Emotionally Invested

Bar a life partner, buying a home is the biggest emotional purchase most of us will ever make. In this episode I go through what you actually need to know about UK housing and mortgages right now — the mechanics, and the psychology underneath them that most financial content skips entirely.

In this episode:

• Where UK mortgage rates actually stand today, and why chasing the "right moment" to buy is a game even the professionals get wrong
• Fixed, tracker, and variable mortgages explained — and why drifting onto your lender's standard variable rate is one of the costliest accidents in personal finance
• How a lender really sees you: income multiples, the affordability stress test, and how your credit file and existing debts move the number they'll actually lend
• Deposits, the Lifetime ISA, and the Mortgage Guarantee Scheme — the real help that exists for first-time buyers
• The full process, start to finish — from viewing and offer through survey, searches, exchange, and completion day, and a realistic timeline for how long it all takes
• Stamp duty: what you'll actually owe, and why it needs budgeting for in cash, months ahead
• The remortgage cliff, and why it's fine to feel the jump before you problem-solve it
• Why buying a home is the biggest emotional purchase most of us make, bar a life partner — the endowment effect, the planning fallacy, and what that comparison should change about how you approach it, alone or with a partner
• Worked example: a £300,000 repayment mortgage at 4.5% — £1,667.50 a month over 25 years versus £1,419.77 over 35 years, and what the extra decade actually costs you in total interest

Mentioned in this episode:

• Bank of England — Bank Rate: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/the-interest-rate-bank-rate
• MoneyHelper — Mortgage calculator: https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/homes/buying-a-home/mortgage-calculator
• GOV.UK — Stamp Duty Land Tax calculator: https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/calculate-stamp-duty-land-tax/#/intro
• GOV.UK — Lifetime ISA: https://www.gov.uk/lifetime-isa

Everyone obsesses over which stock to pick or when to time the market — but the research says the real driver of your investment outcome is something far less exciting: how you split your money across asset classes in the first place.

In this episode, we trace asset allocation back to its unlikely origin — a 25-year-old graduate student named Harry Markowitz who, in 1952, was the first person to mathematically prove that diversification isn't just a good instinct, it's provable. From there, we get into why asset allocation is really a behavioural question dressed up as a math problem — why a "textbook correct" portfolio can still fail if you can't emotionally stick with it through a downturn.

We also unpack the three different risks pulling on every portfolio (market, longevity, and inflation), why "playing it safe" often means trading a visible risk for an invisible one, and — because it wouldn't be this show without it — why club selection on the golf course is the perfect metaphor for building a portfolio you can actually live with.

If you've ever wondered why your mix matters more than your picks, this one's for you.

https://novelinvestor.com/asset-class-sector-and-global-market-quilts-updated-for-2025/

• The regret that came up more than any other — and what it means for financial plans built around someone else's expectations
• Why "I wish I hadn't worked so hard" showed up in every man Ware cared for
• The connection between undiscussed finances and undiscussed feelings
• What 85 years of Harvard data say about relationships, wealth, and what actually predicts a long, happy life
• Scottie Scheffler's Open Championship press conference — the world No. 1 saying the euphoria of winning "only lasts a few minutes"
• Why so many people never let themselves enjoy the money they worked so hard to build

• Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying (Hay House, 2012) — bronnieware.com/blog/regrets-of-the-dying | book listing
• The Harvard Study of Adult Development, directed by Robert Waldinger, MD (Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School) — adultdevelopmentstudy.org
• Below is an excerpt from the press conference; if you find the YouTube video it about 20 minutes in and is the best answer from a sportsman I have heard yet!

Q. You talk about the show goes on, which it does. What would be the longest you've ever celebrated something? What was the most crushing loss or the time it took to get over one?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I think it's kind of funny, I think I said something after the Byron this year about like it feels like you work your whole life to celebrate winning a tournament for like a few minutes. It only lasts a few minutes, that kind of euphoric feeling.

To win the Byron Nelson Championship at home, I literally worked my entire life to become good at golf to have an opportunity to win that tournament. You win it, you celebrate, get to hug my family, my sister's there, it's such an amazing moment. Then it's like, okay, what are we going to eat for dinner? Life goes on.

Is it great to be able to win tournaments and to accomplish the things I have in the game of golf? Yeah, it brings tears to my eyes just to think about because I've literally worked my entire life to be good at this sport. To have that kind of sense of accomplishment, I think, is a pretty cool feeling. To get to live out your dreams is very special, but at the end of the day, I'm not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I'm not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world because what's the point? This is not a fulfilling life. It's fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment, but it's not fulfilling from a sense of the deepest places of your heart.

