Another one in the bag. We entered 2025 with few plans beyond allowing the dust to settle following the extension project in 2024 and to take it easy. The focus of the year was normality, enjoying our home, enjoying time with one another and doing the things we love to do. Flicking through the highlight reel we made some wonderful memories, were able to visit some great places and spend time with people who we enjoy being around.
I have unfortunately been terrible at sharing all of this on the blog, as has often become the start of my posts. While that’s a tale as old as time, I do wish to do better in 2026, as I really enjoy not just looking back over pictures in Apple Photos, but also reading the thoughts and feelings that get forgotten too easily. We’ve had a really good year, but it was not all roses, there were challenges, work has been stressful for us both in different ways, but I hope that we can turn that around for the new year.
Across everything, the biggest observation from the year is that time has become the thing in shortest supply. Our normal weekdays are a flurry of activity from 06:30 to 08:45 with the morning routine, followed by a day spent at work followed by another whirlwind from 17:00 until the bedtime routine is complete. The 19:30 to 21:30 window has become sacrosanct but of little use for anything beyond relaxing before bed. I find focusing in the evening difficult and so the blog and other personal projects are naturally impacted. This is not a story unique to us, but the reality of family. I love it though and enjoy being busy - we’re a great team and work well together to split jobs and get chores, cooking and prep done when it needs to be done.
I wanted to share a few thoughts and feelings to reflect on 2025 and some things to change or improve on in the new year. Not a list of New Year’s resolutions, but some ambition and guidelines. It’s going to be a year of quiet, intentional, grown-up change and I’m confident that in doing so, it will make us even stronger as we get further from our 20s and closer to our 40s. Fuck that’s frightening to write.
It’s the same old story in the health category, I should move more and drink less. 2025 was terrible for exercise and it was terrible for drinking too. I feel positive about making improvements in 2026 and focusing on postive change. One month in and already doing quite well, despite the cold, dark and rain I’ve been running and not boozing. I am very aware that drinking and not exercising are correlated with each other, when I drink, I don’t exercise. And I drink much more than I should. The answer there is pretty straightforward, it needs to change. It might be an uncomfortable reality, but it is the reality.
I’ve also noticed for the first time in my life that my (relative) poor investment in exercise and strength is beginning to show. My knees are not what they once were and even for basic things like using a trolley in the supermarket can cause me some slight pain through twisting my knee. This is material though, I just need to invest myself a little - I know I will wish I had when I’m in my later years. So the plan for 2026 looks like this:
I want to revisit this area at the end of the year and feel like I made a difference across these areas.
This was one area where I made some improvement in 2025 and I’m quite glad about it too. For the last 5 or so years I have been taking Etoricoxib, a pain medication I was prescribed for my lower back where I was experiencing ongoing and very distracting dull pain. Basically, backache. At the worst point this pain was interfering with my sleep and causing me to really lose focus while at work. I have had several MRI scans and all sorts to rule out anything problematic, but no cause found. Separately, I was increasingly experiencing pain in my left big toe knuckle which turned out to be osteoarthritis and while not a problem was very annoying. One Etoricoxib tablet sorted my back and coincidentally also sorted my toe. But after at least four years on that I decided I wasn’t too happy about taking this medication for the rest of my life at age 34. This year I swapped and started taking turmeric which I had read as being helpful for arthritis. Absolute game-changer… Sorted everything out, back and toe. Simple as that, no more medication, just a simple, easy supplement instead.
On the back of that win, I went on a bit of a supplement rally and now take a whole bunch of shit. Of them all, Magnesium has been the other stand-out winner, and has improved my ability to sleep well and get to sleep easily no end. I have struggled for years with getting to sleep with an overly busy ruminating mind, which I no longer have. Valerian Root I have started taking on top, which seems to help too. Of course, drinking less or not at all is also a massive help here.
All of this begs the question why the many doctors and consultants I have seen over the years didn’t suggest any of this for my back, toe or sleep. I have my suspicions.
Here’s my supplement ‘stack’:
In the new year I would like to add Creatine and a few other things to this list, mostly aimed at general wellbeing and longer-term health, as well as continuing taking the above supps. Taking all of this is not necessarily a cheap thing to do, so it does need to be considered. But I feel it’s worthwhile, we pay more for life insurance policies than we do for supplements and at least these I know make something of a difference. If it’s helpful, we buy from British Supplements (which is a weird site, but their products do seem very good), Nutrition Geeks and some of Costco’s Kirkland range. The Magnesium from Nutrition Geeks I didn’t get on with, but the one from British Supplements is great.
