Live on £4000 for a Year, 2009 Challenge, part 2

cw18

lyndasharp wrote: »

They're changing the way they deduct our pensions, so I ought to have more take home pay this month.

Salary Sacrifice by any chance???

(And I saw the "tut tut" comment )

sophiesmum_2

Me too but seeings as I have just ordered a whole new(ish) car couldn't really comment on Lynda just buying a few pieces:rolleyes:

lyndasharp

cw18 wrote: »

Salary Sacrifice by any chance???

(And I saw the "tut tut" comment )

They called it a salary exchange, rather than a sacrifice, but I suspect it's the same thing. As I'm making student loan repayments it should have an effect on that as well as reducing my NI and tax...

P.S. We'll be buying some bits to get the other police panda car on the road.... but we are planning to sell my Betsy car once she's re-MOT'd in August, so that should cover the cost of the restoration on the panda.

cha97michelle

Evening everyone.

Nyk i don't know how you remember things like that, but well done on remembering to let Janey know we are thinking of her. It's crazy that was a year ago. I hope she is ok too, i'm another one who misses hearing about her exploits.


Not much to report from here, i spent a little the other day in my mum's shop buying next size clothes for DS1, but she also gave me an outfit for both boys, and gave me a dozen eggs and a cabbage that someone had given her and she didn't want. So we are trying to come up with ways of making cheap meals from things from the garden.

Mum seems to be doing quite well - apparently a few people have given her different things for free, including meat - must appreciate her cheap prices - i know i do.

Anyone any exciting cabbage ideas? I'm the only one who really eats it in serious quantities. DH has a kiddie portion, DS2 is at the age where he pretty much clears the plate of anything, and DS1 is suspicious and refuses it. We have another 4 almost ready ourselves in the garden. I'm going to quickly get fed up of it boiled though. :rolleyes:

We're still potty training DS1 so costs of nappies and wipes is coming down, but washing is increasing. Particularly number 2's as he won't sit down. We have hours of him running up and down the stairs in some distress and saying he needs the loo, and an eventual accident. It is so frustrating and i'm not sure how to help him learn other than more practice.

Other than that, we had a largish gas bill and i think we are going to have to increase the direct debit to cover it. They haven't asked us to surprisingly, but we owe about £200 and only pay £30 per month, so i can't see us paying it off before winter when most cooking is gas and the water heating is gas. At least no heating needed at the moment though.

sophiesmum_2

michelle - I like lasagne made with a layer of cabbage leaves to replace a layer of lasgne sheets - sneaky way of adding veg. Sometimes I have made it with no pasta at all. Leave the leaves whole and just blanch for 5 minutes or so before adding to make sure it cooks properly.

Colcannon is nice too,add to veggie soups, or just blanch portion and freeze then you don't get sick of non stop cabbage.:D

cw18

lyndasharp wrote: »

They called it a salary exchange, rather than a sacrifice, but I suspect it's the same thing. As I'm making student loan repayments it should have an effect on that as well as reducing my NI and tax...

Salary Surrender is yet another name for it

It won't actually reduce your tax bill. Pension contributions are deducted before tax anyway, so that stays the same. The only difference it makes to a 'standard' payslip is a small reduction in NI. As this is payable at various rates depending on your income, the saving could vary from an extra 11p (if you earn a gross of between £9 and £844 a month) down to 1p for every £1 paid into your pension each month. When I went onto one of these schemes it was at the 1p per £1 rate so not especially worth doing :rolleyes2 But my feelings were I'd do anything I legally could to avoid "giving away" my salary, and I also paid into an AVC scheme to avoid Income Tax on those contributions.