There's a lot of people that make it to what they thought was going to fulfill them in life, and you get there, you get to No. 1 in the world, and they're like what's the point? I really do believe that because what is the point? Why do I want to win this tournament so bad?

That's something that I wrestle with on a daily basis. It's like showing up at the Masters every year; it's like why do I want to win this golf tournament so badly? Why do I want to win The Open Championship so badly? I don't know because, if I win, it's going to be awesome for two minutes. Then we're going to get to the next week, hey, you won two majors this year; how important is it for you to win the FedExCup playoffs? And we're back here again.

So we really do; we work so hard for such little moments. I'm kind of sicko; I love putting in the work. I love getting to practice. I love getting to live out my dreams. But at the end of the day, sometimes I just don't understand the point.

(Laughter).

I don't know if I'm making any sense or not. Am I not? It's just one of those deals. I love the challenge. I love being able to play this game for a living. It's one of the greatest joys of my life, but does it fill the deepest wants and desires of my heart? Absolutely not.

In this episode, I look at why our internal sense of time is so unreliable — why the years speed up as we get older, why the future always feels blurrier and more distant than it actually is, and why the things that matter most (a parent, a child, a friendship) so easily lose out to things with a deadline attached, purely because they don't have one.

Then the numbers: real UK life expectancy at different ages, the often-overlooked gap between lifespan and healthspan, and a set of simple exercises — how many visits are actually left with an ageing parent, how much of your time with your kids has already happened before they're even a teenager — that turn a vague future into a countable one. The episode closes with what this should actually change about how you spend money and time, drawing on George Kinder's Three Questions and the life-planning work this podcast keeps

Mentioned in this episode:

• ONS National Life Tables — look up life expectancy by your own age and sex: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/datasets/nationallifetablesunitedkingdomreferencetables
• Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman — on the average human lifespan, laid out in weeks, and what it means to take that limit seriously
• The Kinder Institute's Three Questions (George Kinder) — the life-planning exercise referenced in the episode's close https://www.lifeplanningforyou.com/main/homepage/?i=0

Tax is a very current hot topic and always a very emotive one. We do not like paying tax but we do have some control in this. We need to be thinking about making ourselves as tax-efficient and savvy as possible. Paying tax unnecessarily is wasteful and it is in this space, where we can minimise the tax we paid personally or if we have our own businesses.

In this episode, I cover some of the basics and how we can gain more understanding and control of the system and the tax we pay.

The bad news is we all have these money scripts. The good news is once we understand which ones we have, we can do something to shift our behaviours (if they are not really serving us).

A money script is an unconscious, deeply held belief about money that is typically formed in childhood. First coined by financial psychologist Dr. Brad Klontz, these ingrained scripts run on autopilot and directly dictate your adult financial habits, spending, saving, and wealth management.

This episode I discuss the 4 main types, things that go along with these and what we can do to understand and turnaround these scripts that have been downloaded to our own operating systems.

Take the free test below:

https://www.bradklontz.com/moneyscriptstest

As part of building your financial house and its foundations, I take a look at the basics regarding protection of your most valuable asset; YOU!

You are a money-making machine, with unlimited upside potential, and this needs to be taken care of.

Please like and subscribe or get in touch with me, at [email protected]

Following on from the spending plan creation, to fully maximise and bring your plans to life, we need to reconcile how we spend our time and money versus our values.

Here I introduce another exercise that can provide you with an operating system on how you can make all kinds of life decisions, not just money ones.

The Values List:

https://brenebrown.com/resources/dare-to-lead-list-of-values/

After hearing that Modern Wisdom (my fave podcast) has an annual review template I decided to check it out and do it out loud. Unfiltered and off the cuff responses to a lot of great questions is what follows.

I did actually do my own in December but this was fun too and could be useful for people if they are interested in reflection. I've actually just checked my 2026 plans to see if I am on track or not, so even though its 5 months late, it has been worth an hour of my time for sure.

Here is the link for the template: https://chriswillx.com/review/

Lets think about budgeting.

I prefer the term spending plan, as for me, it creates real agency on how we allocate our financial resources.

So many tools out there, if you are old school (like me), I prefer writing or keying my data. The best spreadsheet I have seen is this one:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/budget-planning/

I like this version from a Canadian firm on the Financial Planning Triangle and how it can tie-in with Maslow's work on needs.

https://www.valleyfirst.com/simple-advice/wealth/building-a-financial-pyramid#steps