The Lemon Fool

Best financial decision: Acquiring the savings habit at an early age. Without the discipline to avoid spending everything that you earn, it becomes difficult to ever have sufficient money to invest.

Best investment decision: Going heavily into small oil explorers in the early 2000s, a time when the sector was poised to take off (sadly never to be repeated, I suspect)

Tracking: Excel for listing and valuing all assets.

Microsoft Money for recording all payments and receipts into bank and brokerage accounts.

Source of funds-Taking time in my late teens early 20s to pick up a couple of bits of paper from a couple of universities.

Drain on funds- Having two children in my thirties and my wife subsequently retiring as a stockmarket quant analyst.

I once calculated if we had both continued in our careers with no children we would have been mortgage free before 40 and retired before 50, still, kids are even now pretty good fun (albeit I now seem to buy far more wine than I get to drink)

Starting pensions as early as you can and starting home ownership as early as can. Slow and steady has been my way. Myself and others over 50 lucky with house prices, would say more difficult now, unless get help from bank of mum and dad.

Adamski wrote: Myself and others over 50 lucky with house prices, would say more difficult now, unless get help from bank of mum and dad.

Im over 50 and totally disagree. My mortgage payments were made at around 11%......I built a house with an overdraft at 15%......we didn't have access to the cheap loans available today or the bank of mum & dad.

richlist wrote:

Adamski wrote: Myself and others over 50 lucky with house prices, would say more difficult now, unless get help from bank of mum and dad.

Im over 50 and totally disagree. My mortgage payments were made at around 11%......I built a house with an overdraft at 15%......we didn't have access to the cheap loans available today or the bank of mum & dad.

I bought my first house then also (1971). But the difference is that then high inflation rapidly brought down the real value of the mortgage and the cost as a % of salary. The 11% or 15% interest cost was in reality paying back capital because that interest rate reflected inflation. Since inflation was reduced to 2% or 3% the real burden of the mortgage hits the buyer over most of their working life.

However it looks like higher inflation is coming back! Plus ca change?

scrumpyjack wrote:

richlist wrote:

Adamski wrote: Myself and others over 50 lucky with house prices, would say more difficult now, unless get help from bank of mum and dad.

Im over 50 and totally disagree. My mortgage payments were made at around 11%......I built a house with an overdraft at 15%......we didn't have access to the cheap loans available today or the bank of mum & dad.

I bought my first house then also (1971). But the difference is that then high inflation rapidly brought down the real value of the mortgage and the cost as a % of salary. The 11% or 15% interest cost was in reality paying back capital because that interest rate reflected inflation. Since inflation was reduced to 2% or 3% the real burden of the mortgage hits the buyer over most of their working life.

However it looks like higher inflation is coming back! Plus ca change?

Real interest rates are negative at the moment. That's not a normal state of affairs. All else the same mortgage affordability is better with low, or negative, interest rates. Those same extremely low rates, however, have meant asset pricing has been driven significantly higher. Easier to service the loan, but more expensive to buy the house.

Saving money at the start of the month (paying myself first), and in answer to your second question - I use an Excel workbook I created four months ago (no prior knowledge of excel, I just watched this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRtHNqa ... rainingHub and worked through it) to create my own spreadsheet - which you can see a screenshot of here https://i.imgur.com/gUcaHFj.jpg

(i) Saving enough for a deposit on a flat by taking a second job.

(ii) Assiduously checking my assets once every year or every decade.

Hello Katie,
I left school in a recession with very few qualifications but I manged to retire at age 56.
Luckily I managed to secure an (old school type) engineering apprenticeship. It’s been a fantastic safety net for me.

Some of my thoughts:

Try and find a job that you enjoy, and in a useful profession where you will always be needed. If the money isn’t great then try and maximise it by working in an industry that pays above the average rate in pay or/and benefits (such as Pharmaceuticals) etc.

Take advantage of company pension schemes, salary sacrifice, share save schemes etc.

Save into an ISA (every month) and don’t be tempted to ever withdraw money. Have a separate emergency fund for that.

Buy a house when you are young. (Overpay the mortgage if possible).

Try not to buy liabilities and vanity items.

For investing in ISA’s etc. I think that Lars Kroijer talks a lot of sense. He has some videos on YouTube.

Regarding keeping track of net worth, I just do a simple word doc every year on Dec 31st that adds up all my investments + pension + house etc and then subtract all my liabilities, thus leaving me with a figure. This is saved into a folder just so I can look back to see my progress.

Regards, D.L.

Old thread, but still relevant I suppose.

Two main ones, really.

1. Left University in mid 1980's and bought my first property (a flat) as soon as I could (within a year). Rode the property boom by trading up aggressively twice, the second trade was mortgage-free (see below). On paper that looks good as I'm in the South East, although obviously the value is in the bricks, not my bank. My kids will thank me one day.

2. In 1997 I had the chance to buy out my part of the business I was employed at. Business had done well, they were worried about Y2K (IT Company) and this new-fangled Internet thingy destroying the Business model (Travel IT where Booking software was Bespoke. Now it's Web Servers & Browsers).

Whilst the Business was killed off by the Internet, it took longer than thought and I did well upgrading everything to be Y2K compliant during that period. Allowed me to buy my current property mortgage free.


So, a lot of luck, Y2K was a one-off event that I rode hard, however there was also a lot of "Who dares, wins Rodney" too as if I hadn't lumbered myself with a mortgage so early on and if I hadn't taken the plunge setting up my own Business it would look so different. It helped that I was young, free and single at the time, so what was the worst that could happen?


Managing my finances? Simple spreadsheet tracking my Annualised personal Balance Sheet and P&L as though I was a Business (just a bit nerdy really to see how my net wealth has changed over the years, no other use) and Airtable (which is like a souped-up spreadsheet) to manage my share portfolios.