Preparedness for when

COOLTRIKERCHICK

talking about not trusting what they say lol


my friend just posted this on FB...


'Just downloaded this from the Statistics Authorities own website. While the Tories and LieDems have been telling us unemployment is down, turns out it's up!! They said 400,000 down, stats say 12,000 up. Gov't response? "We meant to say economically active". They DIDN'T say that though, nor is this being widely reported. I know it's no surprise to anyone, but it just goes to show YOU CANNOT TRUST POLITICIANS OR THE MEDIA TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH'

paidinchickens

jk0 wrote: »

Morning GQ. Interesting post as usual. My phone is the predecessor to this one:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/JCB-Sitemaster-Sim-Free-Handset/dp/B007TTHHZG/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1395392675&sr=8-11&keywords=toughphone

You can hammer nails in with mine. I recommend it.

DH bought the model before this for £30 of a mate 3 years ago and it's still going strong. He recommends it to everyone with an !phone (as they usually all have cracked screens) but they look at it in horror :rotfl:

PiC x

jk0

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

with us we employ people too, and TBH I could go back to where we started... with only me, and hubby working for someone else, yes we will still be stressed, but it wouldn't be the stress of trying to keep everyone in work, and people not doing their job properly and ending up us losing work etc..


I am extremely lucky I can take a day or two off, or finish early etc, but sadly hubby cant do this...so sadly its very rare we take time off together...which I think we both need...


I did think about trying to save and buy some cheap properties to rent out, so we would have a small income stream, but now we have bought the smallholding, and have this place ( mortgaged) we have zero surplus money,, as we are trying to save every penny to do the ranch up ( major work)


so I am in a right pickle, do I stop and save money to buy a property to rent out, and then go back to saving and renovating the 'ranch' ????? so then we have at least started the ball rolling in trying to get a small income coming in for when we are older/retire ( hubby is 51 and I am 48 this year)


EDIT... sorry waffled on slightly off topic.. but just thinking about income for the future... when prob state pension will just about buy you a loaf of bread and a pint of milk a week

By the sounds of it, you are doing the right thing with developing your smallholding. Presumably that will be able to provide income/produce for barter in the future, so spending on that is in some ways better than 'buy to lets'.

I didn't mean to suggest everyone should buy properties to let out. Just that it's pointless working overtime to afford labour saving devices.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

jk0 wrote: »

By the sounds of it, you are doing the right thing with developing your smallholding. Presumably that will be able to provide income/produce for barter in the future, so spending on that is in some ways better than 'buy to lets'.

I didn't mean to suggest everyone should buy properties to let out. Just that it's pointless working overtime to afford labour saving devices.

We had been thinking about it for a VERY long time... TBH we were saving for a smallholding, and getting nowhere near enough money, so we thought we might be daydreaming too much lol... and did look into it, and go and have a look at a few properties... but then the ranch was up for auction at a guide price we could potentially financially find/borrow.saved etc... it went over our budget, and went into the repair money... so this is why 2 years down the line the smallholding property is still only had small amounts of work done compared to what needs doing..


We are extremely lucky in one way that we have worked our butts off and got a smallholding, BUT in another way it has pushed us to practically financial breakdown, and false move or any more increasing in prices of things will def tip us over the edge... and work is looking very rocky too..


so this year I am going back to trying to grow surplus plants to sell in farm auctions etc... this will also help me see what type of response we will get, there is no way in a million years our smallholding would make any sort of income to cover a % of the necessary bills like council tax, electric etc... but I would have a dam good go, but its all about time, and I cant be in two places at once, work or smallholding, but I know which one I would rather be in..

D&DD

*Drags a chair in front of Elanten's lovely stove* ooh what a gorgeous addition that is!


Been so busy potting on/up last couple of days everythings gone a bit mad!


CTC I worry about the future too retirement and all that, we're both 48 this year so a way off yet I need to seriously look into some stuff regarding this thanks for the reminder.

VJsmum

We did a similar thing a few years ago. When hubby turned 50 he could release a chunk of pension money if he wished. After lots of number crunching and what ifs, we did just that and invested it in a rental property.

We have since invested the income from that property, plus his monthly pension from that release and a couple of bonuses he got and bought another. We treat the income from properties, pensions and any bonus all as pension and reinvest it. I hope to retire long before the government say I must and, true to this thread, don't want any more money in the bank than I can help. WE are working on the basis that we won't get state pension and plan around that - any we get will be a bonus.

We obviously pay tax on the income but that's ok. I don't really have a problem with paying tax, having been in a family that relied on state benefits from time to time - even if only child benefit. It meant the difference between eating and not eating sometimes, I fear. I do have some issues with how it's spent!

ETA - the pension we released was less than they told us we would get if we left it in there. Several months after releasing it, the pension company put a cap on the pension meaning we would never have got any more - even if we'd left it 10 years .

maryb

Charis wrote: »

I open it at Page 1 and click on the green banner under the main heading with the blue 'post reply' button, where it says 'View First Unread'. It usually gets me back to the right place. I scroll back to the previous post to check it's one I've read.

Charis, I do the same but on one thread I follow, clicking on view first unread that takes me straight to the current day's unread posts, even if there are unread posts from the day before, which is no good if you've been away and it's a fast moving thread - like this one. It's all a bit random and I don't understand it - quite possibly it's a setting on my computer - but at least with bookmarking each time I get back to where I was

Karmacat

CTC, if there was a "double thanks" button, I'd press it for your post on numbers of unemployed. Thank you.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

Karmacat wrote: »

CTC, if there was a "double thanks" button, I'd press it for your post on numbers of unemployed. Thank you.

Karmacat... I am just the messenger, or the person who 'stole' a FB post...off my friend lol...


I so agree if possible to try and find/save for our older years..


I don't know whether you get to a certain point/age, where you do realise that things are going to bleak, and you start panicking about how you will manage when you are older

Possession

CTC re. your poor mauled sofa (I have two rabbit-mauled ones!), I'd recommend you have a look at your local Facebook selling site. In the last 6 months I've seen numerous sofas I'd have quite liked for £50 or so, and quite a few being given away free if you have the means to collect them. Even if you haven't you're likely to be able to find a man with a van on the same selling site who'd pick it up and deliver it to you for £30 or so. Before Christmas we bought a leather armchair and pouffe for £30 - got it home and it looked brand new, and have since sold on the pouffe for £15 making the whole transaction most bargainous.
I also got a good-as-new Dyson last week for £30.