Breaking Through, Travelling On

Karmacat

rtandon27 wrote: »

What a lovely dreamy afternoon KC! Communing with the creatures sounds so relaxing! Any foraging happen while you were out and about?

I inspected :rotfl: quite a few sweet chestnuts laying about, and a lot of beech trees, but beech are fiddly, and there's a good cropping sweet chestnut 10 minutes walk from me, so I didn't bother. Apparently most crops need "edge habitat" - and a lot of this was through absolute forest.

There's a free car park there, and its between my sister and me, so we can definitely meet up there and go for walks somewhere new, though we're both annual members at Wakehurst Place, its nice to explore too.

I'm guessing it's the steam railway you are refering to? OH says he's been on it a long time ago - I had a look at the prices last week - wow you are right it's pricey!

Thats the one I'd rather make a day of it with my sister than do it on my own, on spec like this. I don't think she'll go for it tho - she goes there every year with the kids from her class

ed - thanks for the tip! No, it was more about what would a prosperous, tiny little village like this do, to cope with peak oil, fewer food imports, that sort of thing. Seeing the anglers and the game birds and the horses and the *beautiful* allotments got me thinking

Today, I think, is a gardening day - also a "clean the spiders off the front door" day - heaven only knows why, possibly because they get the very earliest morning sun there and its warm because its white, but half a dozen a week lodge there, and its a little disconcerting. Sploosh of water, then spray the empty space with diluted essential oil. Which then attracts wasps :rotfl: I tell you, the ecosystem round here is in fine fettle :rotfl:

Have a good day all!

edinburgher

ed - thanks for the tip! No, it was more about what would a prosperous, tiny little village like this do, to cope with peak oil, fewer food imports, that sort of thing. Seeing the anglers and the game birds and the horses and the *beautiful* allotments got me thinking

They'd form a violent hierarchical society a la John Christopher novels

Actually, breakfast inspired a far more detailed plot.

Struggling with peak oil, peak phosphorus and peak polo, the residents of a wealthy countryside village have fracked their allotments as far as they can go. Their only hope may lie in the blacksmith's son George, who mysteriously manages to stay in the village despite average house prices of £800k. What will George discover about his world and himself as he flies his pheasant pulled blimp 'King William' to the sinister North? in search of the elusive 'renew able energyes'? :rotfl:

Ps. The website I mentioned on Goldies' thread? The blog author contributed to a book on peak oil oddly enough!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Final-Energy-Crisis-Sheila-Newman/dp/0745327176/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411897008&sr=8-1&keywords=the+final+energy+crisis

Karmacat

You're on a roll, aren't you :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: There's a little bit of Waterworld in that there plot, y'know

And there *was* a forge in that village :j

I'm reading your diary - halfway through, and I'm totally inspired by the matched betting, must get back to it. I also think I need to keep a note of what I manage to get, but I'm not doing the bits and bobs like I used to. I like prattling, but I need to do a fortnightly/monthly summary of actual mse achievements, rather than plans and ideas as I do now

edinburgher

Be wary of the bit where I lose several hundred pounds (fresh in my memory, happened a couple of weeks ago). Must remain optimistic, still have ££££s socked in the ISA that wouldn't be there but for the MB :beer:

Karmacat

Ouch!!! I'm not surprised that stung when I did it, I was always pretty conservative, never did in-play bets etc, I set things up a couple of days ahead so I could go back the next day and run through the figures again - I did change things a couple of times, so it paid off.

Your mentions of free spins have got me intrigued tho - they weren't doing that when I was doing it. Sounds good. I'll read through, get some lunch, and we'll see

Karmacat

Ooh ... ed has got me going on the pension front again, I've been researching a few websites he's mentioned on his mfw diary and although I have various properties and funds and investments, my pension shortfall is about £180,000 :eek::rotfl::eek::rotfl::eek::rotfl:

Just as an aside: I'm always very pessimistic about the value of property that I've owned for a while - just did a quick search for what my French apartment might be worth, and there's one for sale on rightmove, same village, same weird arrangement of a sort of cupboard bedroom as the 2nd bedroom. Its new, admittedly, whereas mine is 9 years old now, but its on sale for the equivalent of £200,000! I simply don't believe that valuation, so I'm going to put £100,000 on my list.

