What caught my eye this week.
I was delighted this week when we were named Best Investing Blog in the 2021 SHOMO Awards.
These awards have been running since 2015 and we were chosen by a panel of money bloggers as well as journalists and PRs. A nice way to start the year!
But why aspire to hang one award on the wall of the guest bathroom when you might pick up another?
And to that end, we’ve been nominated (thank you, whoever did the deed) for Online Financial Influencer of the Year in the 2022 British Bank Awards.
These fairly prestigious gongs are chosen by the public. So please do feel free to have your say – for us, or for our sworn enemies – via the official voting survey. All entries go into a draw with a £1,000 cash prize.
Anyway this is Weekend Reading, so I thought I’d celebrate our SHOMO win by spreading the joy and linking to recent posts from runners-up in our category:
- 10 steps to becoming debt-free while loving life – The Money Principle
- How to get a free flight upgrade – The Financial Wilderness
- Why do bankers call things ‘sexy’? – Hannah Duncan
- Bitcoin first – The 7 Circles
- Avoid impulsive buying and save money – NJURLIFE
Hope you enjoy them. But not by so much that you think there was a miscarriage of justice.
Good stuff
Finally and sticking with voting, the results of our best FIRE film poll are in.
The winner by a clear majority was that tale of 1970s utopian suburbia, The Good Life. A respectable second place was claimed by It’s A Wonderful Life, with the Playing with FIRE documentary coming in third.
Thanks to everyone who cast their lot.
Judging by the comments and emails, it’s not clear to me whether The Good Life won on account of its financial messaging merits, or on the back of several dozen rekindled flames for Felicity Kendal.
Here’s a bonus clip from the winner then to please all parties!
Have a great weekend.
From Monevator
The best FIRE films – Monevator
Will you spend less as you age? The case against – Monevator
From the archive-ator: The first law of personal finance is to spend less than you earn – Monevator
News
Note: Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view you can click to read the piece without being a paid subscriber. Try privacy/incognito mode to avoid cookies. Consider subscribing if you read them a lot!1
UK economy grew at whopping 7.5% in 2021, but off a very low base – BBC
Thousands more to be auto-enrolled into a pension as ‘earnings trigger’ frozen at £10,000… – ThisIsMoney
…and there are calls for the trigger to be abandoned [Search result] – FT
US inflation comes in hot, with CPI up 7.5% compared to a year ago – CNBC
Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion – BBC
Economists have solved the great toilet debate – Klement on Investing
Products and services
TransUnion to include ‘buy now, pay later’ debts on credit reports – Which
How are UK supermarkets trying to limit price rises? – Guardian
Free money promo Join the 400,000+ people saving with a FSCS-protected Chip account, and we’ll both get a free £10. Download the Chip app here then head to the ‘Promos & Referrals’ section on your profile and enter the code CHIP-EBZ267
Where can you get the highest rates on your savings? – Which
Homes for stargazing, in pictures – Guardian
Comment and opinion
Should you die with zero? – Rad Reads
The media and the markets – M.Y.F.E.
