Good reads from around the Web.
A bit late with the links today. Blame BT broadband. It fell over in my house and made it impossible to load about nine out of ten of the websites I tried.
Google, of course, remained accessible throughout. It’s tough as a cockroach.
I’m sure we’ll be Google-ing cures for radiation burns and tasty recipes for three-eyed rats come the apocalypse.
“I am not obliged to do any more. No man is obliged to do as much as he can do. A man is to have part of his life to himself.”
Samuel Johnson
I assume the famous 18th Century Londoner and dictionary pioneer Samuel Johnson would include women if he were still issuing pithy soundbites today.
Because despite the headlines about high youth unemployment – or perhaps the cause of some of them – the bigger problem is that British men and women alike are working too many hours.
Since the recession pulled down productivity, we’re producing 21% less output per hour of wage slavery than the average G7 nation.
Real incomes have stagnated, too. The 1% are at least getting richer off of all this effort – and you can if you run your life like a capitalist – but many in the middle are in hock to a treadmill they bought on a payday loan from a late night TV shopping channel to keep up with their next door neighbour’s rat rotastak
Sorry, I think I got up on the wrong side of bed.
As a nation we’ve worked hard for decades to get ever more deeply into debt.
And what for?
Even the simplest middle-class aspiration – a humble mortgage – looks all but beyond the next generation.
In the South East we’ve built too few homes, allowed too few to buy the ones we have built, and bid up house prices to a level where the Bank of England governor has just stepped in to stop first-time buyers in London (at least those who don’t work in the City or have a hotline to the Bank of Mum and Dad) from getting a house in the traditional pre-financial crisis way – enough optimistic bragging about their income to make an oligarch blush, if not outright fraud.
But maybe it’s all academic, anyway. Who can afford to buy a house after they’ve paid for university?
Enough!
Instead of slaving away for 45 50 years and keeping your spirits going with stuff you don’t need, can’t afford, can’t digest, or that plays havoc with your marriage and/or your nasal passages, why not slave away (or work smarter) for merely 20-25 years, spend less, invest the spare, and retire early to a life of leisure, global exploration, study, money-making on your own terms, or a dream career that pays peanuts?
Or heck, even dossing at Ladbrokes as the only mug punter in credit if that’s what floats your boat.
The point is to find your own terms, as best you can, and live them. We live in a world full of money, wealth and opportunity, but it’s easy to squander the lot.
“Most people are too busy earning a living to make any money,” someone once said.
History doesn’t record if he said it hunched over a desk he didn’t want to be at aged 65.
Then again, perhaps the words weren’t bitter, but triumphant. Shouted into the wind from a chilly, gorgeous and empty British beach where he was walking his dog during rush hour, because he runs his business from home.
The title of today’s post was nicked from the British poet Simon Armitage’s wonderful Selected Poems
The following two stanzas from his poem It Ain’t What You Do It’s What It Does To You sums it up for me – and I am partly writing this rant because I’ve drifted myself, and I need to get back on track.
I have not padded through the Taj Mahal
barefoot, listening to the space between
each footfall picking up and putting down
its print against the marble floor. But Iskimmed flat stones across Black Moss on a day
so still I could hear each set of ripples
as they crossed. I felt each stones’ inertia
spend itself against the water; then sink.
You’re a long time dead.
There’s a gap. A gap that exists between the last page of the investing advice books
Where are these fabled funds that lead to passive investing nirvana? How do you pull the trigger? “Just tell me how to buy index trackers, would you?!”
Your wish, dear reader…
I’m assuming you’ve done your research, decided upon your goals, your asset allocation, and the dollop of regular contributions you’ll make towards your masterplan. You’ve opted for the DIY investing route, and the only thing left to do is execute.
I’m also assuming you’re a passive investor who wants to stick primarily to simple index funds and Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). Because that’s my tribe.
Buy online. Human contact only ratchets up expense and could leave you in the hands of some slippery smoothie with a script – a script designed to fatten their bank account, rather than yours.
Choose the cheapest online broker (also known as a platform) you can find. Our broker comparison table will help you pick out the right one.
Don’t go directly to the fund provider, don’t use a full-service, ‘advice’ dispensing stockbroker, and definitely don’t walk into your local bank with a bag full of used tenners.
The best brokers offer the DIY investor:
There’s little practical difference between the various offerings. Hargreaves Lansdown are the one broker that most people have actually heard of but they’re expensive. They score well for customer service but you will pay a premium for it.
I’ve personally experienced four cheaper brokers and never had a problem with the customer service.
The most important thing to be aware of is you’re choosing an execution-only service. You pay low fees because you’re not getting any advice.
Also, your first choice investing platform may not carry the products you want. Always check using the site’s search tool before signing up and transferring money.
One of the most important decisions you will make is whether you will pay your broker a flat-rate or percentage fee for their services.
A percentage fee is best for small investors who are likely to have less than £30,000 in assets because that will work out cheaper than the most competitive flat rate charge on the market.
A flat-rate fee is cheapest for investors who are heading north of that £30,000 fee mark. At this point percentage fees slice off more from your assets than the keenest flat rates out there.
You can calculate your own situation here. Most brokers have chosen either a flat rate or percentage fee charging scheme and our broker comparison table has split them along those lines.
Take it steady,
The Accumulator
Good reads from around the Web.
Blogger Ermine has been retired for nearly two years now. Many Monevator readers are familiar with his dispatches from the other side of the 9-to-5, which he recapped this week in a monster anniversary post sharing what he’s learned.
The following section stood out for me — because instead of the stereotypical vision of an early retiree quipping “so long, suckers!” before hitting the golf course, it makes Ermine sound like a rescued battery chicken relearning how to peck about in the grass:
“I retired early because I was stressed and became increasingly out of sync with the way work was being run.
I am still recovering from that.
It is only recently that I can reliably hear what is good in music, and there’s still a while to go before I will have recovered this to what I once had
In a myriad of small ways I am still reminded that I pushed my luck flying into the storm for three years, and indeed to carry on after I had been off sick.”
Thank goodness he got out! As I’ve said before, don’t kill yourself for your job. It’s not worth it.
Escape if you need to and do something different. If it’s less lucrative, cut your cloth. Anyone who has found and can read this website has many options.
My solution long ago was to escape office life — with all its comforting security and its progression — to become a freelancer and mini-entrepreneur. To my kind of spirit, the security and progression of a typical job feels like systematically moving through the prison system towards parole.
We’re all different. I know a few people who love their jobs, and more who love their careers.
