What caught my eye this week.
Have you ever described yourself as just another average kind of personal finance blog-reading mostly passive occasionally active FIRE-obsessed crypto skeptic?
Well Indeedably did us all a favour this week by collating the data on what Mr Average really looks like:
“Average” varies by locale, so let’s consider the English version, as told by the statistics.
A white 40-year-old man. Married to a white 38-year-old woman. With two school-aged children.
Living in a commuter town somewhere in middle England. Home is a three-bedroom, 720 square foot, house worth £249,000. £96,000 remains outstanding on the mortgage.
Their pensions, investments, savings, cars, and other possessions are worth a combined £133,600.
Giving them a total net worth of £286,600.
Their household annual income was £38,550 before tax, resulting in a disposable income of £29,900.
This means they house, clothe, feed, and entertain the whole family on £81 per day.
It’s invariably interesting to see how one compares to these sorts of statistics.
Unless one is looking at the average age from the wrong side of 45. Then it’s more like an Edvard Munch painting lit by Saturday morning’s PC screen.
Arm wrestling Mr Average
I’d never skip reading Indeedably’s posts in full. Even the bit in this one where he questions:
Pseudonymously written blog posts, whose content is regularly interrupted by confidence undermining random advertisements for haemorrhoid cream, lottery tickets, and Mongolian throat singing lessons?
Ouch! All I can say in our defense is that Internet advertising is mostly personalized to the reader’s own browsing habits…
Ahem. 
How much like Mrs or Mr Average are you feeling these days? And do you aspire to retire to a life less ordinary – or something more mundane?
Let us know how Middle of the Road you are in the comments below.
Have a great weekend all!
From Monevator
Best bond funds and bond ETFs – Monevator
Are you childish about money? The origins of our money mindsets – Monevator
From the archive-ator: Too big to scale – Monevator
News
Note: Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view you can click to read the piece without being a paid subscriber. Try privacy/incognito mode to avoid cookies. Consider subscribing if you read them a lot!1
House prices boom, at least outside of London… – Reuters
…and Nationwide predicts the price growth will continue – Guardian
Long hours are killing 745,000 people a year, global study finds – BBC
UK-listed firms fall to ‘pandemic plundering’ as bosses profit – ThisIsMoney
Leonard Blavatnik named UK’s richest person with £23bn fortune – BBC
San Francisco tech firms sit on record amounts of empty space – CNBC
Crash rules everything around me – A Wealth of Common Sense
Products and services
“Custom indexing unlocks lots of benefits” [Podcast] – Morningstar
Comparing the cost of UK holiday destinations – ThisIsMoney
Natwest to allow personalized bank transfer caps to beat scammers – Which
Sign-up to Freetrade via my link and we can both get a free share worth between £3 and £200 – Freetrade
More Britons pursue a holiday home in Portugal – ThisIsMoney
Houses with outbuildings for sale, in pictures – Guardian
Comment and opinion
Larry Swedroe: the endowment effect – The Evidence-based Investor
Three reasons not to worry about hyperinflation right now – MathBabe
Merryn S-W: are ageing populations really bad for the economy? [Search result] – FT
Good retirement savers are lousy spenders – Leisure Freak
The black box economy – Vox
Lessons from the Great Crypto Crash of May 2021 – The Escape Artist
Profits beat prophets in today’s market – Bloomberg
The spectacular failure of the endowment model – Advisor Perspectives
Twin certainties – Humble Dollar
Naughty corner: Active antics
Fund managers are betting on a boom and inflation – MarketWatch
High-yield spreads are the best single macro indicator – Verdad
Mishits – Enso Finance
S&P 500 CAPE ratio says US market is in an epic bubble – UK Value Investor
A diverse portfolio is a strong portfolio – The Evidence-based Investor
Covid corner
Tests for travel: how to get a green light to go abroad – Guardian
What has gone wrong in Singapore and Taiwan? – BBC
Covid R number inches up across England – Evening Standard
Emptying the nest. Again – New York Times
Kindle book bargains
Lab Rats: Why Modern Work Makes People Miserable by Dan Lyons – £0.99 on Kindle
What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence by Stephen Schwarzman – £0.99 on Kindle
Hired: Six months undercover in low-wage Britain – £0.99 on Kindle
The Future Is Faster Than You Think by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler – £0.99 on Kindle
Environmental factors
Low emission zones do work – Guardian
IEA: no new oil, gas, or coal if we’re to hit net zero by 2050 – DIY Investor
The biggest climate stress test so far – Klement on Investing
“It’s a dirty currency”: Bitcoin’s growing energy problem [Search result] – FT
Climate crisis to put millions of UK homes at risk of subsiding – Guardian
It’s hard to poison a feral pig – Undark
Off our beat
Life satisfaction is better for older people, even when they get sick – Klement on Investing
When all moments have equal value – Raptitude
Daniel Kahneman: “Clearly AI is going to win” – Guardian
All hail King Pokémon! – Input
The optimal amount of hassle – Morgan Housel
The blandness of TikTok’s biggest stars – Vox
Fungi and urban planning – The London Review of Books
And finally…
“In most of our decisions, we are not betting against another person. Rather, we are betting against all the future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing.”
– Annie Duke, Thinking In Bets
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