The hidden leverage of stock-based compensation [Search result] – FT
Making a comeback – Humble Dollar
Lies, damn lies, and stock market valuation – Valididea
Why most money floods into assets at inopportune times – Young Money
Dolmens and doldrums – Simple Living in Somerset
Wall Street ethics: the good, the bad, and the ugly – Morningstar
All things property, with Rob Dix [Video] – Foxy Monkey
Measuring inflation mini-special
Is inflation worse for the poorest households? We don’t know – Tim Harford
Covid-era kinks will screw with the inflation data – Joachim Klement
Crypt o’ crypto
BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute – Guardian
“Hackers helped me find my lost Bitcoin fortune” – BBC
Not everyone is ready to ‘play the sap’ for crypto – Institutional Investor
Ownership and the American Dream – Not Boring
Naughty corner: Active antics
Suffering: the ultimate investing superpower – Compound Advisers
Risk = danger + opportunity! – Musings on Markets
Addition by subtraction – Novel Investor
David Tepper: the king of bouncing back – Neckar’s Insecurity Analysis
Covid corner
The ending of the last restrictions in the UK: “brave or stupid” – BBC
Why are so many Americans still dying of Covid? – NY Mag
Kindle book bargains
The World for Sale by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy – £0.99 on Kindle
The Joy for Work by Bruce Daisley – £0.99 on Kindle
What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence by Stephen A. Schwarzman – £0.99 on Kindle
The Perils of Perception by Bobby Duffy – £0.99 on Kindle
Environmental factors
Architects call for the mass insulation of interwar homes – Guardian
UK’s North East coast devastated by mysterious mass die-off – Guardian
The engineers battling to stop global warming ruining roads – BBC
What is sustainable? – The Belle Curve
100% of the snow at the Winter Olympics 2022 is artificial – TIME
Off our beat
Would a four-day workweek work for your company? – Protocol
After the fact – Morgan Housel
Location, Location, Location: realistic edition [Video] – via Twitter
How thinking about your future self can build a happier you – BBC
The best and coolest decade: nostalgia for the 1990s – Spectator
Brexit: what have we learned so far? [Video] – Gresham College
Interesting outline of North America’s ‘new industrialism’ – Noahopinion
And finally…
“Advice is one thing that is freely given away, but watch that you only take what is worth having.”
– George Clason, The Richest Man In Babylon
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Congratulations @TI & TA
Very much well deserved,
Lee.
It hasn’t surprised me much. I’ve always known Monevator was the best. Congratulations to the whole team! Well deserved indeed.
@TI
The Spectator link is to one of your own articles (Spend Less as You Age).
Agree with Tom-Baker Dr Who. Even as contender, it did not surprise me much. Monevator is a library for learning personal finance and investing, and my blog is just one of the books in the library. Thank you so much for linking my post in your blog:)
> on the back of several dozen rekindled flames for Felicity Kendal.
🙂 Maybe…
Well done on the awards!
Well done and well deserved
Makes my Saturday morning!
Keep up the good work
xxd09
@all — Thanks for the kind words…
@New Investor — … and thanks for the link spot. Fixed now!
One gloomy thing I don’t see covered here yet is holy hand grenade that is the Bank of Englands QE bond sales.
Two items of coverage from Bloomberg:
A £3bn loss at the Bank of England will soon be Rishi’s Sunak’s Problem –
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-10/the-boe-s-4-billion-loss-that-puts-qe-on-road-to-fiscal-burden
Bank of England Begins Talks With Debt Office on Sales of QE Bonds –
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-11/boe-said-to-begin-talks-with-debt-office-on-sales-of-qe-bonds
It all seems nuts to me. The BoE is raising rates which is sending UK gilt yields rocketing (and prices plummeting), but because the Government gave the BoE a special indemnity the loss incurred when the BoE sells will be eaten by the taxpayer anyway? Christ al’mighty
Well, I tried with the chip app – but it doesn’t support Cooperative bank yet.
Congratulations, well deserved, as shown by your gracious listing of runners-up.
My own view: this site is the best by far for content, and the style is the icing on the cake.
TI please could you do a piece on investing a lump sum after maxing out pension, ISA and paying off mortgage? Ideally sheltering from the tax man, EIS Etc.?
Congratulations!
And thanks for the Gresham College link.
It’s a website with a lot of interesting lectures, including one by Chris Whitty on future trends in dementia – which has interesting implications for those of us trying to connect with our future selves….
The time article makes me laugh. 100% fake snow at a winter Olympics hosted in a city which doesn’t get snow. Seems a bit click baity. I see they are questioning how sustainable it is to do this but come on…
Very well done on the award, which is richly deserved.
You have (both/all) helped countless people to make the correct, best and most appropriate financial and investment decisions.
