February 2026
WELCOME
Welcome to The Crazy Plan where our mission is to show that anyone can create unimaginable wealth.
Each month, we publish a blog providing readers with the financial education needed to set out on their own journey to a bright financial future. We do this by following two plans, our Monthly Plan saves £50 a month for 10 years and our Lumpsum Plan starts with a one-off £10,000. Our aim is to turn each plan into $1 billion in one or two generations.
At first, making $1 billion seems crazy but once you realise it’s a journey then things change. We’ll save our first £50 and from there our wealth will build to $1,000, then $5,000, then $10,000 and then $50,000. One day, if we’re patient, we’ll have $100,000 and then we’ll be looking at $1 million. From there it will be onwards to our $1 billion goal. This journey of small steps is how what seems impossible becomes possible.
You can dig-in to our posts however you like or if you are completely new to investing, you may want to start with “1.0 Liftoff!” and go through them in order which is how we build the education. We hope to provide you with the knowledge needed to set out on your own journey to a bright financial future if you choose. You can also visit the “About” page on our website to learn more about our plan.
All readers must read and agree to our Terms & Conditions, including the Disclaimer, which can be found on the T&C page of our website: https://thecrazyplan.com
ON WITH THE PLAN
Our Lumpsum Plan will be worth $1billion in: 77yrs 4mths
Our Monthly Plan will be worth $1billion in: 86yrs 9mths
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Last month we revisited investing small amounts and rebalancing a portfolio and these are habits that will slowly become engrained as we repeat them over the coming months and years. We also reviewed our investments for the first time to see if there was a better portfolio we could be invested in. This raised a huge number of questions including how do you define better, is “better” a larger CAGR, do we want a consistent return, are smaller drawdowns better or do we want shorter ones or both?
One of the biggest questions of all was that we looked backwards at what our portfolio “would” have returned if we had invested 10 years ago. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but is this approach even correct as the future could be very different.
This month we’re going to start to answer some of these questions by thinking about whether we can look at the past when investing. To do that we’re going to have a think about choosing a driving instructor, bear with us here!
CHOOSING A DRIVING INSTRUCTOR
Let’s say that you, or perhaps someone you know, are looking to take your driving test. You ask around to see if anyone can recommend an instructor and take a look on-line to see what schools are out there. Perhaps a friend texts you the number for an instructor they’ve used called Sandra and your on-line search comes up with a driving school called Bob’s Big School. So, you do a little more research.
SOLO SANDRA
You call your friend and they tell you that Sandra is a lone instructor working for herself. She has no website, just her phone number, but she’s pretty good and got your friend through their test first time. Her car is a little old and is “knocked about a bit” and she’s a rather scruffy dresser. You can only book two-hour lessons and Sandra needs 48 hours’ notice to cancel a lesson. If you cancel more than three lessons she’ll most likely stop teaching you as she is on her own and cancelled lessons mean no income for her. Lessons cost £45 per hour.
BOB’S BIG SCHOOL
Looking on-line you find that Bob’s is a large school covering a large area with 30 driving instructors working out of 2 sites. They have 32 small cars with 2 spares so they always have cars available if one is off the road. All cars are less than 6 months old and they are immaculate with not a single scratch (remarkable for a driving school!) and all staff wear a smart uniform. The 2 sites each have a high-end driving simulator which pupils can use both during lessons or can book personal sessions on to practice without an instructor. The website is really slick and there’s an app for booking and managing lessons. You can book one-hour lessons and you can cancel a lesson with just 2 hours’ notice at no charge. Within the app Bob also provides education and test questions for passing the theory test you will need to take before you can take your practical test. Lessons also cost £45 per hour.
WHO WOULD YOU CHOOSE?
