Breaking Through, Travelling On

Karmacat

It's a tricky situation. I must retire at the end of August 2016, for my health and sanity, but far from saving towards my retirement, I'm drawing money from my savings - I'm managing to limit that to paying for the French mortgage at the moment, which is about £3k a year.

What that means is that there's no way I have enough to live on, even until I get the State pension, if I just stay in this house. So, my living situation will be flexible. I'm sure I'll be here for a little while - until Spring 2017, maybe :eek: but after that, the possibilities are endless:
- living with my mum to look after her, renting this place out.
- living in a boat or a van, renting this place out.
- doing either of the above while I sell this place and look for a flat.
- win the big premium bond, buy an annuity and live happily ever after.

So, I know I'm going to move, and the less of my lifetime tut I have to move with me, the better. I want that done sooner rather than later, to increase the viability of my options, and frankly so I can sell as much of it as possible rather than just dump it at charity shops. This is the action list, as far as finances go:

1. selling stuff: Amazon, ebay, facebook.
2. decluttering: things I don't want, things that have worn out.
3. building work: I need the builders in for some things, like converting the shed to usefulness again, repairing the fencing, replastering. Some very small jobs, I can diy.
4. I need to as fit as I can be. If I'm ill the way I've been, then frankly the max I could do would be to move into a studio flat.
5. The regular income I do have is from therapy work as usual, just less of it. That simply needs to be maintained.
6. I do have a tiny bit of income – equivalent to a couple of hours of therapy work – from my kindle efforts. I have ideas for more books, so I can usefully spend time on them. I've learned a lot about how to publicise a kindle book, so that will really help next time.
7. The blogs – the structure is nearly sorted, once thats done, certainly by the end of next week, I'll focus on getting more content in and then publicising like mad.
8. There's the elance writing gigs too: I've got my business partner's niece's phone no now, she works full time as an elance editor, and has too much sometimes, so I'm going to chat to her about ways forward. The local writing group would be good to go back to, if I'm well, when it resumes after summer.
9. There are the novels – which simply can't be taken as a means to an income, but I kind of enjoy writing them. Combined, I call them The Saga.
10. The cat blog also has the potential to make income from designs, if I ever put any of them up for sale.
11. Gardening not only preserves the value of the property to help with the sale, but also provides me with nosh – quite posh nosh too – lots of herbs and fruits. Need to buy more bark chippings quite soon.
12. Keep up the French - sodding apartment in the Alps still requires my input.



All these things, a dozen of them, help me maintain or increase the viability of any of my future plans. So these are the things I'll be wittering on about



Apologies that this is so long - its a bit multifunctional, my future

Alchemilla

KC. Those are some huge questions.
What would you say to a client?

Wasps. I think if you wait til November they will be gone and not come back. Depends if you can wait that long?

Karmacat

Alchemilla wrote: »

KC. Those are some huge questions.
What would you say to a client?

They are huge, aren't they

Some of my clients already know I'm retiring - I've told the ones who seem to be future planning the way I am The rest will be told from this September onwards - the minimum recommended is six months, I think, but to be fair I think it should be more than that. There's no explanation other than "I'm retiring", Al, to be honest - I'm already over the female retirement age that stood until I was in my 40s. I'm the only therapist I know who's lasted this many years while not doing anything else related to counselling and therapy (teaching, running groups outside, etc). It's natural that I should retire. It comes to us all, y'know

Week 56 in the countdown from tomorrow.

Speaking of which ... RIP Cilla Black

[Deleted User]

Alchemilla wrote: »

[COLOR="IndigoWasps. I think if you wait til November they will be gone and not come back. Depends if you can wait that long? [/COLOR]

Thanks:T. Glad to know they'll just disappear eventually anyway and if they were anywhere else I'd leave them to their own devices. They would take up residence by the runner bean canes (24 of them, bean plants not wasps:rotfl:) where I'll be spending a bit of time every day from now on.

