Budgeting
Zero-based budgeting survives contact with an irregular income
Most budgeting methods assume a predictable salary. Here is the version that works when the number changes every month.
Callum Reyes
Markets writer, Finance Ridge
Callum writes about index investing, fees and the difference between a strategy and a story.
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16 articles
Long-term Planning
Inflation does not affect everyone at the same rate
The headline figure is an average across a basket that probably does not resemble your spending.
Long-term Planning
Insurance is not an investment, and treating it as one is expensive
The purpose of insurance is to transfer a loss you could not absorb. Every other use of it is worse value than the alternatives.
Budgeting
Friction is the cheapest spending control there is
Willpower is a finite and unreliable resource. Adding seconds between the impulse and the purchase is neither.
Budgeting
Splitting household bills when the two incomes are not equal
Equal halves, proportional shares and full pooling produce very different outcomes, and each one is fair by a different definition.
Budgeting
Most budgets collapse in the third month, for a structural reason
The first month is measurement, the second is optimism, and the third is when the annual costs arrive.
Budgeting
Spending money nobody has to justify is a budgeting tool
The category most often cut first is the one whose removal most reliably kills the whole plan.
Budgeting
Grocery bills grow through frequency more than through prices
The number of trips, not the price per item, is the variable most households can actually move.
Budgeting
What to cut first when income falls without warning
Triage in a shortfall has an order, and it is not the order most people follow under stress.
Long-term Planning
State pension entitlement depends on rules that vary beyond comparison
How much a state provides, when, and on what conditions differs so much between countries that only your own system's figures mean…
Budgeting
Weekly budgeting fits real spending better than the calendar month
The month is an accounting period, not a behavioural one. Shortening the cycle changes how far ahead you have to see.
Budgeting
Moving the payment dates is the cheapest fix for a squeezed month
Some shortfalls are not shortfalls at all. They are a mismatch between when money arrives and when it is taken.
Budgeting
A no-spend month is a diagnostic, not a plan
Stopping discretionary spending for a fixed period reveals where it was going. It does not, by itself, change anything.
Budgeting
Three numbers say more about a budget than the categories do
Category totals describe last month. A handful of ratios tells you whether the household is structurally sound.
Long-term Planning
Drawdown makes you the manager of your own retirement risk
Keeping the money invested and withdrawing from it preserves flexibility. It also transfers every decision to you.
Long-term Planning
Equity release converts a home into cash and lets the interest compound
Borrowing against a property without monthly payments solves one problem by allowing another to grow quietly.