To decide who to go with you book a taster-lesson with them both to get a little more information. Sandra does a one-hour taster-lesson for £45 and she turns up on time. Your friend was being kind when they said the car was “knocked about a bit,” there were dents and scrapes everywhere! True to form Sandra was very scruffy and the back seat of the car had a couple of empty coffee cups and the left-overs of a takeaway on it. Sandra drove you to a very quiet industrial estate, you swapped seats and then the nightmare began. It was one hour of pure confusion, worry and panic and it made you wonder if this whole driving thing was a good idea in the first place. None the less, Sandra was complementary and said you were better than most of her pupils on day one and she would be happy to teach you. You hadn’t realised she was interviewing you as much as you were her! Sandra says she currently has 10 pupils and will find a slot if you choose her.
Bob’s Big School also offers a one-hour taster-lesson but its free and on the simulator at one of their sites. You get a friend to take you down there and it’s amazing. The instructor gives you a tour of the office showing you all the immaculate cars at the school and you see instructors in their uniforms coming and going. You then hit the simulator for a 30-minute session and it’s so much fun, just like playing a video game! At the end of the session the instructor shows you the app with all the education and test questions for the theory exam and how the booking system works and explains that the school has over 350 pupils being taught every week.
Now comes crunch time, who would you choose to teach you? Well, you could do some research on the best car for learning, do simulators help, is an app-based learning tool helpful, is a big school better than a small one, are one-hour lessons better than two-hour and all sorts of other questions. The thing is, surely that’s what you’re paying the instructor to do, provide the best set-up for you to learn and pass? How on earth are you supposed to know all the answers to these questions?
Perhaps a better way is to go with our gut. Much as we like our friend and appreciate their recommending Sandra, after our taster-lessons we came away feeling much better with Bob’s Big School. Bob’s seemed far more professional and had lots of gadgets such as the app and simulator and we just think using the latest tech must be a good thing. We also like the fact that we can cancel with short notice and book one-hour lessons to fit in with our schedule. Bob it is then.
THE ALL-IMPORTANT QUESTION
Just as you’re about to sign up with Bob’s Big School your friend calls and asks how you got on with Sandra. Then they ask the question that got lost in all the glamour of Bob’s free taster session.
“Are they any good at their job?”
You’re a little taken aback as they recommended Sandra and why would they recommend someone who wasn’t any good? Bob must be good at what he does as otherwise he couldn’t have grown to 30 instructors teaching over 350 pupils a week. None the less, your friend insists you do some digging.
What you find is startling, when a pupil of Sandra’s sits a test they have a nearly 70% chance of passing but Bob’s pupils? They only have a 45% chance of passing. When you work out what that means in terms of cost it’s potentially staggering as on average Sandra’s pupils need around 50 hours of lessons to pass whereas Bob’s need close to 75. At a cost of £45 per hour that’s an extra £1,125 not to mention the hassle of all those extra hours and the delay in getting your license. Armed with this information you pick up the phone to Sandra and book her straight away.
SUMMING IT ALL UP
What the above experience shows is that it’s very easy to get sucked in to a story, a slick website, the latest gadgets and all sorts of things and as a result forget to ask the most basic of questions. In the case of passing your driving test, the instructor’s history is far more important than outward appearances. Quite simply, the percentage of pupils that pass their test will be the best indicator of your chance of passing and you get that information by looking at past results, not by predicting the future. It’s an instructors job to work out the best approach to teaching and you should not have to research simulators, car types, apps, one versus two-hour lessons and all manner of other things.
Your job is to ask the most basic of questions, “are they any good at their job.” You want to pass your test so the question you need to ask is are they any good and getting results. If you have to put up with an older car and a coffee cup on the back seat then who cares as long as they get you through your test.
This question of “are they any good at their job” is the fundamental question we need to ask when choosing funds. If we give a fund manager our money to manage then we expect them to make an acceptable return on it just as we expect to pass our driving test if we pay for lessons. This most basic of questions is for some reason often forgotton when it comes to choosing funds. There are a lot of great stories out there when it comes to investing as we will see next month but our job is to look through the story and ask if the fund delivers the results we need.