However, to continue:
1. the pension income I'm projecting I want is considerably higher than I live on right now.
2. that shortfall ignores the fact that eventually I *will* get a state pension, in 6 years time or so. Currently a tenner or so under £6,000 a year.
3. it ignores the extra I could rent out: it includes selling this place, buying 2 flats with the proceeds, then renting one out and living in the other. But I wouldn't want to do that immediately - I'd want to travel in a camper, or a little van like Cheery has - so there'd be two flats to rent out, not one. The capital cost of a flat like that would be about £120,00 (including buying a camper ). Or it might be houses in Liverpool. I'll see :cool:

£180k shortfall less the £120,000 capital cost of the flat to provide the extra income, is £60k. Which means I have a new aim on here : meet the £60k shortfall. In two years Hmm. Well, thats only impossible if I ignore points (1) to (3) above.

Here we go.

Goldiegirl

I had to snigger about the 'middle class snotty' written tone.

I also like to do that in letters when unhappy, usually letters to the tax office as I'm always needing to micro-manage my tax affairs.

I perfected this back in the 1980's when writing arrears letters to mortgage customers. I used to enjoy communicating my personal affront and horror that my customers had defaulted on payment arrangements that they had agreed with me.

Nowadays it's all automated letters, but back then my letters had character :rotfl:


On the other hand, there was a lot of job satisfaction when you could help a customer with budgeting and getting themselves back on track. Back then, it was more personal, and it was very pleasing when a customer cleared their arrears and could get on with their life

edinburgher

I take it you pay tax of some sort KC? If so, the £60k shortfall is more like a £48k shortfall (or less). Also, point 1 is particularly valid, you can trim your budget etc. Assuming a 4% withdrawal rate from your pension pot, every £1/mth saved is something like £300 you don't have to save :money:

Karmacat

edinburgher wrote: »

I take it you pay tax of some sort KC? If so, the £60k shortfall is more like a £48k shortfall (or less).

Oh! Of course :j I forgot all about that

Also, point 1 is particularly valid, you can trim your budget etc.

My budget has been trimmed back so much its anorexic, truly the only budget I have is "don't spend if you don't have to". Which includes cutting my own hair (not just my fringe, but tying the rest of it in a ponytail and lopping the bottom off) and not watching tv - I download the odd thing from iplayer, but thats all. Been doing my own accounts for years, and as that also includes the apartment in France, thats quite troublesome - in fact, anyone who reads this thread in the next few months is going to be sick and tired of my accounts

Assuming a 4% withdrawal rate from your pension pot, every £1/mth saved is something like £300 you don't have to save :money:

I saw the guy using that £300 figure, and I didn't follow it, to be honest, ed. I read it through a couple of times, and it didn't go in. I'll try to make time to read it again today, and this time I'll read it out loud - that works for me, sometimes when I speed read I can miss stuff out

I'm going to make a chart I can colour in I like charts - it'll have to be two sets of columns tho - one will be actual money put by, and the other will be money off like vouchers for this that and the other.

Goldie - for me, the middle class snot is usually a complaint of one sort or the other. It doesn't always work, but it often does :A

edinburgher

The £300 figure assumes that you're trying to create a perpetuity (i.e. the money won't run out). For the sake of simplicity, 4% has been the safe withdrawal rate over the last 100 years or so for a balanced portfolio, although it's likely that it will be lower in future as global growth has slowed.

£1/mth expense = £12/year cost
100% / 4% = 25
£12 * 25 = £300

If you don't have dependents/want to take it all with you, you could theoretically have a higher withdrawal rate.