We begin today\u2019s Irregular Roundup with chilling.<\/p>\n
Chill not FIRE<\/span><\/h6>\nWhen I started this blog almost ten years ago, one of the 7 Circles after which it was named was \u201cFIRE and Frugal\u201d.<\/p>\n
\n- The FIRE movement wasn\u2019t very well known at that point, but by now I would expect that most readers know that the acronym stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Both aspects of FIRE appealed to me, and indeed, I had already FIRE\u2019d before I started the blog.<\/p>\n
\n- But a lot of the UK finance bloggers at that time were working towards FIRE, and it was a topic I was interested in.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Unfortunately, there isn\u2019t a lot to say about fire. The process goes as follows:<\/p>\n
\n- Work out how much you need to live on<\/li>\n
- Multiply this by between 25 and 33 (depending on which SWR \u2013 safe withdrawal rate \u2013 you believe in) to come up with a pot size that will allow you to retire<\/li>\n
- Work backwards from that pot to work out what level of contributions you need to make\u00a0 to get to that number by your target age (and divide that by your income to come up with you\u2019re savings rate)<\/li>\n
- Save for many years and hey presto! You\u2019ve fired.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
I ran out of things to say, and several other FIRE bloggers who were around then have also quit since they hit their number.<\/p>\n
The sooner you want to FIRE, the more aggressive your savings rate has to be \u2013 some people aim for 60% to 70% of income.<\/p>\n
\n- I only worked for 25 years, which according to Mr. Money Mustache\u2019s \u201csimple maths\u201d means I must have saved 33% of my income.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
I\u2019m not sure I managed that, but the point I was going to make is that there has been a backlash against high savings rates, and \u201csacrifice\u201d in general.<\/p>\n
![\"Andrew](\"https:\/\/the7circles.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Andrew-Oxlade-257x300.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe latest salvo was fired by Andrew Oxlade of Fidelity in This Is Money.<\/p>\n
CHILL stands for Career Happiness Inspires Longer Lives.<\/p>\n
\n- That\u2019s a tall order for many \u2013 the quality of careers has declined considerably since I started.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Andrew thinks that social media fosters the idea that money is what\u2019s needed for happiness.<\/p>\n
\n- Maybe it does \u2013 Reddit and Twitter were the only platforms that I ever liked, and they have both fallen a long way from their peak.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
More money indeed has diminishing returns, but that depends on how you define enough.<\/p>\n
\n- If you look at income, then clearly \u00a3200K of income is not worth double what \u00a3100K is.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
But in FIRE, the surplus just brings forward the date of your financial independence, so money scales more linearly until you reach your goal.<\/p>\n
\n- That might look weird to someone who isn\u2019t interested in FI, or who thinks that it\u2019s unattainable \u2013 but it\u2019s not.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
I always saw FIRE as being about regaining control of your time.<\/p>\n
\n- I hated my job and 90%+ of the more than fifty managers I had during my career.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
I was also bored at work, and find retirement more stimulating (though when you quit a decade or more before your peers, you do lose some social contact).<\/p>\n
My partner enjoys her job and is likely to continue for as long as she is offered interesting work (and her health permits).<\/p>\n
\n- I enjoy not having a job, but instead having the time to devote to whatever hobby or passion currently interests me.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Everybody has to decide for themselves on the RE part, though there are few jobs that I can see 70-year-olds enjoying.<\/p>\n
\n- FI, not so much \u2013 I can\u2019t see why anyone wouldn\u2019t want to be financially independent.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
FI means freedom.<\/p>\n
Consumer preferences<\/span><\/h6>\n![\"Joachim](\"https:\/\/the7circles.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Joachim-Klement-300x270.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nJoachim Klement wrote about whether consumers take notice of firms\u2019 profits and ESG credentials<\/a>.<\/p>\n\nExcept for weirdos like me who are totally into investing as a hobby or profession, I have never seen anyone read a financial report or an ESG report. I wonder how anyone could have missed that before sending outquestionnaires to tens of thousands of unsuspecting Americans.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n![\"Purchase](\"https:\/\/the7circles.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Purchase-considerations-7-Circles-300x194.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAs you might imagine, people are interested in quality and price, not profitability and ESG credentials.<\/p>\n
![\"Information](\"https:\/\/the7circles.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Information-sources-7-Circles-300x203.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAnd their key information sources are friends and family and customer reviews.<\/p>\n
