A bit about me
I'm James — based in the North East of England, with a day job that has nothing to do with finance. Over the past few years I've developed a genuine interest in personal finance: how mortgages work, how pensions are taxed, how to make the most of an ISA or LISA, and how all of these decisions interact with each other.
I'm not a financial adviser and I don't have a finance degree. What I do have is a lot of time spent reading, questioning assumptions and running numbers — because at this stage of life, with a mortgage and retirement both very much on the radar, getting the basics right seems worth the effort.
MortgageVPension.com started as a personal spreadsheet I built to answer one question: should I overpay my mortgage or put money into my pension instead? The further I dug, the more I realised there wasn't a single answer — it depends on your tax band, your employer match, your interest rate, your time horizon, and whether a LISA or ISA also fits into the picture. So I built a calculator that handles all of it properly, in one place.
Why I got into all this
When I started my first proper job, I did what most people do — joined the workplace pension, put the minimum in, and got on with life. It was only later that I started paying closer attention. Not because I'd made any major mistakes, but because I realised how much difference small decisions can make over time.
One thing that surprised me when I started looking more closely at pensions was how few people know where their money is actually invested. Most workplace pension members are in a "default" fund chosen by the provider — often called something like "Balanced Portfolio" or "Moderate Growth." That's not necessarily wrong, but it's worth understanding what it means for your money and whether it suits your situation. It's something I'll be writing about in more detail in a future article.
The mortgage side came from a similar place — not crisis, just curiosity. I wanted to understand how interest compounds over a term, how much difference a small change in rate makes to total interest paid, and whether overpaying makes sense compared to investing that money elsewhere. The answers aren't always obvious, which is what makes the calculator useful.
The articles grew from the same thinking. A lot of personal finance content is either too vague to act on or buried in jargon. I try to write clear explanations with real numbers — the kind of thing I'd have found useful when I was first trying to make sense of all this.
I'm not a financial adviser
I want to be upfront about this: nothing on this site is financial advice, and I'm not qualified to give it. I'm a person who's done a lot of reading and built some useful tools — that's it. The calculator and articles are for educational and illustrative purposes only.
Before making any significant financial decisions — particularly around pensions, investments or mortgages — please consider speaking to a qualified, FCA-regulated financial adviser. The right answer for your situation depends on factors this site can't account for.
That said, I do believe that understanding the principles of how these things work puts you in a much better position — whether you decide to act on your own or take professional advice. Knowledge is useful even when you eventually hand the decision over to someone else.
Contact me
Got a question, spotted something wrong, or want to suggest a topic for a future article? I'd love to hear from you. I read every message and try to reply to most of them — though I can't promise lightning-fast responses.
You can also reach me directly at [email protected].