A neighbour had a wasp's nest a couple of years ago and used some sort of poison/aerosol on that but I'd like more natural methods if I can find any. Will Google;)

[Deleted User]

I can appreciate your dilemma, KC. Lovely to be in touching distance of retirement but a nightmare to have to work out the ways and means of supporting yourself. Whatever you decide I'm sure it will be the right thing for you as you seem such a well-balanced person with lots of interests and talents:beer:

For what it's worth, I really think you should concentrate on writing in some form or another. I read your Getting Home in an Emergency book on Kindle and was totally gripped from the first sentence. I say that as someone who wasn't all that interested in the subject matter before reading it:o. You have a wonderful writing style and I'm sure you could make something from such a talent. Plus, it's something you enjoy doing so its win-win there:j

Could you perhaps write some sort of Self Help book? Your counselling and therapy experience and expertise would be invaluable and that sort of book seems eternally popular.

Goldiegirl

Karmacat wrote: »

I'm already over the female retirement age that stood until I was in my 40s.

Mr Goldie is 65 at the end of next year, so there will be an increase in the household income then, but I have to admit I sometimes daydream about what it would have been like for me to get my state pension in four and a half years time, rather than wait until 2026. I know we can't dwell on it, but it does rankle a bit.


It's fair that men and women now have the same age of course.... but it's a long time to wait


A real shock about Cilla Black. She was 72, and that doesn't seem any age at all

[Deleted User]

Ouch, Goldiegirl:eek:. 2026!

Karmacat

carbootcrazy wrote: »

I can appreciate your dilemma, KC. Lovely to be in touching distance of retirement but a nightmare to have to work out the ways and means of supporting yourself. Whatever you decide I'm sure it will be the right thing for you as you seem such a well-balanced person with lots of interests and talents:beer:

CBC, thats very kind, thank you

For what it's worth, I really think you should concentrate on writing in some form or another. I read your Getting Home in an Emergency book on Kindle and was totally gripped from the first sentence. I say that as someone who wasn't all that interested in the subject matter before reading it:o. You have a wonderful writing style and I'm sure you could make something from such a talent. Plus, it's something you enjoy doing so its win-win there:j

Thank you very much! I'm a bit overwhelmed at that, thats amazing to read.

Could you perhaps write some sort of Self Help book? Your counselling and therapy experience and expertise would be invaluable and that sort of book seems eternally popular.

I might do, I might do. What I *am* taking notes for is the analogies that pop up in my head when I'm working. Like housing: we don't do a new build, we do a renovation when we're in therapy, but you don't faff about with the windows and the side tables at first - you do the deep stuff like underpinning foundations, then you do rewiring and replumbing, then decoration

That would probably evolve into a self help book, actually. Its important to say that I'm not an academic in the counselling world - I have good qualifications for the time, but people now have to study for much longer. So my approach is always going to be in normal, everyday language, and I guarantee you that books that are written about this stuff for *counsellors* aren't written in everyday language.

Goldie - yes, I never really minded the first increase, although it was so big, because its just *fair* - women live longer but we retired so much earlier than men. But I really resented the rise from 65 to 66, even though it was only 1 year not 5.

Cilla is a bit of a touchstone for me, even though the accent seemed a bit too strong after such a long time away from Liverpool. I used to get a *lot* of comments about how much I looked like her ...

Goldiegirl

carbootcrazy wrote: »

Ouch, Goldiegirl:eek:. 2026!

It's so far ahead - it seems like an impossibly futuristic date!

Karmacat wrote: »

Cilla is a bit of a touchstone for me, even though the accent seemed a bit too strong after such a long time away from Liverpool. I used to get a *lot* of comments about how much I looked like her ...

I know what you mean. Mr Goldie's cousin is about the same age, and although she doesn't actually look like Cilla, she's still quite glamorous and has kept herself in trim - sort of Cilla-ish




PS - we have ants too, including flying ants. We've put down something called Eraza. Hope it works, because it wasn't nice sitting out with all those things flying around

Karmacat

Ouchie, I *hate* being out in clouds of flying ants - thank heavens they only last one day.

I'm usually on here first thing, but I had paid work the whole morning :eek: bit of a shock to the system :rotfl:I just have a couple of emails I want to do, and then I'm back to tidying up.

Raining at the mo - light cloud forecast, grrr. No gardening in the rain for me, again grrrr, so I'm back to tidying up, and possibly even cleaning :eek:

:cool: