To ask if you know any "Secret option 3" secrets? how many "rules" in life are you only finding out too late?

[coffeeginandkindness]

Inspired by this scene in friends where Ross and Rachel are talking about the unwritten rules of life I was thinking what other examples there are

Some of mine are money based but i was also thinking about the thread a few weeks ago where the OP felt like she was being left behind her peers in many other ways. Even though they had all been on a level playing field at uni,

People who manage to buy two properties and let one out instead of buying a bigger house to provide passive income.

People who have limited companies as well as their paid jobs and run expenses through this to reduce their outgoings?

Are there other secrets?
Aibu to ask you share yours?

I do wish people would stop making patronising comments like this. MN is a UK website, aimed at UK users. Yes others use it, but it's not unreasonable to assume most users are in the UK.

As for "hacks", I would have preferred a summer born to save a year's nursery fees! On the other hand, as an autumn born, my son was straight into school full time after three weeks, whereas summers borns had a whole term of mornings only. I have no idea how working parents cope with that.

Driving a decent car and producing a child who is good at football helps you fit in in the aspirational middle class playground.

The main secret seems to be

Choose your parents and date/year of arrival carefully.

My life hacks?
Forget the aspiration to own a house and end up constantly in thrall to a mortgage and expensive maintenance. Get social housing with a lifetime tenancy and you will never have to worry about maintenance.

(nb: I got my house partly due to my situation ,partly due to luck and partly by keeping my eyes and ears open. So I guess my life hack would be: always be curious. Always keep your ear to the ground).

Another life hack? Don't aspire to utterly pointless goals like owning a Porsche. I mean, how is that going to make you fundamentally content? 🙄

A lot of people don’t use this hacks of life not because they are stupid or uninterested but because life is not so simple.
A lot of people struggle to conceive so it’s never the option for them to get “April” baby or “September “ baby they are happy with any baby ( that how felt about mine after 8 years) .
A lot of people are selling their current property not because they are lazy or stupid but because they need money for the next one, otherwise they can’t afford it. And no one can negotiate bigger salary or company car or better holidays if they are taking up certain jobs e.g primary school teacher or cashier at the supermarket. So some so called “hacks” are very unrealistic.

Don’t disagree with you first point
second point though: whilst it is true , it is not the root cause of why people with investments get rich. The point with investments is that you need to have surplus income in the first place to make your first investments . If you’re on the breadline or just making ends meet with income -expenses, you can’t afford to invest .

I will continue to say this until I’m blue in the face : it is really, really easy to make money when you have money. The more money you have the more money you will make. It is actually very hard or very stupid to continually loose money over years if you have money (ok, temporary blips in stock markets will loose money but if you’ve spread you’re investments and are long term investing it is hard not to gain unless you are stupid). If you have £50k stashed away in savings or investments you’ll literally be making money while you sleep are do sod all (currently £50k will make you £4-5 better off each day even sat in a bank). Imagine if you’re on minimum wage - that’s pretty hard to make £5 extra per day doing nothing but sleeping . You have to actually work for that at around 30m8ns work. If you pre a working mum with children to pick up that’s very difficult

I hate rich or well off people thinking they’re getting wealthier by how clever they are, or realised some clever hack, or that poor people are just not using their money well or are stupid. It is the mindset of Tory’s. Anyone, like me who has been both well off and very poor knows how much easier it isn’t get more wealthier once you have some surplus income

I worked in a Corporate environment for 27 years, before taking VR.

I now do a very basic job, working for myself, in what most people would assume is a low paid profession, whereas the reality is that I am earning a shed load.

Never assume the basic jobs pay low. Your Window Cleaner probably earns more than you do.

100% agree.

@Whiteroomjoy - I'm not gonna disagree with you there at all. And I guess for context I've come from a very working class family where survival was the aim. I am now doing a city job and at the beginning didn't really understand how people earning the same as me were much 'wealthier' and it's often because they had the background of being taught that even though they had a high flying job after taxation etc they weren't going to be 'rich'. So it's something that I decided to do- instead of putting away money in a savings account to get minimal interest (which a lot of people do) I'd invest it instead. I have no next to no savings to have immediate access to but I do have stocks that are doing pretty well and it's a longer term plan. It's a different way of managing your money and not just on the basis I have 'lots of money' to begin with. If you asked me to give you £5k from a savings account tomorrow I wouldn't be able to.

