Best Financial Decision of 2025

Metrocammell

Simply, to start trying to make the little savings I have earn just that little bit more, as opposed to sitting in a low interest account as it had for most of the year. 

DT2001

Moving back to DIY’ing. I have put aside ongoing fees saved this year to fund future one off advice.

Writing down my plan for market movements up and down 

friolento

Spending some of my savings on travelling to Portugal, Egypt, Crete and Sri Lanka. Nobody can take my memories of those trips away, I am richer with experiences from different countries, and it’s all been much more enjoyable than seeing some numbers on a spreadsheet. 

mills112

i don't know about the best decision, but the worst decision for me was that I forgot to put £20k into my ISA so I lost that allowance (doh)

leosayer

Not buying the BMW M340i Touring that I've been coveting.

It's unnecessary when we have a properly serviceable Audi A3 that costs peanuts to run and has been reliable since we bought it new 12 years ago.

hallmark

Bothering to login to Virgin Media on the offchance I could change package without having to endure an endless phone call with CS threatening to leave.  Surprisingly there was a "click here" option that gave me the identical deal/options I currently had for £55 instead of £95.  So that was £480 for two mins work.

Choosing to look at the options when I renewed my Wix website for 3 years.  They wanted to increase it from approx £300 to approx £600 (both 3 years).  I chose to look at the "downgrade" option & selected that but DIDN'T renew.  As soon as I'd done that if offered me to retain my current option at an over 50% discount, which meant less than the £300 I'd been paying. Again, £300 for a few mins work.

TBH it p*sses me off that you have to do these things just to pay a fair price but it's the modern world.

Bothering to open a NW Regular Saver & shunt some money that would have just been in a Flex account into it instead.  Just under £90 interest for almost no work altho Rachel will be trousering 40% of that for doing none whatsoever.

I made financial "decisions" that made far more profit in 2025 but those were all down to the market, not anything particularly sensible I did.

Cus

alfred64 said:

Cus said:

Reducing the number of times I visit this forum 😁

That's not a financial decision.

It was for me

Edit to add: similar to the advice that one shouldn't look too often at their portfolio values, the essence of that advice also was valid for me regarding the frequency of visiting this forum (specifically the investment and pensions forums)

chiang_mai

The best:

Selling my UK rental property and putting the funds on a 2 year fix, days before the rates were reduced.

Moving my investments into 50% cash.

Trading my US index tracker for a global managed fund.

The worst:

Throwing my toys out of the pram in April.

kimwp

Deciding to continue to stooze after trying it for a year.

Made some decisions re investing that didn't work out so well - giving using a GIA a go in Feb with a lump sum. Selling my sharesave shares before they peaked. And opting for ig invest 8% cash June/July/August instead of filling my stocks and shares ISA - but that was to do with making sure I had cash available to repay the stoozed credit cards if I couldn't get new offers (and then got really busy at work so didn't have time to think about it). Also didn't achieve the right balance of cash savings and GIA to optimise the tax allowances - gain currently £500, dividends £20, savings interest £3k. But this year was a learning year - mostly learned that the short term market is so unpredictable, don't make any plans based on it. Which makes my intention of putting spare cash in a GIA and then selling to put in my ISA in a way that optimises the dividend and capital gains even more wooly than I thought it would be (or maybe worries have now been evidenced). But my main takeaway is to not focus on the losses or mistakes, because some are inevitable and only known in retrospect.

Vitor

Taking profit on gold Britania coins
Taking profit on Bitcoin
Taking profit on a high tech fund
Getting a multi £k refund from HMRC on 2024-25 tax year