THE INVESTMENT REPORT
For an explanation of The Investment Report and The Crazy Fund please see our post “1.1 The Deep End”
| Fri 27-Feb-26 | Monthly Plan | Lumpsum Plan |
| Cash last month £ | 55 | 0 |
| Cash Saved £ | 50 | 0 |
| Unit buys / sells £ | 0 | 0 |
| Total Cash £ | 105 | 0 |
| Units last month | 930 | 10,000 |
| Units bought / sold | 0 | 0 |
| Total Units owned | 930 | 10,000 |
| Unit Price £ | 1.4992 | 1.4992 |
| Fund Value £ | 1,394 | 14,992 |
| Total Wealth £ | 1,500 | 14,992 |
| FX Rate | 1.3489 | 1.3489 |
| Total Wealth $ | 2,023 | 20,223 |
| Estimated CAGR | 15.00% | 15.00% |
| Years to $1billion | 86yrs 9mths | 77yrs 4mths |
Another month and another £50 saved on the Monthly Plan and of course both plans have resisted the temptation to spend. To help resist that temptation we should ignore how much we’re worth and just look at how long it’s estimated to take to reach $1 billion. By making the amount of money irrelevant we’ll be less tempted to spend, so around 87 years and 77 years is how we should read the table and that’s it, forget the money.
THE CRAZY FUND
| Results | 30-Jan-26 | 27-Feb-26 | MTD Move | YTD Move | LTD Move |
| Unit Price £ | 1.4832 | 1.4992 | 1.08% | 2.35% | 49.92% |
| FX Rate | 1.3687 | 1.3489 | (1.45%) | 0.14% | 6.03% |
| Unit Price $ | 2.0301 | 2.0223 | (0.39%) | 2.48% | 58.95% |
| CAGR £ | 20.83% | 20.62% | (0.21%) | (0.40%) | 20.62% |
We had a flat month with the small gain on our investments being offset by the FX rate moving against us.
Below is a table of what the fund is invested in at 27/February:
| Ticker | % Fund | Price | CCY | Type | Description |
| LON:IEM | 11.4% | 451.00 | GBP | IT | Impax Environmental Markets PLC |
| LON:SMT | 10.2% | 1,237.50 | GBP | IT | Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust PLC |
| LON:XDEM | 9.9% | 6,328.00 | GBP | ETF | DB X-Trackers MSCI World Momentum Factor UCITS |
| LON:ATT | 9.4% | 534.00 | GBP | IT | Allianz Technology Trust PLC |
| LON:IITU | 9.3% | 2,953.00 | GBP | ETF | iShares S&P 500 Information Technology |
| LON:PCT | 10.8% | 511.00 | GBP | IT | Polar Capital Technology Trust PLC |
| LON:XDWT | 9.5% | 112.54 | USD | ETF | Xtrackers MSCI World Information Technology UCITS |
| LON:CSP1 | 9.9% | 54,822.00 | GBP | ETF | iShares Core S&P 500 UCITS (Acc) GBP Hedged |
| LON:EQQQ | 9.5% | 45,339.00 | GBP | ETF | Invesco NASDAQ 100 UCITS GBP Hedged |
| LON:JAM | 10.0% | 1,126.00 | GBP | IT | JP Morgan American Investment Trust PLC |
| Shares | 99.9% | ||||
| Cash | 0.1% |
On 12/Feb IEM went ex-Div and so we have included this in our cash balance, we will receive the dividend on 06/Mar. Otherwise, there were no changes to the portfolio during the month.
A FAVOUR
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NEXT MONTH
Next month we’re going to apply the ideas around picking a driving instructor to choosing a fund and we hope you’ll see both are remarkably similar.
DISCLAIMER
Please note that by the time this blog is published, we may no longer own some or any of the investments discussed. Strategies and investments discussed might be totally unsuitable for you and we are not recommending them to you, they should only be considered as ideas for further research. You must read and agree to our Terms & Conditions, including the Disclaimer, which can be found on the T&C page of our website: https://thecrazyplan.com
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