The other difference it makes for some people (but didn't for me, as we were already well up the scale for combined family income) is Tax Credits. As your gross figure on your P60 will be lower, this lower figure is the one that gets notified to Tax Credits, So it is possible for some people to also see an increase from there (probably not more than pennies, but hey! evey penny counts )

Not sure how student loan payments work, but I do know they're only repayable once you earn £15k+ a year. I assume the repayment rate is then a percentage of your earnings above that? If so, then yes - you may see a small reduction there. If the rate is set amounts for set income brackets, then it's possible you may come down a bracket and see it make a more substantial difference.

cha97michelle

sophiesmum wrote: »

michelle - I like lasagne made with a layer of cabbage leaves to replace a layer of lasgne sheets - sneaky way of adding veg. Sometimes I have made it with no pasta at all. Leave the leaves whole and just blanch for 5 minutes or so before adding to make sure it cooks properly.

Colcannon is nice too,add to veggie soups, or just blanch portion and freeze then you don't get sick of non stop cabbage.:D

great ideas.

It's nice to be worrying about what to do with my excess stuff though. I am willing my strawberries on now. We've managed 3 so far which DH and the kids scoffed and i failed to get a look in. :rolleyes: DS1 has been eyeing them up for weeks though and even picked a green one and tried to eat it last week.

So, i need to make some space in the freezer then me thinks.

lyndasharp

Cabbage in a pan, with lid on, plus a bit of water, mustard seeds and red or white wine vinegar gives it a nice flavour.

I've been just having a look for a recipe called cabbage Wonderful, but can't seem to find it. I got it with a Woodlands Farm vegetable box, when I was living in Lincoln, but it doesn't appear to be on their website. It involved lots of terribly unhealthy stuff to make the cabbage interesting, with a layer of cooked tinned tomato / onion / cabbage mix, a layer of bread fried in butter, then a layer of cheese, then repeat. Bake in the oven until the top cheese layer is crispy. I think there was more stuff in the tomatoey mix, but I suspect you could put pretty much any other veg or herb in it. It really was wonderful!

lyndasharp

cw18 wrote: »

It won't actually reduce your tax bill. Pension contributions are deducted before tax anyway, so that stays the same. The only difference it makes to a 'standard' payslip is a small reduction in NI. As this is payable at various rates depending on your income, the saving could vary from an extra 11p (if you earn a gross of between £9 and £844 a month) down to 1p for every £1 paid into your pension each month. When I went onto one of these schemes it was at the 1p per £1 rate so not especially worth doing :rolleyes2 But my feelings were I'd do anything I legally could to avoid "giving away" my salary, and I also paid into an AVC scheme to avoid Income Tax on those contributions.

The other difference it makes for some people (but didn't for me, as we were already well up the scale for combined family income) is Tax Credits. As your gross figure on your P60 will be lower, this lower figure is the one that gets notified to Tax Credits, So it is possible for some people to also see an increase from there (probably not more than pennies, but hey! evey penny counts )

Not sure how student loan payments work, but I do know they're only repayable once you earn £15k+ a year. I assume the repayment rate is then a percentage of your earnings above that? If so, then yes - you may see a small reduction there. If the rate is set amounts for set income brackets, then it's possible you may come down a bracket and see it make a more substantial difference.

It should make a difference to the tax... as I pay tax on the pension, which is then reclaimed into the pension pot. Their calculation was that I pay 3% of my net salary in at the moment, but the tax reclaim makes it 3 and a bit % of my salary going into a pension. So instead of the tax going into my pension, it goes to me. That does have the disadvantage of slightly less in the pension as now it's only going to be getting the 3%, but given how rubbish the stock market is at the moment, I'll probably make more money putting it in a savings account! No tax credits though.

cw18

Interesting take on the tax break for making pensions contributions - I've not met that one before

I've paid into 5 schemes (2 of which were just slightly changed versions of 2 others) and DH paid into another slightly different version of one of mine. I've also looked into the newish ones that all employers (with more than a certain number of employees) are supposed to offer as a minimum. I debated paying into one of those for DH when he took VST and became a house-husband so we could relocate for my job - but the returns were so low even back in 2000 it wasn't worth doing :eek: All the company ones were deducted before tax was calculated and our contributions were just what was deducted from salary. The other could have meant a tax rebate each year for DH - except he wasn't paying tax on anything to qualify for a rebate :rolleyes2