Tim's Wealth Letter

06/06/2026

This week the S&P 500 hit a record high — above 7,600 for the first time, after rising nine weeks in a row. Then on Friday one chip company gave a weak forecast, and the index lost a trillion dollars in an afternoon.

That whippy, top-heavy thing is the fund almost all of us own. It's my default too, and it's still where I think most people should start.

But here's the part nobody mentions. You think you own 500 companies. You mostly own about ten. After a decade of a few tech giants swallowing the market, the Magnificent Seven alone are now more than a third of the index.

The "diversification" you bought for safety is quietly a bet on seven companies and the enormous electricity bill of the AI build-out.

At the turn of the year I moved my core out of the standard S&P 500 and into an equal-weight version. Same 500 companies — each gets the same small slice, instead of letting a handful be the whole story.

It doesn't promise me a better return. It just means I'm not betting the lot on seven companies by accident.

Why I did it, what the numbers actually say, and which of the usual arguments for it I don't buy:

https://timswealthletter.substack.com/p/i-own-the-s-and-p-500-just-not-the

03/06/2026

The market keeps hitting record highs. That feels like the worst possible moment to start investing. The numbers say otherwise...

https://timswealthletter.substack.com/p/surely-nows-a-terrible-time-to-start?r=ute9

12/05/2026

Most people don't fail at investing. They just don't get round to it.

The current account they've been meaning to do something about for years. The pension they've never opened. The adviser they don't really like and don't really trust, but haven't quite got round to firing.

None of it feels urgent. None of it, on its own, seems worth worrying about.

But it adds up. Quietly. Year after year. In ways you don't see, because the number on the statement keeps going up.

I've just published a new Start Here piece — a plain-English guide to managing your own money in three layers. The first layer is the only one most people ever need. And it beats the average paid adviser.

You don't need to be smart, or brave, or interested in investing.

You just need to start.

Read the full piece: https://open.substack.com/pub/timswealthletter/p/start-here-crawl-walk-run

(Not financial advice. Do your own research.)

How to begin managing your own money — and why most people never quite get round to it.

11/05/2026

Your financial adviser doesn’t beat the market.

85% of professionals don’t.

But they all charge you as if they do.

Three things I wish I’d known sooner ↑

Comment “FREE” and I’ll send you the first three chapters of Make Yourself Rich so you can learn what I learned.


—
Not financial advice. Investments can go down as well as up. Always do your own research.

08/05/2026

Most people think it’s the safe choice. The numbers disagree.

06/05/2026

Portfolio Update: I bought Intel at $20.24 last August. Sold on Friday at $99.

A 389% gain in nine months — about two years ahead of when I expected the trade to pay off!

So why did I sell? It's not that I think Intel won't go up any more, it probably will. But there is a logic and a plan to my investing.

Read why it was a buy in the first place, and why I exited before the story was over — in this week's Tim's Wealth Letter.

👉 https://open.substack.com/pub/timswealthletter/p/intel-a-389-gain-in-nine-months-and

Not financial advice. A 389% gain in nine months is not typical, and you should not assume similar results from any other stock.

30/04/2026

Nothing to do with finance, or investing, or anything like that — it’s a lovely day in Kent, and I’m feeling happy… that’s all!

28/04/2026

Most people's relationship with their pension goes like this:

A statement arrives once a year. It lists a number. The number goes up most years. You glance at it, file it somewhere, and go back to thinking about the other 11 months of your life.

That's it. That's the whole relationship.

If that's the sum total of your engagement with the most important tax wrapper the UK government has ever created, you are almost certainly leaving serious money on the table.

For 2026/27, every £1,000 a higher-rate taxpayer puts into a pension costs them just £600. The government tops up the rest.

There is no other investment in the UK that hands you a guaranteed 67% return before the markets do anything at all.

So why doesn't everyone max it out?

For most people, the only exposure they ever have is a workplace pension — in funds someone else picked, with fees they don't see, and almost no engagement until retirement is already in view. The most powerful tax wrapper available to ordinary UK investors is also the most underused.

A SIPP — Self-Invested Personal Pension — is the same wrapper. The difference is YOU decide what's inside.

You don't need a Financial Adviser, or to pay expensive fees.

Read the full article here: https://timswealthletter.substack.com/p/the-pension-nobody-talks-about

In the full article I cover what a SIPP actually is, how the tax relief really works, what I hold in mine, and the trap to watch for if you're thinking about transferring an old workplace pension.

— Not personal financial advice. Pension rules are complex and the relief rate depends on your tax bracket. Please do your own research and consider qualified advice if you're thinking about transferring old pensions.

27/04/2026

£5,000 today. £87,000 in 30 years. No genius required.

That's the maths of compounding at roughly the long-term S&P 500 average.

Put £5,000 into a low-cost index fund, leave it alone for three decades, and it grows to around £87,000 — without you having to pick a single stock, time a single trade, or pay a single adviser.

What's powerful about compounding isn't how fast it works.

It's how it accelerates.

For the first few years, almost nothing seems to happen. Your money grows, but not dramatically. It feels like progress is slow. This is where most people give up, or start fiddling — picking hot stocks, trying to time the market, trusting someone else to "do something" with their money.

They're missing the point.

Compounding doesn't reward cleverness. It rewards patience.

The real returns — the ones that change your life — come in the last decade, when your earlier gains are themselves earning. That's the bit most people never see because they've already interfered with it.

The hardest thing in investing isn't picking stocks, reading charts, or timing the market. It's having the self-discipline to leave your investments alone.

Full breakdown with the numbers on my Substack — https://timswealthletter.substack.com/p/the-miracle-of-compounding