Category
Freedom
Where personal finance meets politics, history, and the long arc of who actually owns the country.
"Freedom isn't free" is the site's thesis: financial independence is not just a maths problem. Knowing how to invest matters, but so does understanding who controls the rules of the wrapper your money sits in, which way state policy is leaning, and what the historical pattern looks like when governments run out of options.
These pieces are longer, more argumentative, and less how-to than the rest of the site. Some are historical (how debt felled the British Empire, the case for a UK sovereign wealth fund). Some are forward-looking (AI and the labour market, the auto-enrolment story). All of them assume you're the kind of reader who wants to know the political weather as well as the index fund.
37 articles
Showing 1-10
Why You Feel Poor on a 'Good' Salary
Earn £70k with two kids and a £10,000 raise leaves you £4,631. Nobody voted for a 54% tax band, but you are in one. The £60k-£100k squeeze, costed band by band.
Should You Tell People Your Salary?
Your employer knows every salary in the building. You know one. That asymmetry is worth thousands at every pay review, and the salary taboo is what keeps it in place.
Mid-Contract Price Rises: The Hike Nobody Agreed To
In April 2023 your broadband bill went up by 14.4% in the middle of a fixed contract, and the small print said you agreed. Ofcom banned the formula. The replacement still stings.
Who Gets Your Service Charge? The Tipping Con
That 12.5% 'service charge' on your bill wasn't legally a tip until October 2024. It was the restaurant's money, and staff often never saw it. The fix took nine years to arrive.
Financialisation of Housing: When Homes Became Assets
A UK home now costs 7.6 times what a full-time worker earns, up from four times in the 1990s. Your salary did not cause that. Housing stopped being shelter and became an asset class.
Rentier Capitalism: Why Hard Work Stopped Paying
Real UK wages have barely moved since 2008 while the average home costs 7.6 times earnings. That gap has a name: rentier capitalism. The system pays you for owning, not working.
Land Value Tax UK: The Reform Nobody Dares Try
Your council tax band is set by what your home was worth on 1 April 1991. Economists agreed on the fix a century ago. No party will touch it. Meet the tax you cannot dodge.
Bank of Mum and Dad: Should You Gift a Deposit?
The Bank of Mum and Dad gave first-time buyers £9.6 billion in one year: what a housing market looks like when it cannot work without parental subsidy. Access set by inheritance, not income.
Loyalty Penalty UK: Why Staying Put Costs You
Loyalty isn't rewarded in Britain, it's fined. The FCA found 6 million insurance customers would have saved £1.2bn a year by paying the average. The default rinses you.
Modern Monetary Theory UK: Does MMT Work Here?
MMT says a country that prints its own money can never run out of it. True for the US. The UK found out in September 2022 that the bond market disagrees.