By @edent · FIRE money · 4 comments · 650 words · read ~199 times.
Everyone's favourite tabloid, The Daily Telegraph, contains an article decrying the Financial Independence Retire Early philosophy1 I have a mixed relationship with the FIRE movement. It basically boils down to "spend less, save more, then you can retire once you've save 25x your annual spend". That's it. As Michael Taylor writes, some people fetishise the […]
Continue reading →By @edent · FIRE money · 5 comments · 1,050 words · read ~382 times.
Brits hate talking about money. But this benefits no-one. This is my situation - it's probably different to yours. I'm acutely aware I'm in a better financial position than most. This isn't financial advice - but I'd sure appreciate anyone's thoughts. I've recently moved down to a 4-day-a-week job. Taking a 20% hit to my […]
Continue reading →By @edent · money openbanking python · 1 comment · 450 words
As I mentioned last week, MoneyDashboard is shutting down. They are good enough to provide a JSON export of all your previous transactions. It is full of entries like this: { "Account": "My Mastercard", "Date": "2020-02-24T00:00:00Z", "CurrentDescription": null, "OriginalDescription": "SUMUP *Pizza palace, London, W1", "Amount": […]
Continue reading →By @edent · api data finance money openbanking programming · 3 comments · 550 words · read ~471 times.
A few weeks ago I was moaning about there being no OpenBanking API for personal use. Thankfully, I was wrong! As pointed out by Dave a company called Nordigen was set up to provide a free Open Banking service. It was quickly bought by GoCardless who said: We believe access to open banking data should […]
Continue reading →By @edent · api money openbanking · 16 comments · 600 words · read ~333 times.
The recent news that MoneyDashboard is suddenly shutting down has exposed a gap in the way OpenBanking works. It is simply impossible for a user to get read-only access to their own data without using an aggregator. And there are very few aggregators around. Why is it impossible for me to get programmatic access to […]
Continue reading →By @edent · money Open Data Open Source OpenBenches · 7 comments · 500 words · read ~534 times.
My wife and I run a side project called OpenBenches.org - it is a fun little crowd-sourced memorial bench site. It's mostly fun, except when the bills come due! Most hobby sites and side projects don't cost a lot to run. Lots of services have generous free tiers to (ab)use, and they can pay well […]
Continue reading →By @edent · mobile money phone · 6 comments · 500 words · read ~330 times.
I'm not sure how many people know this, but I thought I'd share something I learned a few years ago when I worked for a mobile phone seller. Most modern smartphones are too expensive for people to purchase outright. At the most extreme end, the iPhone 14 Pro Max costs £1,2001. So a typical customer […]
Continue reading →By @edent · Book Review childfree FIRE money · 300 words · read ~155 times.
My wife and I are planning on being DWZ DINK FIRE. That's a lot of letters to say we want to retire early and not leave any money to our non-existent kids. This book is a (slightly shallow) exploration of 26 people on similar journeys. They're all American (or now living in the USA) so […]
Continue reading →By @edent · banking fraud money scam · 2 comments · 450 words · read ~358 times.
There's an incredibly distressing story in the BBC about a vulnerable elderly man who was conned out of his life savings. Fraud victim gets surprise £153,000 refund despite rules BBC News In the story, the heartless bank refused to refund the fraud victim due to an absurd technicality - the money was sent to a […]
Continue reading →By @edent · electricity EnergyCrisis money NaBloPoMo SavingSessions solar · 800 words · read ~309 times.
Electricity demand varies throughout the day. When demand is higher, electricity prices go up. Most UK consumers are insulated from this variability - we pay a fixed price per kWh no matter what the actual wholesale cost. But it doesn't need to be this way. Exposing users to the immense variability in pricing is probably […]
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