I’m not sure 2025 was a particularly productive year for diet. We generally eat well and cook most food ourselves, although tend to be more generous than is perhaps sensible with wine, butter, salt and cheese. Of course, it’s certainly better to cook things at home, but more recently I fear we may be eroding the health benefit of doing so in favour of flavour and taste. I don’t generally record my weight, but my Bupa annual report shares that in the time since 2023 I have put on about 4kg. Taking into account my height, my BMI is at the top of the normal range, which I suppose is good. But I don’t feel that’s telling the true story of diet choices, as transfats, other nasties and cholesterol are probably doing harm where it can’t be seen. In addition, I almost certainly don’t eat enough fibre (I don’t think anyone really does) and probably don’t eat my 5-a-day either.
For 2026, I do need to make change to what I eat, to what we eat, as I think we can and should be doing much better. I have some history of changing my diet, in the late 10s I opted to stop eating pork for a year or so and in early 2020 went veggie for over two years. Both of these changes were largely focused on the ethical, environmental and personal-health/diet impacts of livestock farming and meat consumption - I still feel the same way about these issues now as I did then. But effecting long-term change is difficult, they were instead transitory and ‘faddy’ diets, which didn’t stick. This year I expect we’ve got some breathing room and stability to do better and to make things stick in the longer term, diet will be a pillar of focus for 2026.
So what to change? In summary, I want us to eat more thoughtfully, more sustainably, and for our long-term health. Here are my thoughts, strap in, it’s a bit of a list:
This will be hard to track, but I think we’ll feel whether we’re on track or not. As with drinking, I think a monthly accountability check-in will help here.
In 2025 I did not read very much, at all. The one book I did read (I believe) was ‘The Wager’ by David Grann it was so good and I struggled to put it down. Reading long-form is a challenge for me particularly with the pressure of time, but it is something I must do better with and begin to normalise. I have added a page to the blog, to track books I’ve read and those I wish to read to try and encourage reading a little more. Let’s see.
Colliers in 2025 invested in providing technology colleagues with access to Pluralsight. Across the summer I completed several courses and subsequently passed both Azure Cloud Fundamentals and Google Cloud Digital Leader. These are of course, the ‘loss-leader’ exams, designed to get you hooked and to provide a baseline understanding which I mostly already had, but it was rewarding nonetheless. In 2026, I’d like to continue utilising Pluralsight and to attain another Google Certification.
Towards the end of 2025 I invested some of my time in voluntary work, conducting a business capability and technology assessment for Medway Yacht Club. I completed the report in mid-December and provided the Flag Officers with a walk-through before the end of the year. It was a very interesting project and a welcome opportunity to apply some of my experience in another environment and for a worthy cause. In the new year, I hope to spend more time with The Club in 2026, contributing further in maturing their use of technology.
2025 was a relatively dry spell for social media and I’m quite happy with that. It seems that this stance is increasingly normal for our generation, there’s a great article on the New Yorker which accurately describes my feelings on social media.
I still have accounts on most platforms, although seldom use them. Facebook is an occasional exception, as it’s particularly useful for selling things on Marketplace and for keeping an eye on community news and events. I don’t think my use is unhealthy though, it’s serving a purpose.
I did begin to slip into a habit of ‘swiping’ Instagram and YouTube shorts. Instagram is a tricky one, there are some accounts which I quite enjoy following, but it’s very easy to slip into a habit of staring at it for hours. I have uninstalled it and hope to keep it that way for now. YouTube shorts is particularly naughty as I do like long-form YouTube videos from time to time. Self-discipline for that is key.
Across the year I’d like to focus more on Mastodon and using that to share things here and there. I’ve found this is more for me personally, than it is an attempt to share with an audience. It’s nice to write things down and share thoughts and feelings. I want to use it as a mini-blog, which is basically its purpose. I do very much enjoy not being bombarded with adverts and political noise, it’s a good platform.
I’ve obviously neglected the blog in recent years and need to fix that too, as already mentioned. Hopefully with some of the above, it’ll allow for time to switch from consumer to producer and share things. Leaning on Mastodon for simple snippets and the blog for longer things. In 2026 so far I’ve made a few changes to the blog, including a ‘lists’ section, where I can keep a tab on bits and pieces.
Lastly, I made a change in 2025 to pay for a newspaper subscription so as to have something more sensible to read on my phone vs Reddit. After some trial and error in the past, I’ve found the FT to be the most practical service. It offers high quality journalism on general news and events and, of course, goes deeper into markets and business, which I find interesting. It is generally technocratic and factual in style rather than having a strong bias unlike many other papers. It does not cover celebrity news or popular affairs, which is great. The weekend supplements are very good too; I particularly like the columns from Jay Rayner and Jancis Robinson.
I also subscribe to Local Authority who provide superb reporting for the Medway Towns and Sailorz which is fantastic and free reporting on international sailing news.
In 2026, I want to keep this up, to continue reading good, genuine, real journalistic content, which isn’t clawing for my attention with click-bait titles and pages of advertising.
