My Knowledge Directory

One of my favourite topics to discuss is financial planning. I expect that the more I blog about that, the lower my readership will be. 🙂

Last night, my sister and I reviewed her workplace pension and her stocks and shares ISA. We concluded:

1. It’s important to regularly review how much we can contribute to our workplace pensions. For now, my sister thinks she can deposit an extra $100* per month so she’ll adjust her employee contribution immediately. By using calculators such as this one, you can easily see the difference that an extra $ per week/month/quarter, can make to your pension by the time you retire. A small amount each month can make a significant difference in 20 years from now. The sooner you start, the better, and it’s not to late to start.
2. She won’t yet increase the monthly deposits to her stocks and shares ISA. However, at the end of each month, she’ll commit to transferring any leftover cash to her ISA. This is super easy to do with her ISA app and it’s free. An extra $20 one month, an extra $5 another, will all add up.

*I have used $ when I in fact mean British pounds. My keyboard doesn’t have the pound sign.

In the last year, I and 2 close families completed massive home renovations projects.

Here are some of my top learnings. I’ll add more as I continue to remember them. In fact, as I’ve been writing this short post, I’ve made a note of 5 more already!

1. Always get at least 3 quotes

Yes, it’s a total pain to ring round to find builders, arrange visits, chase them when they don’t turn up, show them around etc but the pain of doing that is a tonne lower than the regret pain of picking a bad builder in a rush. You’ll learn something with each quote, you’ll become more knowledgeable about the project, and you’ll know what you like/don’t like about the builder e.g. the level of detail they share, their communication, their punctuality. Ask friends & family for builder recommendations to make this easier – they’ll also share their war stories & best practices with you.

2. Do your research into the works

Aside from researching the builders, take time to understand the work you’re looking to have done. This couldn’t be easier now with AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. Simple prompts asking about the work, asking about common problems, the best materials, the timelines, the costs, pictures etc, will all help you to ask meaningful questions to your builders when they come to give quotes. This information and these tools will also help you to check the quote e.g. does the quote include waste removal including the cost of the skips?

3. Do daily visits to your projects & question everything

This was my biggest mistake. I assumed the main builder, who served as the Project Manager, would critically assess everything that was happening. And when I did visit the site, I accepted the builder’s update without question. Luckily, my brother has a much more critical eye plus armed with his strong common sense and his own online research into the works, he confidently inspected the work in project and questioned it at each visit.

I’ve created this website to document information that I’ve found useful but that I’m worried I’ll forget.