\n- Financial and ESG reports are used by less than 10% of people.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\nWhich I guess is simply the share of people who checked every possible answer because they didn\u2019t pay attention to the survey plus the few weirdos that have investing as a hobby or profession.\u00a0ESG reports only have an effect on consumers who have been prompted to actually read them, but these effects are small and short-lived.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n![\"Frictions](\"https:\/\/the7circles.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Frictions-7-Circles-300x202.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhen they were asked after the experiment why they didn\u2019t care about ESG and profits, the number one reason was that they couldn\u2019t remember.<\/p>\n
One factor model<\/span><\/h6>\nIn a second article, Joachim wrote about a one-factor model to explain asset returns<\/a>.<\/p>\n\nThe problem with most finance models and theories is that they have been developed by people trained in economics and finance, which is to say by people without a proper education in maths and statistics.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nJoachim is a trained mathematician and physicist and doesn\u2019t rate his colleagues in finance.<\/p>\n
\n- In particular, he\u2019s not a fan of linear models, even though they sometimes make money.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\nFinancial markets are complex dynamic stochastic systems and trying to describe a complex dynamic system with a linear model is inevitably going to fail no matter how many parameters you use to \u2018fit\u2019 the model to reality. <\/span><\/p>\nMost importantly, practitioners and academics alike insist on using fundamental variables like valuation or profitability to explain market behaviour.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nWay back in 2009, Joachim wrote a paper explaining how to use a Fourier filter to profit from market cycles<\/a>.<\/p>\n\nI thought that was an incredibly simple model that performed extremely well, but I met a lot of resistance because the model did not rely on fundamentals, but instead used combinations of sine and cosine functions to identify cycles without \u2018explaining\u2019 what drives these cycles.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThe new paper is similar, using fourth-order polynomials.<\/p>\n
![\"Non-linear](\"https:\/\/the7circles.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Non-linear-single-factor-model-7-Circles-300x185.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\nThis nonlinear model makes all known factor models redundant. It created sizeable outperformance and matched the actual returns of asset<\/a> classes very well. [The] model outperformed existing factor models in almost all cases for forecast periods of 6 months.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nDespite this, Joachim is not optimistic that the new model will be widely adopted.<\/p>\n
\nIt doesn\u2019t use fundamentals to explain share price returns. And that means to most practitioners and academics it has no meaning. <\/span><\/p>\nBut you know who doesn\u2019t care about \u2018having meaning\u2019 or using polynomials to understand and forecast asset<\/a> returns? AI. And hedge funds don\u2019t care whether their model uses fundamental variables. They just want to make money.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI don\u2019t care either, so I hope that someone will use AI to make the model available to regular private investors.<\/p>\n
DIY vs advised<\/span><\/h6>\n![\"Alina](\"https:\/\/the7circles.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Alina-Khan-257x300.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nFor FT Adviser, Alina Khan reported that 79% of over 55s prefer the DIY route to taking advice from an IFA<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe data comes from Canada Life, which reported a few more findings:<\/p>\n
\n- 39 per cent p are experiencing the retirement they dreamed of<\/li>\n
- 29 per cent are not<\/li>\n
- 11 per cent did not anticipate just how much money they would need in retirement and are finding life after work more difficult than they expected<\/li>\n
- 36 per cent said they had experienced unexpected health challenges<\/li>\n
- 27 per cent said they were still happy even if they were not living the retirement they had planned<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/the7circles.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Experiences-during-retirement-7-Circles-300x174.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nCanada Life MD Tom Evans said:<\/p>\n
\nPeople\u2019s experiences of retirement vary quite widely. While a lack of retirement funds, and the impact of rising costs are clearly issues facing the current generation of retirees, unexpected health issues trump both of those, and the dreams of many have been shattered.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nPlanning your retirement and ensuring it is flexible enough to navigate the many challenges you will face is vital to feel in control to enjoy your later years.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\nEngaging the services of a qualified financial adviser early on is a fundamental part of that process. <\/span>An adviser will not only be able to help with product choice, investment selection and tax, but will help you navigate any unexpected bumps in the road along the way.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI agree about the need for a flexible plan, but many people should be able to put one together without professional help, and many others won\u2019t have the funds to justify paying for (expensive) advice.<\/p>\n
IHT<\/span><\/h6>\n![\"Emma](\"https:\/\/the7circles.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Emma-Agyemang-284x300.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nFor the FT, Emma Agyemang reported on calls from think-tank Demos for government action on IHT<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n- A freedom of information request found that 68 estates, each with business assets of more than \u00a35M, were able to shelter \u00a31.8bn of their assets from IHT.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
