Money is the engine. Freedom is the point.
UK personal finance in plain English, for people who want choices, not just a salary. Currently doing it from the road.
Not your usual finance guy.
I am Jonty. My degree is in sport and exercise science, first class, which is not the standard route into personal finance. But I go deep on whatever I do not yet understand, and I have a low tolerance for problems that should not exist. Money kept supplying both.
It started when I had to track my own finances across two currencies inside a British tax system, and nothing out there did it properly. So I taught myself to build and shipped Vault, a privacy first finance app that does. Building it forced me to understand ISAs, capital gains, pensions and crypto tax well enough to explain them to a computer. Explaining them to a camera turned out to be the easy part.
Since then I have backpacked Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, and I am writing this from Melbourne. Earning in one currency, living in another, funded by the boring money habits I talk about online. That is the whole pitch. I am not rich and I am not selling a course. I am building optionality in public and showing my working.
Three numbers your bank hopes you never compare.
Inflation
The official rise in the price of your shopping. Annoying, visible, endlessly reported.
Debasement
Money printing quietly shrinking every pound you hold. Nobody puts this one on the news.
The hurdle rate
Roughly inflation plus debasement. What your money must earn each year just to stand still.
Cash sitting in a savings account is not being safe. It is quietly evaporating. Once you see the hurdle, everything else follows.
Illustrative figures, not financial advice. I explain the workings in the content.One idea, three places to find it.
Content
Plain English UK personal finance across TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, all under build optionality. ISAs, tax, investing and earning more, minus the boring bits.
Follow @jontyancollins ↗The newsletter
Once a week, the money ideas worth your time, plus the free Optionality Starter Guide the moment you join.
Join free ↓Vault
The privacy first personal finance app I built end to end. Budgeting, investing, capital gains and crypto, no data harvesting. The app that started all of this.
Visit Vault ↗Optionality, field tested.
This is not theory from a spare bedroom. The route below is what the boring money habits actually bought. Same rules I talk about, applied, then packed into a backpack.
Uni
DoneGrad job
DoneSouth East Asia
DoneAustralia
You are hereSide quests
PendingOverland to the UK
The long way homeThe last leg is overland through Central Asia. Yes, really. Subscribe and watch me regret it.
Two paths, one inbox.
Brand partnerships
Honest, on brand collaborations with things I actually rate. If your product genuinely helps people build optionality, my audience wants to hear about it. A full media kit with formats, audience and house rules is available on request.
Request the media kit →AI and automation
I also build small tools that quietly kill boring business admin. Invoices, follow ups, data entry, the jobs that eat your week. Built the same way I built Vault: shipped, owned, maintained.
See what I do →For either, get in touch at jonty@jontycollins.com.