There’s a war that has been raging on in the FIRE community since the beginning. Every corner you turn, every FIRE forum you stumble upon, you’ll see people arguing for and against including your home in your FI calculations. I’ve always been in the for camp, but I’ve never fully explored the notion. So, for my benefit as well as yours, let’s deep dive into this question - Should you include your house in your net worth?...

In 2017-2018 the BBC made £3.8324 billion from charging people for a ‘TV licence’. Think about that for a second… The BBC is making more money from their ‘TV licence’ than some of the biggest companies in the world. There’s mainly one reason for this; most of the UK believe they need to have one. They think it’s a tax, and the BBC are doing everything in their power to convince you of this....

When I find out people who live in the UK have never heard of matched betting, I cry a little inside. A way for people to make £1000s of tax-free income with minimal effort which is basically exclusive to the UK? It sounds almost ludicrous, but it’s really not! Everyone normally moans that people in the USA earn more money, but I know people who are making over 5k per month from spending 20 hours a week matched betting on the side of a full-time job....

Why Pensions Are Awesome First things first - Pensions in the UK are absolutely bloody awesome. There’s no other country which I know of that offers tax savings as good as this. If you’re in the higher rate tax bracket, contributing to your pension via salary sacrifice would instantly save you 42% of what you deposit from 40% income tax and 2% National Insurance savings. If you throw a student loan into the mix, you can add another 9% savings onto this, saving a total of 51%!...

This is a Saving Ninja savings report. Go to How To Track Your Savings to check out the Saving Ninja Super Spreadsheet. Please note that I split my expenses equally with my partner and the savings rate, house equity and house value represent my share only. The spreadsheet calculates my savings rate based off £12,000 worth of expenses per year, even though my expenses are actually Less Than 10k Per Year ....