HMRC data shows that 3,380 estates in 2020-2021 claimed the tax break on assets worth a total of \u00a33.2 bn.<\/p>\n
\n- So the Demos families mad up 2% of claims, but owned 57% of the sheltered assets.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Business relief was introduced in 1976 and was originally targeted at company firms, but was later extended to AIM stocks.<\/p>\n
\n- Since then, a cottage industry of wealth managers offering IHT portfolios of safe AIM stocks has grown up.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
To save even more money, you can run such a portfolio on a DIY basis (since most AIM stocks qualify) \u2013 as I did for my mother-in-law.<\/p>\n
Dan Gross of Demos said:<\/p>\n
\nIt is quite shocking that over half of the relief goes to 68 estates. It\u2019s a very small number of the wealthiest benefiting from the vast majority of the relief. Business relief is being used as a way to reduce tax bills for those estates at the very top.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThe inclusion of AIM stocks makes no sense from an IHT perspective, but it makes more sense from the angle of supporting small growth stocks (as with VCT and EIS).<\/p>\n
\n- This argument is somewhat undermined by the low quality of the typical AIM stock, but with some joined-up thinking from the government, this might be fixed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
I think it\u2019s more likely that Labour will do away with the relief (for AIM stocks at least) as IHT seems to be one of the taxes they are planning to raise more revenue from.<\/p>\n
\n- The best we can hope for is a cap on how much an individual can shelter \u2013 the IFS has suggested \u00a3500K (in total, with the AIM relief scrapped).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Quick Links<\/span><\/h6>\nI have just one for you this week:<\/p>\n
\n- Alpha Architect looked at The Penny Stock Anomaly<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Until next time.<\/p>\n
Both aspects of FIRE appealed to me, and indeed, I had already FIRE\u2019d before I started the blog.<\/p>\n
- \n
- But a lot of the UK finance bloggers at that time were working towards FIRE, and it was a topic I was interested in.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Unfortunately, there isn\u2019t a lot to say about fire. The process goes as follows:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Work out how much you need to live on<\/li>\n
- Multiply this by between 25 and 33 (depending on which SWR \u2013 safe withdrawal rate \u2013 you believe in) to come up with a pot size that will allow you to retire<\/li>\n
- Work backwards from that pot to work out what level of contributions you need to make\u00a0 to get to that number by your target age (and divide that by your income to come up with you\u2019re savings rate)<\/li>\n
- Save for many years and hey presto! You\u2019ve fired.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
I ran out of things to say, and several other FIRE bloggers who were around then have also quit since they hit their number.<\/p>\n
The sooner you want to FIRE, the more aggressive your savings rate has to be \u2013 some people aim for 60% to 70% of income.<\/p>\n
- \n
- I only worked for 25 years, which according to Mr. Money Mustache\u2019s \u201csimple maths\u201d means I must have saved 33% of my income.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
I\u2019m not sure I managed that, but the point I was going to make is that there has been a backlash against high savings rates, and \u201csacrifice\u201d in general.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nThe latest salvo was fired by Andrew Oxlade of Fidelity in This Is Money.<\/p>\n
CHILL stands for Career Happiness Inspires Longer Lives.<\/p>\n
- \n
- That\u2019s a tall order for many \u2013 the quality of careers has declined considerably since I started.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Andrew thinks that social media fosters the idea that money is what\u2019s needed for happiness.<\/p>\n
- \n
- Maybe it does \u2013 Reddit and Twitter were the only platforms that I ever liked, and they have both fallen a long way from their peak.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
More money indeed has diminishing returns, but that depends on how you define enough.<\/p>\n
- \n
- If you look at income, then clearly \u00a3200K of income is not worth double what \u00a3100K is.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
But in FIRE, the surplus just brings forward the date of your financial independence, so money scales more linearly until you reach your goal.<\/p>\n
- \n
- That might look weird to someone who isn\u2019t interested in FI, or who thinks that it\u2019s unattainable \u2013 but it\u2019s not.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
I always saw FIRE as being about regaining control of your time.<\/p>\n
- \n
- I hated my job and 90%+ of the more than fifty managers I had during my career.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
I was also bored at work, and find retirement more stimulating (though when you quit a decade or more before your peers, you do lose some social contact).<\/p>\n
My partner enjoys her job and is likely to continue for as long as she is offered interesting work (and her health permits).<\/p>\n
- \n
- I enjoy not having a job, but instead having the time to devote to whatever hobby or passion currently interests me.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Everybody has to decide for themselves on the RE part, though there are few jobs that I can see 70-year-olds enjoying.<\/p>\n