@Whiteroomjoy - my point I guess is that women particularly like to know their money is 'safe'. But it's often the risk (if you can palate it) that will make the money. Fully appreciate that if you're on the breadline you can't save anything. But if you are saving something at least consider what returns you're getting on your savings and if there are higher return options.

What’s the job, @BeachBlondey ?

It’s not secret and it requires a bit of money, but my biggest ‘wish I’d known that’ tip from my pregnancies was the difference 3-4 sessions of private physio made to my pelvic girdle pain, even though I wasn’t bad enough for the NHS to offer me anything. Wish I’d known that first time, as I could have cut back elsewhere and done that.

Muslins make fantastic napkins. DS doesn't need them as much anymore. I always wipe my face/ hands during the day. Instead of using kitchen paper I now use his muslins. Savings money and trees

@BeachBlondey
Come on you can’t leave us hanging; spill the beans and tell us what you do.
Please.

Also! ‘Hare magic’ Moroccan lipstick (about £2.50) stays all day, doesn’t bleed and is very moisturising.

OP - I’m not going to patronise you by suggesting you think life is one long episode of Friends, but it’s interesting that it’s a TV show that’s got you thinking about this. “Life hacks” and vague financial solutions are perfect media fodder. Very little of it represents reality.

How often in fiction-based television do you see characters in a panic about money screaming “How on earth are we supposed to find that kind of money by tonight?!” - with, more often than not, their partner shouting back “Well we’ll just HAVE to, won’t we?” And they usually do; either by “ringing round all day” and “calling in every favour possible” or by selling something that, in reality, would be worth a fraction of what they need. The reason it’s all so vague is that the scriptwriters just need to get the characters to the end point of coming through their crisis - the details of how it happened, and any accompanying realism is not important.

Similarly, headlines that scream “This life hack can save you thousands!!!” or “The secret banks don’t want you to know about!” exist to generate clicks and the associated ad revenue. Most of the time the secret isn’t that secret, and certainly won’t save you thousands.

Ask yourself - if there were all these secret solutions out there, how long would they stay secret? Life isn’t like that. When something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

No one is ever on a level playing field - so much of your life's outcomes are determined or at least influenced by your family, and where you're born and grow up. There's no 'secret hack' to having a second BTL property - someone has given you that money!

Didn’t some financial analyst work out that if “business guru” Donald Trump had just left all his inherited wealth in high interest accounts, he’d have made more than he did through any of his businesses?

Those born in the autumn are around 25% more likely than those born in the summer to get an Oxbridge place. It's interesting that the effect is so long lasting. Some of the advantage must be psychological by that stage.

I can't imagine having the sangfroid to use a birth timing 'hack' for reasons of educational advancement though.

@Anklespraying same here with the mat pay - first time was a happy accident, second time was carefully planned! Baby boom in August/Sept every year at my bank!

Could one of you please explain the banking industry and conception planning please??

You don't have to go to every fight/argument that you are invited to.
You can always make more money, but you can't buy the time back.

The Porsche will be an all electric Taycan and does legitimately lower Corporation Tax. My Accountant actually advised me to do it myself.

@Whiteroomjoy
100% agree with you especially with the following:
I hate rich or well off people thinking they’re getting wealthier by how clever they are, or realised some clever hack, or that poor people are just not using their money well or are stupid.

Agree. Its ridiculous to judge an August born again a September born in the same year group.

@DojaPhat as I recall (it was a while ago!) your maternity pay is based on the average of your monthly pay over two pay periods somewhere around 24weeks. If one of these pays included your annual bonus then that bumped up your average pay, and that’s what was used as your Mat pay

So if you earn 2k a month, the normal average is 2+2 /2 i.e 2, so your mat pay is based on a monthly figure of 2k. But if your two pays are one normal 2k then 2+2k bonus, the calculation is 2+4 /2 = 3. So your mat pay is now 3k a month. It was great!!

@Piffpaffpoff Thank you!! That's definitely a good hack!