A few random things in here for 2026…
First up, I want to reduce phone use when around Charlotte. She’s now at an age where she notices when we’re giving our phones attention and I’m concern that’s not a healthy example to set. This will be hard to track, phones these days are increasingly essential, but hopefully change is possible. We have rules for no phones at the dinner table and in the last week or so I’ve also stopped taking my phone upstairs at bedtime or using it in bed in the morning, reading a book instead. Will need to go further, but I’m sure some small mindful changes will help.
Normalise no TV evenings. This is a habit, we watch TV most evenings after Charlotte goes to bed. I don’t think it’s the worst thing, we’re almost always exhausted and want a rest. A chill-out on the sofa with the TV on does just that. While not a big problem, we both feel that a few days a week where we do something different, read, puzzle, blog, exercise, etc will present a healthy change and break the cycle. Equally, I’d also like for us to have movie nights where we agree a movie and settle in and watch it through. That needs some planning, rarely do we have two full hours on a weeknight evening!
Prioritise eating together. Aiming for an earlier shared dinner around 5.30–5.45 rather than two seperate meal times. This is a big shift for us, we were very accustomed to eating late in the evening. We have noticed that Charlotte eats better when we eat together, particularly by watching us eat the same food, it also supports a calmer family rhythm and better day-to-day communication. It means we get more evening back too and I think sleep better too. It means leaving London earlier on office days, but that’s managable.
As a general rule, I want to balance work and spend more time with family. I’m very fortunate that Colliers allows me 30 days annual leave, some additional days off over Christmas as well as bank holidays. That’s generous. Last year, I opted to ‘buy’ additional annual leave too, in order to maximise time we can spend together. This comes at a financial cost, but one which is minimised by tax savings and can be spread across the year. I’ll repeat that this year too. The saying goes “you can’t buy time”, but this seems like the next best thing. School holidays will start to become tricky for us this year, now that Charlotte is in normal school. That will require some creative thinking even with all this leave. I enjoy my job, but family is what’s most important and should take priority.
It is easy to be sceptical of the true value of recycling household waste but few things irk me more than walking around our local village on bin day and seeing certain houses have nothing outside but piles of black bags, especially when they clearly contain cardboard and other recyclables. It’s perhaps a little irrational, but it makes me really quite cross. Reflecting on 2025, I felt we did virtually all we could do to reduce the waste that ends up in landfill. We recycle all the obvious things and have done for many years (glass, tins/cans, bottles, cardboard, food waste, etc). This year we started recycling soft-plastics as this was becoming the majority of our black bin, as well as tablet packets (to boots), wine corks (to Majestic) and other random bits and pieces like metal and batteries. I don’t know if it makes a difference or not, we are one household of millions and so in reality, it probably makes very little difference, but I like knowing that I’m doing all I can to be mindful of our planet and our impact on it, mostly for Charlotte. I probably go a little too far sometimes pulling stuff out of the bin that doesn’t belong.
Aside from waste, I’ve already mentioned our plan to reduce meat consumption, which after home and travel is likely the next biggest contributor to our climate footprint, particularly beef.
Our home setup is pretty well optimised, I’m really proud of the steps we’ve taken to install our Solar PV and home battery which are working really nicely (although are undergoing a warranty repair as I type this). More recently we installed an Air-Source Heat Pump, along with new pipework radiators and UFH as part of our extension project. This has been through two winters now and has kept us far more warm and happy than our gas boiler. There’s so much to be said for having a consistent temperature, which we never had with a boiler. I don’t think the ASHP is necessarily cheaper than a boiler, but it is green and is very cheap when the PV and battery give it a helping hand. With these, we are more or less as optimised as we can be, it’s really nice to know that we’re not directly burning fossil fuels to warm our home.
Likewise, for the past 18 months we’ve been a fully-EV household, with both our cars now full electric. We exchanged our Audi A4 for a Tesla Model Y in September 2024 and have had a second EV through my work scheme for the past 3 years, recently moving from a Nissan Leaf to a Renault Model 5 (which is absolutely fab!). I was a little disappointed to let my beloved Audi go in exchange for the Tesla, having had it from new, but it was no longer really big enough for us. The Tesla, despite its controversial CEO, is hands down just the best car, it’s fantastic in so many ways. It has a kick-ass sound system, the app and digital experience is incomparable to anything else, it has heaps of storage, the charging network is the best, it is super secure and a really safe and easy car to drive - I’m a huge fan. Yes, it’s weird and a bit cult-like, it has zero personality and I’m a complete stereotype IT-guy, but I don’t care, it’s superb, I love it. Oh and as I type this I’ve just had to buy two new tyres as we (not me) drove over a screw. Argh!! But that also happened plenty with the Audi too, to be fair.