- \n
- FI, not so much \u2013 I can\u2019t see why anyone wouldn\u2019t want to be financially independent.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
FI means freedom.<\/p>\n
Consumer preferences<\/span><\/h6>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nJoachim Klement wrote about whether consumers take notice of firms\u2019 profits and ESG credentials<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\n
Except for weirdos like me who are totally into investing as a hobby or profession, I have never seen anyone read a financial report or an ESG report. I wonder how anyone could have missed that before sending outquestionnaires to tens of thousands of unsuspecting Americans.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nAs you might imagine, people are interested in quality and price, not profitability and ESG credentials.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nAnd their key information sources are friends and family and customer reviews.<\/p>\n
- \n
- Financial and ESG reports are used by less than 10% of people.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n
Which I guess is simply the share of people who checked every possible answer because they didn\u2019t pay attention to the survey plus the few weirdos that have investing as a hobby or profession.\u00a0ESG reports only have an effect on consumers who have been prompted to actually read them, but these effects are small and short-lived.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nWhen they were asked after the experiment why they didn\u2019t care about ESG and profits, the number one reason was that they couldn\u2019t remember.<\/p>\n
One factor model<\/span><\/h6>\n
In a second article, Joachim wrote about a one-factor model to explain asset returns<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\n
The problem with most finance models and theories is that they have been developed by people trained in economics and finance, which is to say by people without a proper education in maths and statistics.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Joachim is a trained mathematician and physicist and doesn\u2019t rate his colleagues in finance.<\/p>\n
- \n
- In particular, he\u2019s not a fan of linear models, even though they sometimes make money.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n
Financial markets are complex dynamic stochastic systems and trying to describe a complex dynamic system with a linear model is inevitably going to fail no matter how many parameters you use to \u2018fit\u2019 the model to reality. <\/span><\/p>\n
Most importantly, practitioners and academics alike insist on using fundamental variables like valuation or profitability to explain market behaviour.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Way back in 2009, Joachim wrote a paper explaining how to use a Fourier filter to profit from market cycles<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\n
I thought that was an incredibly simple model that performed extremely well, but I met a lot of resistance because the model did not rely on fundamentals, but instead used combinations of sine and cosine functions to identify cycles without \u2018explaining\u2019 what drives these cycles.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The new paper is similar, using fourth-order polynomials.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n\n
This nonlinear model makes all known factor models redundant. It created sizeable outperformance and matched the actual returns of asset<\/a> classes very well. [The] model outperformed existing factor models in almost all cases for forecast periods of 6 months.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Despite this, Joachim is not optimistic that the new model will be widely adopted.<\/p>\n
\n
It doesn\u2019t use fundamentals to explain share price returns. And that means to most practitioners and academics it has no meaning. <\/span><\/p>\n
But you know who doesn\u2019t care about \u2018having meaning\u2019 or using polynomials to understand and forecast asset<\/a> returns? AI. And hedge funds don\u2019t care whether their model uses fundamental variables. They just want to make money.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I don\u2019t care either, so I hope that someone will use AI to make the model available to regular private investors.<\/p>\n
DIY vs advised<\/span><\/h6>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nFor FT Adviser, Alina Khan reported that 79% of over 55s prefer the DIY route to taking advice from an IFA<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The data comes from Canada Life, which reported a few more findings:<\/p>\n
- \n
- 39 per cent p are experiencing the retirement they dreamed of<\/li>\n
- 29 per cent are not<\/li>\n
- 11 per cent did not anticipate just how much money they would need in retirement and are finding life after work more difficult than they expected<\/li>\n
- 36 per cent said they had experienced unexpected health challenges<\/li>\n
- 27 per cent said they were still happy even if they were not living the retirement they had planned<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Canada Life MD Tom Evans said:<\/p>\n
\n
People\u2019s experiences of retirement vary quite widely. While a lack of retirement funds, and the impact of rising costs are clearly issues facing the current generation of retirees, unexpected health issues trump both of those, and the dreams of many have been shattered.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Planning your retirement and ensuring it is flexible enough to navigate the many challenges you will face is vital to feel in control to enjoy your later years.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n
