Breaking Through, Travelling On

Karmacat

Thats true :rotfl: and sensible but you of all people know that we aren't always sensible at least the cleaning is down on the list :rotfl:

I've ticked something off the financial list this morning - listing the amounts earned from ratesetter since I opened it up just after I retired. The statement to the end Feb says I've earned £12.68 interest already, a rate of 1.15% after 6 months, and much more after the referral bonus was donated by a certain lovely mse-er :j



Concentrating on the financials today:

• refilling the French cheque account.
• check whether the English account needs refilling too, oops.
• check that the management company has my cheques that were sent to their old direct debit.
• tiddly piece of money I need to put in an ISA.
• buy rail ticket for next week – boy, am I glad that I won't get caught up in the fiasco at Liverpool Lime Street currently ongoing.
• start considering where my pension funds are. Reading a thread on here that normal charges can be as low as 0.4% a year – mine are higher than that

Noodling the pension
Pension contribution – I could still put in £2880 and get tax relief on it, even though I don't think I'll be paying income tax this year. Except … the contribution I made for last year squeaked in to the previous tax year for the pension company, but they didn't cash the cheque till 8 April 2016 – and I declare my accounts on a cash basis, so thats this year's tax-free £2880 already taken, sadly. Just needed to write that down to sort it out in my head. Sigh … ah well, I'll make the contribution in time in the next tax year, thats for sure.


Right, a quick canter around the threads, get the washing on the line, I'm good to go.

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themadvix

That's rubbish about the pension - any chance you can get the pension company/HMRC to acknowledge date of receipt? (I don't really know what I'm talking about here, but it seems unfair that you miss out because they were slow with their admin!)

Liverpool Lime Street sounds horrendous!!

Karmacat

Its a bit of a pain, isn't it, madvix - its last year's tax relief I missed out on, but frankly with all the complexity of my own accounts (because of the French apartment) I don't want to kick up any dust. And to be fair, the rules are clear.

Anyway, some things accomplished:
- sent savings to my English current account, so I can then send them to the French current account.
- English current account doesn't need topping up this month.
- but Talktalk took £65 for the engineer's visit I had in November or so ... bit horrifying, to see that amount going out! And the engineer had said they wouldn't charge so after a bit of fuss, I've got somebody ringing me in the next few days. I doubt they'll do anything, but I can only try.
- not quite sure if the French management company have my last few payments or not ... otoh, I now "only" owe them E131, and they'd been asking for E2000+, so I guess they got my payments Must now update their banking details on my own French current account.
- bought rail ticket, one of the timed tickets, so if I get ill its a problem - but its only £46 return, counting the Senior Rail discount which still makes me snigger, to think that I qualify
- filled another bucket with weeds and dead grass from the garden! My lemon balm is definitely alive :j I may have to put another personal blog post up, showing before and after pictures :rotfl:
- washing on the line is almost dry :j
- my brother got his birthday parcel, as Royal Mail promised :j

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Cheery_Daff

Ooh, some good news and good list-ticking-off in there KC :j :j Sorry to hear about the pesky cluster flies :eek: and the pension palaver (and being charged for an engineer visit - pah!)

Yay for washing though :j

Karmacat

Yep, there are some "yay" moments in there, thats for sure

Today is really rainy again, but there's a mistake outside I have to correct - I was going to repot a salad burnet that had taken root in an abandoned plantpot, but I forgot, turfed most of it out, and left it on its side so the worm colony could crawl out without being mashed by the drainage stones inside

Save the worms!

Save the salad burnet!

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Karmacat

- the salad burnet is safe! I upended a *different* abandoned flowerpot. Not sure if thats good or bad, once I write it. Maybe its both

- phoned bro, its his birthday. Sister phoned me after phoning him

- friend I'd written to emailed, I emailed back - friendships seem to be rescued, thank heavens.

- have to hold fire on splitting some of my mum's ISA money, which I was going to do today, got to find out if receiving an ISA transfer counts as "opening" an ISA.

- just starting the process of cooking some beans in the slow cooker.

- been researching dehydrating information on the interweb - I'm very tempted not to spend out buying a book, just to research each type of veg as and when. Found a very good site about general safety (and specifics) in dehydrate2store.

- signed up to an author who's giving away 5 of his books, free - English, and he writes apocafic, but these are horror - hmmm, don't usually read horror. Will give them a go, they're on kindle.

- binmen not been, this is seriously hampering my garden pruning!

- instead of splitting the ISA, ahem, I went onto Real Seeds, I love those people, and bought 5 packets of seeds: dwarf bush courgette, lettuce, calendula, nasturtium, and something called breadseed poppy - the seedhead doesn't have holes in like normal poppies, so its easy to collect them and use them in their edible sense, as well as plant a few more I spent the grand total there of £11.88. No root plants, not in this soil!

I still need to:
- open the post
- open an ISA
- finish cooking the beans
- send money to France, though that might be better to wait for Monday now, and do it first thing :o:o

Karmacat

Update: slow cooker beans are done, and I squeaked in sending the money to France, the rate improved slightly during the day.

Also been examining the garden seeds I have, *after* I bought a new set from Real Seeds, of course there are some I could use to sprout in the house as microgreens, and there's a small pack of wild garlic seeds, which say they'll grow in any soil, planted in the spring, even in shade. Just the job for outside my back door, then! If it works, I'll have to protect them from builders working on the garden gate and the brick shed, but one bridge at a time. This packet has been sitting about for a *long* time :o:o I'll see if I can do something with it today.

Might save opening the post for this evening, exciting as that will be (not)

beanielou

What a pain about the ISA.

EatingTheElephant

It sounds as if there will be a fantastic crop of food this year, growing is something I've been slacking on the past few years. Have a lovely weekend

earthgirl

That sounds great KC. Very exciting with all the veg seeds- much more adventurous than me. I get a mini selection from a hardware shop for £5 and we just eat whatever we get! Hope the wild garlic germinates. I love planning the garden out.