Category: Analysis & comment

Dec ’25: 2025 in review

FIRE v London6 Comments

It’s over. The year of 2025, the thirteenth year I’ve been systematically tracking my investment portfolio every month, is over.

One of the reasons I blog is to track my performance with a bit more discipline and rigour than I might manage otherwise. And part of that process is to review the portfolio not just monthly, but with a bit more depth each year.

Seven questions to assess my portfolio

For the last few years I have answered seven questions – with a variety of analyses that I don’t conduct every month. These seven questions are as follows:

Q1 – How did markets do?

Q2 – How did I do, vs my benchmark?

Q3 – What is my progress towards my retirement goals?

Q4 – How tax efficient is my portfolio?

Q5 – What fees am I paying?

Q6 – How complex is my porfolio?

Q7 – What key risks am I taking?

What’s the answer? Lots to like this year

This year is no different, insofar as I have considered each of these seven questions. But rather than simply copy/paste last year’s post, with minor updates, I’m going to cut to the punchline.

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Nov ’25: Coastal Folly loan repaid

FIRE v London6 Comments

Trump dominated the headlines again. This time partly due to some very biased editing by the BBC of a Panorama show about Trump before the US election.

There was also the omnipresent UK Budget. Which has had more than enough coverage. I did a ‘damage assessment‘ at the time and haven’t revised/updated my view since.

Back at home, the Christmas season started early. I found myself dining at two of London’s impressive skyscraper restaurants in one week.

I also managed a trip up to Oxford, where the Christmas lights were out in force.

Other London highlights included a performance of the Crucible in South London, and a dinner at George’s club in Mayfair.

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2025 Budget: Damage assessment

FIRE v London4 Comments

The big news in the UK this week was the latest Budget by the Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

The scare story in the budget runup

All UK readers of this blog will know that the rumours and counter-rumours in the run-up to this budget exceeded anything we have seen before.

There were too many rumours in advance of the budget to catalogue properly here. But I want to highlight several key rumours:

  • Taxes up by 2%. For a crucial couple of weeks in November, the government was rolling the pitch to break its manifesto pledge by increasing income taxes by 2%.
  • National insurance on investment income, notably property rental income. This rumour felt credible to me, because it happens elsewhere – such as Ireland. However most of the commentary missed a key characteristic about NI which is that there is an Upper Earnings Limit of around £4k per month (£50k p.a., roughly) above which you only pay 2%, not 8% (or, until quite recently, 12%).
  • Mansion taxes. The key rumours here were that there would be a tax of 1% on ‘mansions’ above the value of £1.5m or £2m. This move would have been the most impactful for me – with over £8m in two ‘mansions’, I was facing potential £40k p.a. of an entirely new tax.
  • Pension changes – potentially reducing the ability to take around 25% tax-free, for instance.
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