Engaging the services of a qualified financial adviser early on is a fundamental part of that process. <\/span>An adviser will not only be able to help with product choice, investment selection and tax, but will help you navigate any unexpected bumps in the road along the way.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I agree about the need for a flexible plan, but many people should be able to put one together without professional help, and many others won\u2019t have the funds to justify paying for (expensive) advice.<\/p>\n
IHT<\/span><\/h6>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nFor the FT, Emma Agyemang reported on calls from think-tank Demos for government action on IHT<\/a>.<\/p>\n
- \n
- A freedom of information request found that 68 estates, each with business assets of more than \u00a35M, were able to shelter \u00a31.8bn of their assets from IHT.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
HMRC data shows that 3,380 estates in 2020-2021 claimed the tax break on assets worth a total of \u00a33.2 bn.<\/p>\n
- \n
- So the Demos families mad up 2% of claims, but owned 57% of the sheltered assets.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Business relief was introduced in 1976 and was originally targeted at company firms, but was later extended to AIM stocks.<\/p>\n
- \n
- Since then, a cottage industry of wealth managers offering IHT portfolios of safe AIM stocks has grown up.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
To save even more money, you can run such a portfolio on a DIY basis (since most AIM stocks qualify) \u2013 as I did for my mother-in-law.<\/p>\n
Dan Gross of Demos said:<\/p>\n
\n
It is quite shocking that over half of the relief goes to 68 estates. It\u2019s a very small number of the wealthiest benefiting from the vast majority of the relief. Business relief is being used as a way to reduce tax bills for those estates at the very top.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The inclusion of AIM stocks makes no sense from an IHT perspective, but it makes more sense from the angle of supporting small growth stocks (as with VCT and EIS).<\/p>\n
- \n
- This argument is somewhat undermined by the low quality of the typical AIM stock, but with some joined-up thinking from the government, this might be fixed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
I think it\u2019s more likely that Labour will do away with the relief (for AIM stocks at least) as IHT seems to be one of the taxes they are planning to raise more revenue from.<\/p>\n
- \n
- The best we can hope for is a cap on how much an individual can shelter \u2013 the IFS has suggested \u00a3500K (in total, with the AIM relief scrapped).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Quick Links<\/span><\/h6>\n
I have just one for you this week:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Alpha Architect looked at The Penny Stock Anomaly<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Until next time.<\/p>\n
- Alpha Architect looked at The Penny Stock Anomaly<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
- The best we can hope for is a cap on how much an individual can shelter \u2013 the IFS has suggested \u00a3500K (in total, with the AIM relief scrapped).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- This argument is somewhat undermined by the low quality of the typical AIM stock, but with some joined-up thinking from the government, this might be fixed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Since then, a cottage industry of wealth managers offering IHT portfolios of safe AIM stocks has grown up.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- So the Demos families mad up 2% of claims, but owned 57% of the sheltered assets.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- A freedom of information request found that 68 estates, each with business assets of more than \u00a35M, were able to shelter \u00a31.8bn of their assets from IHT.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- In particular, he\u2019s not a fan of linear models, even though they sometimes make money.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Financial and ESG reports are used by less than 10% of people.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- FI, not so much \u2013 I can\u2019t see why anyone wouldn\u2019t want to be financially independent.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- I enjoy not having a job, but instead having the time to devote to whatever hobby or passion currently interests me.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- I hated my job and 90%+ of the more than fifty managers I had during my career.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- That might look weird to someone who isn\u2019t interested in FI, or who thinks that it\u2019s unattainable \u2013 but it\u2019s not.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- If you look at income, then clearly \u00a3200K of income is not worth double what \u00a3100K is.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Maybe it does \u2013 Reddit and Twitter were the only platforms that I ever liked, and they have both fallen a long way from their peak.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- That\u2019s a tall order for many \u2013 the quality of careers has declined considerably since I started.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- I only worked for 25 years, which according to Mr. Money Mustache\u2019s \u201csimple maths\u201d means I must have saved 33% of my income.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"Andrew](\"https:\/\/the7circles.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Andrew-Oxlade.jpg\")