Mouthy Money: Building wealth with long term investing and saving strategies

From 6 April 2029 the government will cap the National Insurance saving on salary sacrifice pension contributions. The first £2,000 a year stays free of National Insurance, and everything above that will be taxed like ordinary pay. The CIPP puts 3.3 million workers in scope.
Edmund Greaves and Chris Tuite explain what salary sacrifice is, why middle earners gain more from it than high earners do, and what the cap actually changes. National Insurance falls from 8% to 2% above the higher-rate threshold, which is why someone earning £28,000 saves proportionally more than someone on £80,000.
They also work through the drawbacks of carrying a lower gross salary, from mortgage affordability and maternity pay to income protection and redundancy, and answer whether any of it affects your state pension.
Nothing changes until April 2029. Check your payslip to find out whether you are already on salary sacrifice, and talk to HR or payroll if you are not sure.
Chapters
00:00 The perk in your payslip that's about to be taxed
00:48 What we cover in this episode
01:28 The law has already passed
02:33 Why the £100,000 threshold matters so much
04:24 Fiscal drag is pulling more people in
05:26 How salary sacrifice actually works
07:02 Why the highest earners gain the least
08:06 The numbers at £28,000, £50,000 and £80,000
10:14 The catches: mortgages, maternity pay and cover
14:08 What changes in April 2029
15:19 The cliff edges at £60,000 and £100,000
17:15 What to do before 2029
19:44 Chris's verdict and the name problem
20:56 Over to you

Sean Standerwick is a chartered financial planner, and a fair part of his job is talking people out of distrusting their own pension. This episode is what he tells them.
You come away with a number to measure your own pot against. The Retirement Living Standards put a single person's minimum retirement at £13,900 a year, a moderate one at £32,700 and a comfortable one at £45,400, against a full state pension of £12,547.60.
You also get the tax case in three parts — relief going in, no tax while the money is invested, and 25% available tax free on the way out — along with the three routes to paying in: salary sacrifice through work, your own limited company, or personally.
The second half is the more useful part if you are the sceptic yourself. Sean argues that people seldom object to the pension itself and mostly resist being sold to, and he works through two clients who talked themselves round once the conversation changed shape.
Figures are current for the 2026/27 tax year. This episode is information rather than financial advice.

From April 2027 the cash ISA allowance for under-65s drops from £20,000 to £12,000. The overall allowance doesn't move, so £8,000 a year has to go somewhere that isn't cash.
For a lot of people that turns investing from a someday decision into a this-year one.
Edmund Greaves is joined by Andy Prosser, Head of Investments at the ETF platform InvestEngine, on how to pick what you invest in — time horizon, risk tolerance, the difference between an ETF and a traditional fund — and on what InvestEngine's own investors have been buying this year.
Ed also explains what he got wrong when he started.
InvestEngine investing data:
https://blog.investengine.com/most-bought-etfs-july-2026/https://blog.investengine.com/most-popular-etfs-uk-2026/
Nothing here is financial advice. Investing involves risk and you can lose money. ISA and tax rules can change.

AI stocks retreated through July, and Ed’s portfolio went with them. Chris Tuite's didn't. So does Ed scrap his strategy and copy Chris T’s?
That question sits at the centre of this month's Investing Stakes, in partnership with Stratiphy. If you want to explore Stratiphy or build your own rules-based portfolio, you can use our referral link:🔗 https://www.stratiphy.io/referrals?code=INVESTINGSTAKESDisclosure: This is a referral link. We may receive a benefit if you sign up using it.
Ed’s tech-heavy Black Elephant strategy peaked in June and has handed back a chunk of it since, with Corning alone falling close to half its value and accounting for roughly half the decline. Chris kept out of the direct AI names and has carried on climbing. He is now behind every strategy and benchmark we track.
Chris Ling, Chief Investment Officer at Stratiphy, walks through why AI stocks pulled back, why the drawdown stayed concentrated in that corner of the market, and what happens to your returns when you abandon a strategy mid-run to chase whoever led last month.
We put six months of our own numbers into a matrix and follow what would have happened to an investor who switched into the winner every time. The answer is not flattering.
We also cover the difference between our two quantitative models, why a faster-trading strategy is not the same thing as a more volatile one, and the case for doing nothing when the market goes against you.
Chapters and full data tables are on the Substack, where we publish the monthly performance figures in more detail.👉 Stratiphy: https://www.stratiphy.io/referrals?code=INVESTINGSTAKES 👉 Substack: https://mouthymoney.substack.com👉 Subscribe for a new episode every monthYour capital is at risk. Past performance does not guarantee future returns. Nothing here is personal financial advice.

Ed pays £50 a month into a junior ISA for each of his sons. At 18 it's legally theirs, and he can't do a thing about it. So what happens if he uses a pension instead?
Full description
Every month he puts £50 into a junior ISA for each of his two sons. On their eighteenth birthdays that money becomes theirs outright — no conditions, no drip-feed, no veto.
So Ed modelled the alternative: the same £50 a month into a junior SIPP, a self-invested personal pension. Children get 20% tax relief despite paying no tax, which means £50 goes in as £62.50. Over a lifetime, that relief alone is worth £82,000.
The catch is that they can't touch it until 57 at the earliest, and probably 60 by the time his sons get there.
Chris and Ed work through the whole model — the tax relief, the charges, the inflation problem — and argue about whether an 18-year-old can be trusted with the money at all. We both end up somewhere we didn't expect.
The numbers, at 8% growth and 0.5% annual charges:
£10,200 paid in over 17 years becomes £19,930 in a junior ISA at 18, or £24,912 in a junior SIPP. Left alone to 60, that SIPP reaches £511,675. Restart contributions at 22 and it reaches £661,264, against £529,012 for the ISA. Raise charges to 1.2% and £181,915 disappears. Double the contribution to £100 a month and the pot hits £1,322,529 — which 3% inflation reduces to £231,211 in today's money.
(00:00) I think I've been doing this wrong(01:12) The junior ISA as it stands(02:32) Chris makes the case for the ISA(05:02) Would an 18-year-old actually blow it?(06:31) The tax relief is worth £82,000(07:20) Junior ISA against junior SIPP at 18(09:01) What happens if they restart at 22(09:40) When can they actually access a pension?(10:30) What charges do to all of this(13:00) Only 23% of UK workers are on track for a moderate retirement(15:43) What £100 a month becomes(17:36) The inflation problem nobody talks about(20:00) Tax on the way out(20:49) What Chris is doing(21:23) What I've decided to do
Full tables and charts, at both contribution levels and both charge scenarios, in cash and in today's money: [Substack link]
Retirement Living Standards figures from Pensions UK, 2026 update, calculated by the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University.
Neither of us is a financial adviser and none of this is financial advice. All projections are illustrations based on stated assumptions, not forecasts. Investment returns are not guaranteed and tax rules change.