One pay rise, three different futures
A raise can land three different ways depending on where it goes. Take home, pension, or ISA. Running the three futures side by side.
Blog
UK personal finance, the long way round — ISAs, pensions, tax, and the trade-offs nobody explains.
Your partner's financial situation has tax implications on yours
Child benefit, allowances, and joint planning depend on both incomes. Modelling your finances without your partner's leaves money on the table.
Mortgage overpayment or invest? The honest comparison
Overpaying the mortgage feels responsible. Investing the same money feels greedy. The numbers don't care about feelings. Run them.
When your ISA allowance runs out, the GIA starts to bite
The £20k ISA allowance is generous until you want to save more. What happens in a general investment account, and how CGT lands.
The state pension is at 68. You would rather leave at 55
The state pension age keeps drifting. You don't have to wait for it. Here is how to model a finish line that sits a decade earlier.
The what-if question you should actually be asking
Can I afford it is the wrong question. The useful one is what saying yes to this thing does to your net worth in twenty years.
Joint finances without the awkward spreadsheet share
Couples' money is two people, two salaries, two pensions, and a shared plan. Modelling it in a shared spreadsheet usually ends in a row.
Bonus season: where the smart money actually goes
A UK bonus lands and most of it evaporates into tax. The interesting question is what the remaining chunk does over the next twenty years.
Salary sacrifice is good. Is it better than an ISA?
Salary sacrifice gets the tax relief and the NI saving. An ISA gets flexibility and tax-free withdrawal. Which one wins, and when.
Why your spreadsheet is lying about your retirement
Your retirement spreadsheet can't model UK tax bands, partner income, or what-if scenarios. That is why the numbers feel off.
Can you actually retire early in the UK?
UK early retirement has a structural problem. You can't touch your pension until 57. Here is how the ISA bridge fixes the gap.
What a career break actually costs (hint, it isn't the salary)
A year off work doesn't cost you one year of salary. It costs the pension contributions you skipped and the decades of growth on top.
ISA or pension? The UK optimiser's oldest argument, settled properly
ISA for flexibility, pension for tax relief. The honest answer is both, in the right order. A walkthrough of how the split actually works.
The £100k tax trap, and the one lever that gets you out
Earning over £100k in the UK costs you 60p in the pound thanks to the personal allowance taper. Here is how to model your way back under it.
Why A Few Quid exists, and what it does for UK money
Most UK adults guess at their financial future, miss obvious tax breaks, and rely on US-centric advice. A Few Quid is a UK-first answer built on real projections.