You’ve also turned a subject whose general ethos is “Just keep at it, doing more of the same,” into an absorbing, educational, entertaining and greatly anticipated weekly read, without ever becoming stale.
Thank you.
@TI/TA. Congrats.
@Andrew “the loss incurred when the BoE sells will be eaten by the taxpayer”
Before moaning about the losses incurred, you might want to first acknowledge the £120bn in income the taxpayer has received from the BoE since 2012.
The issue here is not the BoE. The issue is that the taxpayer, through their elected representatives (aka the Tories), decided from 2012 to book all the accrued income from the AFP portfolio without taking any single penny of reserves for potential capital losses. It was dodgy accounting 101.
No doubt you love what you write about. You and your team well deserve these awards, thanks for making millions of us better informed, entertained and educated. Keep it up.
Regarding the Die with Zero article, it is interesting that there appears to be a functioning market for long-term care insurance in the US, unlike the UK where such insurance has never taken off. Also I’m not sure what the ‘permanent life insurance policy’ referenced entails. It sounds like a conventional annuity, perhaps bought at a younger age and deferred, but with an upper cut-off age.
@ZXSpectrum48k it’ not super clear to me how it all works, nonetheless I’m definitely against the government and feel that QE was reckless.
In any case, I feel like Joe Public just expects QE being unwound and interest rates rising to hurt the wealthy by bringing down markets and property prices.
In reality my gut tells me we’re all just going to pay the piper with higher taxes across the board in the years to come.
Maybe I’m just in the “unfortunate” position to be well off enough to have a anxiety about these issues, whereas your average guy on the street who doesn’t read FIRE blogs has resigned themselves to it / given up worrying.
@ Monevator Team:
Congratulations on the award – totally deserved.
@DavidV:
Several well respected US FIRE bloggers (e.g. Retirement Cafe, Retirement Manifesto) decided that whilst there is a “functioning” US LTC market – it is very poor value. There are several related posts on both of their blogs.
Indeed, there used to be a UK market – and I happen to know a beneficiary. FYI, their insurer tried really hard to offload them!
Sorry, in my haste to post my last comment I forgot to add my own congratulations to the Monevator team on the well-deserved award.
@Al Cam (19) It’s no surprise to me that the long-term care insurance available in the US is regarded as poor value. I found it fascinating that you actually know a beneficiary of such insurance from when it was available in the UK – they must be very rare!
I did find it slightly odd that this insurance was included in an article about ‘Die with Zero’ as it does not really match the philosophy. You need a high income to pay the monthly premiums, including when in decumulation, right up to the point of needing the benefit. What would really be needed for a die-with-zero mindset is a one-off premium that reduced capital but provided assurance that care fees could be met in the future if needed. Not unlike a care needs annuity, but bought well in advance of it being needed (or not). I’m not surprised, though, that such schemes have always been regarded as unlikely to be either popular or affordable in the UK.
> Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion
Regardless of the amount of breakthrough in tinkering with fusion I don’t call any of it major until it gets close to enabling a fusion power station. I spent some of my early career in fission which has worked since the 1950s and should be continued until fusion is actually in use.
Congratulations! Well deserved. I’m always recommending this site on The Lemon Fool (the place where the Motley Fool crew ended up)
I haven’t received my referral bonuses yet…. 🙂
> Not unlike a care needs annuity, but bought well in advance of it being needed (or not).
I think the 4:1 odds of ending up in a care home past 85 is the explanation. You’re terribly unlikely to suffer from a house fire and very unlikely to have a motor accident, so these are insurable. Everybody knows they will die sometime, so life insurance can be qualified, particularly as it makes most sense for people with dependent children, which tends to mean they are very unlikely to die, and can be made increasingly unattractive as you get older. Whereas those intermediate odds, and the generally less than 50% chance of getting over 85 make that a really tough call. If I could insure against that eventuality I’m still not sure I would pony up the quite considerable costs of a care needs annuity. Even divided by five to reflect the odds. It’s just a really tough and miserable sell,
@ermine
I recall some ideas being mentioned around pay £28k upfront to cover future potential care costs – this is loosely consistent with 1 in 5 change and circa 18 months in care.