We had a relatively quiet year for travel and we spent most of our time here in the UK. We had a few very lovely trips to France where we drove via EuroTunnel or took the ferry. I visited Canada for work early in the year and had a short trip to see Mum and Kelly in Morocco. Air travel sits a little uncomfortably with me, following on from the environmental topic, but I feel that largely it is something of a personal responsibility to make sensible, aware choices and fly sparingly, mixing it with other more economic travel options (see my train trip to Turkey). Of course travel is a luxury, but I believe it is important for development, experience and curiosity - it’s no secret I love to travel and I very much hope to allow Charlotte to experience travel too.
In 2026 I hope to travel more, for us to travel more - be it in the car, by taking the train or flying. Last year was the first since covid where I didn’t add a new country to my list, and I’d very much like to try and make up for that this year.
Here’s my thinking for this year (yes, I like to plan):
This topic certainly needs some attention..! I’m not going to get into it too much, because this is a public blog, but I also want to hold myself accountable to a degree. Some readers will know that we use YNAB, often poorly, but we use it to track every penny of income and all outgoings, categorising everything very specifically. I don’t know how it’s possible to not have something like this to remain on top of family finances. While administering it is a bit of a pain, it’s a godsend in knowing what is going on.
So here’s some numbers from 2025:
We spent a really quite shocking £3,838 on booze and pub. That is anything in a pub or bar, etc, except for when we sat down for a meal and anything we spend in a shop on buying plonk for home (wine, beer, rum, etc). How we managed to spend quite this much I do not know; well, I do, it was that bloody rum bar in Polzeath, but it’s certainly not a number that’s pleasing to read. Especially not when it’s also contributing negatively to the Health and Exercise topic. This number is up quite considerably on 2024, which sat at a more reasonable (but still insane) £2,338, so represents a 64% increase. I’m not sure I can attribute that all to inflation or higher pub prices. Some of it, in my defence, if I have any, is that we did spend more on better wine vs years past and do have a fair amount knocking around at home. Also much of this ends up being ‘bottle gifts’ for dinner parties or last minute presents. But, still, significant improvement needed here, and I’m pretty committed to making that happen as frankly even half of that number would pay for a family holiday somewhere. Need to do better. My goal here is to get this below £1,500 in 2026 - £125 a month should be plenty. Ideally £0.
Nursery and school costs improved slightly in 2025, which is pleasing. We’re almost out of this painful period where we need to pay for early education hours. We saw a drop of 11% on last year, which is likely almost entirely attributable to school holidays (as Charlotte is now off, and we therefore don’t pay). September 2026 will mark the start of state-funded schooling and consequently no/minimal fees. We’ll likely still pay for after school club and other things here and there, but it’ll be a lot less.
We also did better with eating out, and saw a reduction of around 31% on last year, taking it to £3,295 across the year. 2024 was a bit of an anomaly for eating out, so not sure this is a real win. I think we generally did eat out less, and typically avoided paying what increasingly feels like high prices for mediocre food that we could simply cook at home for a lot less. I can’t remember the last time I ate a steak in a restaurant. Instead we tend to eat at either end of the spectrum, mostly cheap quick bites, along with a few fancy dinners out. During the various holidays we took, we logged eating out in this category, although in future I think it’ll be more sensible to budget and categorise holiday costs (food, drink, activities) inclusively.
In groceries we broke a new record, with £9,558 across the year. I don’t know about this one, I know we’re very lucky to be able to spend that much on food but £26 a day doesn’t seem like a mad number for 2 and a half people. Still, it’s a 15% increase on last year and is a full £3k more than we spent in 2022. We separate out a few things, so this doesn’t include cosmetics, bath stuff, anything health-related (e.g. medicine) or ‘non-food consumables’ like bin bags, bog roll, etc. We do include soft drinks and non-alcoholic in here though, and they add up. Across the year we were mindful to use cashback and reward schemes, using NX Rewards for a 10% rebate on Asda deliveries and for a while we were using the 4-5% pre-paid cards. But it became a bit of a faff for nominal reward. We did most of our shopping at Asda, with about 31% of our spend there, with Ocado, M&S and Costco all having another 10% each. Asda is the easiest supermarket for us to get to, tends to have everything we want and is pretty price competitive. Deliveries from Asda are a nightmare and we’d frequently end up going to the shop anyway, so gave up on that. We’re more recently very happy with Ocado and will look to continue that in 2026, while it is a good stretch more expensive the deliveries are almost always perfect and the quality of produce we feel is worth the extra. A weekly delivery forces us to meal-plan too, which means we don’t just go any buy things randomly at the shop. Ocado is also very good for variety, with a huge number of products and is superb for healthy options. Bonne Maman Rhubarb yoghurts are my guilty pleasure. In 2026, I’d like to keep to around £170 a week, but frankly my priority is on keeping waste down, avoiding the supermarket and meal planning - I don’t mind that we spend more on good quality food.
Most other categories we were comparable with past years, with not too much to report home on.
Aside from YNAB, a couple of things to consider: