Continuing our journey through the century’s ledgers, we arrive at a fascinating forty-year block. Looking at the years 1920-1950, we cover an astonishing amount of historical whiplash. This era spans the jazz-soaked Roaring Twenties, the devastating 1929 Wall Street Crash, the gritty reality of the Great Depression, the rationing of the Second World War, and … Read more
Following up on our dive into the 1900–1909 ledger, it is time to turn the page to the next chapter. If the 1900s were the settled, opulent Edwardian era, the 1910s were a harsh reality check. This decade started with tea dresses and motor cars and violently crashed into the rationing, blockades, and inflation of … Read more
Looking at my recent Monzo feed is an exercise in casual absurdity. There is a £7 monthly charge for banking ‘perks’ that buy me a cinema ticket and fee-free cash abroad. There is an £8.99 deduction for invisible audiobooks, mostly because reading physical pages puts me straight to sleep. Trying to explain this to a … Read more
I was supposed to be a monk. A financial, spreadsheet-wielding monk who had reached a state of “set and forget” nirvana. Back in December, I made a public vow: no changes to my financial system until April. I called it my “no-touch” plan. The goal was to stop the constant tweaking, the obsessive mortgage overpayments, … Read more
I’ve been in financial spirals before — the kind where every morning starts with, “What can I tweak today?” You know the type: constantly running numbers, overpaying here, reallocating there, trying to shave pennies from one category to funnel them into another, thinking every small move is the key to perfection. For me, the spiral … Read more
