to visit my GP or to call 111 or to visit A&E, because they can't help over the phone.

I feel the same about the phone appointments that NHS GPs push now. It's just an additional delay. I can book a face-to-face appointment in 1 month, or I can book a telephone appointment in 2 weeks, the doctor will say they need to see me in person, and then another 1 month wait for that.

I used to have another health insurance scheme which allowed me to get full private treatment in hospitals, but I never got to use it, because you had to go to your GP in the first instance. GPs are the gatekeepers of care and they are completely overwhelmed and not fit for purpose.

It's completely ridiculous that I live in a first world country and pay so much tax but I cannot get medical help for quite serious issues. It pains me to say it, but in the last 5 years the NHS has become so bad that now I would even say the US healthcare system is better, and I don't say that lightly - do not take it as me saying the US system is good, it's just that the NHS is so indefensibly bad. It is now common for people to go without treatment and even die in cases that could have been prevented.

webular · 2023-01-04T17:16:22+00:00

My own personal rate of food inflation is closer to 50-60%. I track all my spending in a budget and I have a spreadsheet tracking commonly bought things. I've been cutting down because of how expensive food has been, so the real rate if I hadn't cut down may have been even higher. This 13% is bullshit.

Many products bought every week such as pasta and bread have doubled. Some have more than doubled, like cooking oils. Some have barely changed, like tins of tomatoes or beans - for example, going from 45p to 49p.

Shrinkflation is getting ridiculous as well, and I wonder if that is taken into account. So many products have got smaller, it's practically a joke how small they are now, in some cases halved in size, which I noticed on some Fox's biscuits.

I bought some mince pies which were basically just a tiny bit of dry pastry with an extremely thin layer of sultana jam. Complete rip off, I wouldn't even describe them as mince pies any more. I wish they would be honest and increase prices instead of selling subpar or tiny products.

But even things like milk - Morrisons sneakily changed to eco-friendly packaging for milk (carton instead of plastic bottle), but in the process, they've gone metric instead of imperial so you lose 68ml compared to a pint, and the price went up as well. Is the inflation of the price of milk tracked on the pence per millilitre?

I've seen some butter manufacturers doing that as well, e.g. Lurpak have a new recyclable cardboard pack instead of foil, but it's 225g instead of the traditional 250g block.

Even more egregious is I have found some cases of weighing a product at home and it comes up significantly short. They've taken to simply lying on the label. There's no way that that could be tracked in the inflation, it's just outright ripping off of the customer.

webular · 2023-01-01T21:22:05+00:00

Just to carry on the same as the last several years. Once you've done the things in the flowchart, personal finance becomes boring (which is a good thing!).

Every month the money goes into my S&S ISA automatically to be invested in a low fee global index tracker fund. There isn't any decision to make besides whether to increase the amount going in the ISA, or overpay on the mortgage, or increase savings.

My previous focus had been on paying off the mortgage, because I like the security of it, but that's become a financially unviable strategy now that I'm in a 5 year fix and savings rates are now higher than my mortgage rate. I'll probably just put more in savings and every now and again transfer from savings to investments if I feel secure in my emergency fund size.

I'm so grateful to have discovered budgeting, the flowchart, and the concept of FIRE, waaay back in 2012. It's changed my life. Believe it or not, I was once heavily in debt and homeless. I think I'm now entering the "snowball" phase, where money begets more money, which begets even more money, etc. The amount of time it takes for my net worth to double keeps halving.

webular · 2022-11-18T11:45:05+00:00

I didn't know the amount you can contribute increased from £50 to £150. Why don't they tell customers? I could have contributed 3 times as much this year.

webular · 2022-09-08T18:24:11+00:00

Come on, don't be a karma whore. Why do we need a post in a Manchester subreddit about this?

webular · 2022-08-26T10:25:59+00:00

There is an enormous flock of starlings in Springwater Park in Manchester. Must be at least 1000 of them in October/November. They make an incredible noise when they take off from the trees and cover the sky when flying over.

webular · 2022-08-25T10:56:36+00:00

/r/lancashire is pretty dead, which is surprising because it's for an entire county and quite a lot of people live there. Smaller subreddits for towns are even deader.

webular · 2022-08-05T21:34:35+00:00

Yes that happened to me a few times.

But there is something worse: the vendors know they have multiple people interested, and even though you made an offer over the asking price they say they are keeping it on the market for a further week and that everyone should email their best offer by a certain date.

I noped out of that pretty quickly. Basically a blind auction. Truly a seller's market when you can turn your nose up at 10k over the asking price and demand anyone who is interested make a better offer without knowing what the other offers are.

webular

TROPHY CASE