Best financial decisions

[thetallfairy]

On the back of a fascinating other thread

Would love to know what your best financial decisions are?

I have very few sadly

But I am delighted I did not let my abusive ex pressurise me into marriage even when he went to book a civil ceremony and just expected me to show up on the day to please him

Very little financial advice in school
Had no clue re credit cards and overdrafts
Learned the hard way sadly !!!!

Education - getting a degree and a professional qualification.
Paying into a pension
The worst was getting into debt which took me a long time to get out of.

My Barclays shares that went up loads overnight when there was a shorting ban years ago.

My Tesla shares have tripled in value.

A mortgage of 0.168% above base rate which is paid off now and another mortgage of around 1% (unfortunately this ends next summer).

Years ago I read an article in The Times about how my mortgage provider had two rates, one for new customers and one for old customers and apparently this wasn’t allowed. So the newspaper included a letter to copy and add my own details to, I did that and got a big refund and switched to the lower rate.

This one was an accident, The Woolwich Building Society became Barclays Bank around 28 years ago, I got 3k and took my family to Jamaica with it which was the first time I had left Europe. Although in a way this cost me a lot of money as I now have the travelling bug.

Years ago paying off the mortgage when the opportunity arose against the advice of accountant.
The sense of freedom was enormous.

Parents who drummed into us constantly from a very early age to always have some savings and once working, start a pension.

I was lucky enough to be automatically enrolled into a final salary pension back in the early 80s and I have always been a saver even if I didn't have a lot of left over money to save at times.

Best decision: Downsizing slightly at 60 to get rid of the small mortgage I had and becoming mortgage free. The freedom from paying that every month meant more to put into savings.

Civil service pension.

current house, had the option to do fixed rate at the time, cheap mortgage for 5 years or go variable to see if it went lower. Mortgage advisor and husband were discussing variable and I put my foot down, we got it fixed at low rate just before they all zoomed up massively because of truss. saved us 1000s.

marrying someone financially savvy….not in a making millions on bitcoin way, but we are secure in pensions etc.

These are amazing

I am lucky to have no mortgage

Got some credit cards hanging off my shoulders and these need to go

One used to be 10k

That was a killer

I used to go crazy at Xmas
One year the kids had so many gifts they didn't even open
So from now on we keep it small

Is there any chance you can find a link to that Times article please @FastTurtle ?

Yes please @FastTurtle

We were on a bad rate on a previous property and had no idea what to do

Putting in place adequate life insurance and critical illness cover policies for me and my DH.

Buying a house instead of renting.

Getting a pension

Yes absolutely

My pension is dire

I need to get it sorted asap

Getting divorced!
never having a credit card or overdraft.

Offset mortgage with a lifetime tracker interest rate (0.75% above the base rate). Seemed expensive at the time 25 years ago but was great during the low interest years. We needed the flexibility because of erratic income from DH's business but it proved to be an excellent choice and was paid off a few years ago.

Reclaiming PPI. I didn't think I'd qualify because I had chosen a policy myself rather than having it foisted on me by a lender. So wasn't going to bother then I was in the car with DD who was about 12 and one of those relentless ads came on. I spoke out loud about mine probably not being eligible and DD said "do it Mum" so I went on Martin Lewis, did it and got a couple of £k back fairly easily.

(1) Where possible, don't allow payrises to lead to lifestyle creep.

Every single payrise is split in 3:

1. Pension
2. Savings
3. Spending

First boss told me that one and I've stick to it.

(2) Negotiate every payrise hard and always look for one after a good year's performance.

(3) Try not to buy anything expensive until bank holiday weekends - there's more likely to be a sale or a discount code.

Lived off one salary.

Never had any debt.

Didn't keep up with the Jones in terms of buying more and more expensive houses so are mortgage free in our 30s.

Nothing particularly savvy here but I am so glad we didn’t move to a bigger house when most people on our income do. We stayed small with the mortgage paid off and used most of the money to fund retirement savings but also amazing experiences with the kids.

we are now financially set and could retire tomorrow- we’ve both just turned 50. Can honestly say we work because we want to and enjoy it but it’s so liberating to have that freedom.

Transferring my work final salary pension to a SIPP when I was made redundant. Up 67% in 7 years. Retiring next month age 54.

Long term mortgage fix, and never stopping work other than maternity leave.

Also generally being tight - packed lunches and no flash cars kind of thing.

Saving to buy a house in our twenties. Overpaying the mortgage so that now in our late 30s we are on our next house which is a decent size, and have a good amount of equity built up.

Working as a teenager and during university so had savings built up, a smaller student loan and work experience which meant it was easier to get a graduate job dispute the financial crash at the time.

Genius

How much does the average divorce cost? Like is there a way to do it without paying shed loads?

tbh I honest it cost me practically 10k but it was worth every penny! Best solicitor ever! She dealt with everything! She advocated for me when I didn’t even know how or that i needed to! I came out with everything I needed to start over again.

So much if this stuff is very dependent on when you were born frustratingly eg my work closed their final salary pension scheme whilst I was at uni.

Buying a house I guess but I only did that with family help as I'm a Londoner.

I do have decent savings in my S&S ISAs but again I didn't really do anything.

@Upsetbetty well it was money well spent and the peace of mind is priceless