That’s the scale of things – the £28k would need to be paid pretty early (under 55) to avoid too much self selection by people likely to get good value. Moral hazard risks too.
For those FIRE people £28k would probably be good value and excellent peace of mind – not sure what happens with the idea
B
Well done on the awards and let’s all add another one.
So, Re Online Financial Influencer of the Year 2022
My normal access routes for Monevator are the website and the emails but to vote in this award a social media handle for Instagram and YouTube is required. Whilst I’ve watched Lars’ emails I’ve no idea what this is. Anyone?
@DavidV (#20):
I had never really thought about it before, but on reflection I agree such people are probably quite rare. Having said that, I am not sure I would want the health issues he/she have had to endure for the past decade or so – but at least they are well looked after.
The real ‘scandal’ was the numerous and nefarious (and IIRC this was upheld in court too) attempts by the insurer to offload the liability. Incidentally, most of those happened prior to the insurance being claimed on. The insurers really did pick the wrong guy to mess with. Makes you wonder how many people surrendered their policies?
@nearlyrich #25
I’d say the share links top right on the website are your friend. I wouldn’t dream of following this link but I’d say
http://www.facebook.com/monevator
fits the bill, no? though perhaps it should be https in this day and age
Ok so I failed to read their initial question properly and interpreted that Q as “social media”. But they accepted the facebook link OK, so should be able to allocate it to Monevator, assuming he is on facebook as advertised 😉
@Al Cam (26) The experience of your friend/acquaintance at the hands of the insurance company sounds awful.
I can imagine a further hazard, if such insurance were still available, is that you would be at the mercy of the insurance company in agreeing that you need residential care and can no longer be looked after in your own home. At least if you are self-funding (including buying a care needs annuity at the point of need), you and your family get to make the decision yourselves.
Congratulations on winning the best investing blog. I’ve been an avid reader of the blog for about 11 years now,and I’ve learned pretty much everything about investing from you.
BTW, didn’t you mention that you were going to write a book a few years ago?
Thanks again for the kind words everyone. It’s pretty crazy this blog is around 15 years old now. I guess we do like what we’re doing!
A few individual replies:
@Warren — That’s a nice position to be in! I’ll add it to our long list. Personally one of the benefits of the past few years after I liquidated a bunch of stuff to buy my flat (and sold most of the rest down wary of a CGT rise) has been mostly getting rid of unsheltered stuff and all the hassle that goes with it. (Not counting EIS investments — a hassle of their own!) Tempted to say spend it and save the hassle and potential tax paperwork… 😉
@G — That’s odd, they cover most nowadays. Might be a Cooperative bank thing? Does it do Open Banking yet?
@berkshirepat — Cheers, very kind! I do read LemonFool now and then, and I recognize many of the old names. (I have an account there but periodically forget under what alias and haven’t posted for years…)
@NearlyRich @ Ermine — Thanks for soldiering on with this. I have to admit I’m not sure exactly what they require — I didn’t try to vote for ourselves! 😉 We don’t have an Instagram currently. Monevator doesn’t have a YouTube. Lars does, but it’s his channel not ours. Can we be online influencer of the year with just a Twitter account and a website in 2022 I wonder?! 😉
@Atlantic Span — Yes, the book is an on/off project. (It might actually be on again! We’ve pretty much written it all, but that turns out to be the easy bit).
Screeching in rather belatedly here….
Echoing all the plaudits above. Continuing to provide a most excellent investing perspective. Slight riff off Bill& Ted there but you get my drift.
Re “UK’s North East coast… ” article – imagine my disappointment when I clicked on the link to read about my beloved Peterhead, to find an article about Whitby, which doesn’t even get near halfway up the GB coastline!
Congrats on the award – well deserved!
Enjoyed that BBC future self link