Old money had
lawyers. New money
has better info.
Markets, metals, whisky casks, Birkins and the psychology that makes you buy them at the wrong time. One desk-grade memo, three times a week, written for people whose money is newer than their ambition.
The cask supremacy: rare whisky quietly outran the S&P for a decade. Then everyone noticed.
Buy it, or rent it and invest the rest?
Set the four numbers below — or pick a starting point. Everything else is already sensible; fine-tune it under Advanced if you like.
Advanced settings — fine-tune every assumption
Buying & the mortgage
Renting
Investing, cushion & tax
See the money, line by line
If you buy
The cash you need, and what leaves your account each month.
If you rent & invest
Same cash invested, then the same monthly spend — rent paid, the rest invested.
How this works — and where it’s honest
Same money, two roads. Both start with the identical cash: the deposit plus buying costs. The buyer spends it and mortgages the rest. The renter invests it — and invests the monthly difference between the two, too. That’s the only fair way to compare.
Same spend every month. The buyer’s outgoings are mortgage + upkeep. The renter spends the same total — pays the rent, invests the rest. The cash cushion is there only so a bad market year doesn’t force selling at the bottom.
The one big difference. A home you live in is free of capital-gains tax; the renter’s investments are taxed on their profit at the end. “Best estimate” uses steady average returns; “stress-test” draws hundreds of bumpy, realistic futures so a run of bad early years counts against you exactly as it would in real life.
Figures are UK-baseline (£, stamp-duty bands, private-residence relief) that you set yourself — no live market data. General guidance only, not financial, tax, or investment advice.
One list.
Three desks.
Zero fluff.
Every subscriber gets all three. Skim what you like, forward what makes you look smart.