Every financial book or blog I come across seems to be either targeted at Americans, blatantly obvious (i.e. "pay down your debt and don't spend all your money on takeaway"), crammed with irrelevant lifestyle chat, or full of wishy-washy stuff about mindset and other 'motivational'/self-help style claptrap.
What can I read that will give me an up-to-date and concrete idea of what I should do with my money in the UK?
I've attached the Reddit guidance from their UK personal finance page, which is a home start, but doesn't really cover many options or go into the reasons behind each step.
That flowchart is pretty much spot on. The /r/UKPersonalFinance wiki recommends The Money Diet by Martin Lewis, which covers pretty much everything you need to know unless you're ridiculously wealthy. Most of the information in the book is covered on moneysavingexpert.com if you want to save a tenner and the website always has up-to-date information on the best deals. Personal finance isn't rocket science, so a lot of the most important advice is fairly obvious stuff that most people still don't do.
Managing your income is fairly straightforward. Increasing your income is a big topic. What are your skills, experience and qualifications? How hard are you willing to work? What level of risk are you willing to tolerate? Are you willing to put your career on hold to retrain?
I currently work in a "data admin" type position at a clinical trials company, and have been there just over a year. It's pretty low level but pays an entry level graduate salary. I also have a couple of years' worth of experience working in hospital audit. About being willing to put my career on hold, that's a yes. I'm saving at the moment so that I can do an M.Sc. in Public Health. My undergraduate degree is mostly unrelated.
I'm aiming my career at stuff I find fulfilling, but pharmaceuticals and clinical trials can obviously be quite a lucrative path. As this is Britfa.gs and there's only three of us, it's probably obvious I'm also >>/uni/6349. So alongside work I am trying to learn more and more complex maths -- but I'm very willing to take on suggestions.
My willingness to work is honestly at a "whatever it takes" level. I am young, healthy, and quite ambitious -- I can cope (and have coped) with very heavy workloads in the past.
I could try for part-time remote and home-based work (which is apparently common in pharma) while I work my full-time job. I've thought about and tried a load of things in the past to get some sort of secondary income going. At the risk of revealing that all posts on .gs are actually me, I've gone into some of the stuff I've done and thought about in >>/job/11921.
I haven't really considered levels of risk, as I've only ever had a few thousand built up and have never invested. Currently, I don't have a wife, kids, or a mortgage. I have very few financial responsibilities that couldn't be cut off tomorrow. I think I could tolerate a higher level of risk than most for those reasons.
My mission for today actually is to look up the highest paid jobs in my chosen field, and see what I can do to increase my chances of getting there.
What else can I do in these early, initial stages?
What I'd disagree with on that flowchart is the three to six month's expenditure as an emergency fund as optional. It's not optional. Holding one month's expenditure might be alright if the boiler goes or your car breaks down, but if several things happen in a short period of time or you lose your job then you could be pretty much fucked.
It also doesn't cover off protection. Most people won't need life cover unless they've got a mortgage or family, but it's worth trying to get an income protection quote in case you can't work because I wouldn't want to be reliant on state benefits. First step is probably to see what employee benefits you have.
I am >>7343. I don't know what's realistically possible for me to achieve in 10 years, but I want to do everything I can to make sure I'm in the best possible financial position.
>>7347 Define what 'best possible financial position' means to you. What are you wanting to do with this money? How much are you prepared to commit to this? What sacrifices can you make? What are you prepared to compromise on if you have conflicting goals?
>>7348 and what kind of money-obsessed person do you want to be during and after this exercise? If whatever you make won't be enough, what's the point?
>>7349 Personal finance is about how best to structure your affairs and what changes to make in order to achieve your goals. You seem to be suggesting the point of it is to make the number the biggerest. Whilst is may be, that seems a silly aim to me.
After giving this some thought, I'd say my main financial goals are mainly about independence. You'll have to forgive me here because I don't know how realistic these goals are, given the career path I've chosen. I'll just say what I want in an ideal situation.
Let's say I want to be able to purchase somewhere to live without taking out a mortgage, or being tied to a mortgage for the minimum time possible. Let's give it a figure of £250,000.
Second, I'd like enough passive income to be able to survive off it if I need to (this is dependant on expenses, I know). It would bring me a lot of security, though, to know I had money coming in based off investments or property or royalties or whatever else.
In terms of sacrifices, as in the previous post I have comfortably(ish) worked 60+ hour weeks in the past. I basically live like a monk, cheap meals prepared in bulk, currently live with family, minimal spending. My most lavish expense right now is probably a nice gym membership. I would be willing to put a substantial part of what I earn back into investments with moderate risk.
For the last question it might be easier to say what I'm not willing to compromise. My health -- it sounds obvious but I'd prefer not to take on so much that it makes me sick (I've managed to stay healthy with huge workloads in the past, but there is obviously a point at which it would become too much, e.g. getting 5 hours sleep per night). I'm also committed to my career path in health, and I wouldn't want to stray far from that. I know myself well enough to say I couldn't hack being a FOREX trader or something for a sustained period of time, even if it meant making lots of cash.
>>7351 Firstly, if you want to own a home, you need to look at making use of the Help to Buy and Lifetime ISAs to help boost your deposit. The easiest way to build up a deposit is to start a regular saver; this gets you into the habit of saving and you'll learn not to miss the money if it goes out on pay day as you never really have it.
The £250,000 figure you mentioned seems pulled out of the air. Have a good think about where you'd like to live and the type of property you'd like to live in and see how much they cost. Set yourself a realistic target.
Once you have a target deposit in mind you can plan how long it should take for you to achieve it. If it's fewer than five years then place any Lifetime ISA monies in cash; if it's greater than this then look to invest. Five years is generally the minimum investment term.
When it comes to getting a mortgage go and see a proper broker. They'll have deals only available via intermediaries and it's likely not to cost you anything as they'll get paid a proc fee by the lender. There's an overpayment calculator on the Money Saving Expert website which you can use to determine whether it's worthwhile to overpay the mortgage or to invest monies elsewhere.
When it comes to a passive income you've got to appreciate it is highly unlikely to be guaranteed. ~15 years ago many pensioners would supplement their retirement income by putting cash in fixed term accounts which paid low double figure rates of interest. Then the financial crisis happened and when their savings accounts matured they found they couldn't find anything yielding anywhere near the same levels. With dividends you'll have to accept that either your income can go down or you'll have to erode the capital if you want to maintain a target level of income.