Cash, currency and collecting

“Never that foreign stuff MedFI. Only English.” were the words of advice from my grandfather, spoken in his gruff yet somehow also sing-song Celtic tones. The irony that the statement came from an immigrant was lost on my boyhood self. Instead there was only excitement and wonder as he showed me the contents of a

Westminster wallies: a golden false start to 2021

It only took fourteen days for my prediction to come true. Rule-makers turned rule-breakers. Quelle surprise. The politician in question was undoubtedly under surveillance by journalists hoping to generate an easy headline, unlike the rest of the Toms, Harrys and Dicks that are flouting the rules without such scrutiny. Whether you’re a hypocritical government official

Bin the resolution – try a Yearly Theme instead

New Year’s resolutions are awful. They mostly amount to, admittedly well-intended, hot air. The Banker on FIRE has already laid bare the pitiful probability of succeeding in your newfound resolve. Instead of crafting a single defining goal for the year 2021, one that you’ll have likely forgotten about come the start of Spring, why not

Ho Oh No

What’s this? An early Christmas present?! How thoughtful! Is it a bicycle? Or a drone? Or that generic deodorant, aftershave & moisturiser trifecta? Nope. It’s a huge lump of Christmas Covid coal. A perhaps fitting cherry on top of a year that’s been far from trifling; a government announcement that takes the cake. How naive

10 Outrageous Financial Predictions from 2020

Before the time of masks, quarantine and abhorrence for hand-shaking, the Danish investment bank Saxo Bank published ten “unlikely but under-appreciated” financial events that might occur during 2020. If there was ever a year for outrageous predictions to come true, 2020 seems like it could have been the perfect one! I’m sure, however, that those

RIP RPI – pensions in the cross-hairs?

The Treasury has lined up the Retail Price Index (RPI) for a 2030 retirement. In its place will be the much wordier, and ultimately lesser in value, Consumer Price Index + owner occupiers’ housing cost (CPIH). The change has brought a modicum of grumbling, predominantly because of the negative impact on those with defined benefit

One Track Mind

Focus is a noun most frequently used in a positive context. As is often the way there are a host of idioms exalting such a state of mind: being on the ball, getting in the zone, putting your nose to the grindstone, knuckling down. Focus is an example of the ‘system two’ thinking that counterbalances

Red Alert

As any Trekkie will surely be aware, the term ‘red alert‘ is synonymous with critical or imminent danger. Yellow (amber) alert is a slightly more mellow affair – if you’ve ever seen a traffic light then you get the drift. In what is presumably a sort of frequency illusion, I’ve been seeing alerts everywhere recently.

Flight distance: a P2P story

We’ve all seen seaside holidaymakers strolling along the boardwalk, proudly (naively) sporting their paper cone of chips. In swoops a seagull – chips are lost, pride is wounded. The daring seagull has demonstrated a fairly short flight distance – how close it will get to a human before retreating (NB flight distance is not the

Exam Hustling

In the MedFI household, in-between the exuberant frivolity of the summer season and the joyous festivity of the Christmas season, lies sandwiched a season without joy, exuberance, frivolity or festivity – exam season. Burning holes Doctors are not unique in their requirement to sit postgraduate exams. What seems different to other professions is that medical