Breaking Through, Travelling On

Karmacat

Hi DDFW! Thanks hope yours has some good things too, in spite of working ... mine is mostly quiet, I'm just off to the supermarket now, and then I'm off out tomorrow night, for an evening of board games, its a tradition that stretches back almost 25 years now :eek: dear me :rotfl:

Hopefully, I'll do a little bit of gardening too :cool:

Oh, and just in case peeps other than Goldie were wondering about Swagbucks - don't! On any account :eek: They've rehashed the radio listening thing - used to be 6 pts for 30 mins, now its 1 pt for 40 mins :rotfl: the music I listen to is very nice in itself, currently one of Chopin's nocturnes, but thats not quite the point :rotfl:

Ooh, I woke up to another realisation - I have some dosh floating around after my visit to my mum - I can buy premium bonds with that :j till I put a lump sum into the pension at the tax-year end, from all the matched betting I'll be doing altering sig now

rtandon27

Morning Karma!

I too have given up on most of the survey & click sites - they suck you in with great offers that then dwindle down to almost nothing!

Have stuck with the $hoppers thought$ one as it pays in Te$co points which we quadruple to use for restuarant vouchers & also another two sites which pay out automatically in cash to paypal once £5 is reached.

I've realized that my time is better spent saving money rather than making pittance, such as organizing & meal planning or selling off our extra 'stuff' or bartering/trading extra food finds with friends for ingredients we actually use. So today two hours spent planning food related things has saved me £20, whereas 2 hours of surveys might have netted me £8.

It's amazing the things I've learned over the years hanging out on MSE!

Karmacat

Well put, RT! Though I have to say, if you managed to earn £8 from surveys in 2 hours, you're doing astonishingly well :T I'm the wrong age bracket, thats all - they're well-targeted on yougov, but on swag*, I've only completed 1 survey, I think ... I don't bother now.

Did the shopping just before the forecast rain started tipping down, and its still going. Used £2.50 of nectar points that were sitting there for me - ooh, thats another £2.50 for my pension :rotfl:well, as the rule is £1 saved to the pension is £300 ... (damn, its not that, is it, I knew that was going to leak out of my brain, sorry Ed) - anyway, £2.50 is something like £950 Must do better (at remembering what the bleep I'm talking about :cool: )

rtandon27

Karmacat wrote: »

...I'm the wrong age bracket, thats all - they're well-targeted on yougov, but on swag*, I've only completed 1 survey, I think ...

I think in theory I'm a niche bracket - in *theory* I should have lots of disposable income for my age group as no littlies running about - the reality is unfortunately very different! The things I get asked about are so outside my scope & I'm very sure that my opinions really skew the research!:o:p;) I'm very sure that most surveys are not geared at someone who's watching every penny & trying to pay of debt inherited from the ex! I mean really - who has the funding to go on weekend breaks every month or eat out 3 times a week or buy clothes on a monthly basis?

Knit_Witch

People who live on the credit card and then panic when they realise that they can't afford to pay it back this month ... so they go to W*nga et al and end up even more in hock!

Karmacat

You're right, KnitWitch - and I never used to know anyone like that, and sadly I *do*, now in RL. And RT, you're right too, they're not geared to people trying to save, none of them are.

And I forgot to say about my shopping: I've got 1kg there of pumpkin seeds, £8.50 a kilo, the Sainsbo price the little packets can go in the freezer, and just get opened 100g at a time, which keeps them fresher.

Still raining. I don't need to water the garden :j

I'm off to research the £300 again, see if I can get it to stay in my head this time

rtandon27

Karmacat wrote: »

...and I forgot to say about my shopping: I've got 1kg there of pumpkin seeds, £8.50 a kilo, the Sainsbo price the little packets can go in the freezer, and just get opened 100g at a time, which keeps them fresher...

Brilliant deal KC - I'd never thought of keeping the packets in the freezer! - now that operation 'defrost the freezer' is well underway, I'll be able to rejig the storage in there, so may put my kilo of raw cashews in there. Unlike back across the pond, OH & I don't normally buy food in bulk, but these were such a DEAL!!!

(and Knitwitch you are 100% correct - I didn't think of it like that! - thanks for opening my eyes!)

edinburgher

How about a quick spreadsheet to help you understand it?

Assuming you start in A1:

(A1) Monthly Expense 1 (B1 is amount that you wish to spend)
(A2) Annual Expense 12 (=B1*12)
(A3) Safe Withdrawal Rate 4% (B3 is your SWR)
(A4) Investment Required 300 (=B2*(100%/B3))

Karmacat

Okay, edinburgher - and guess what, when I've got something vaguely mathematical to understand, I work it through, I forgot about that. Goes back to learning the Hardy Weinberg equations for genetic drift at uni - it was part of my degree, I couldn't drop the subject, I *had* to understand it. I worked those equations for days, until they sank completely into my brain on a gut level, so to speak

Spreadsheet is open now. I may be gone some time

Karmacat

edinburgher wrote: »

(=B2*(100%/B3))

Does that mean:
square B2 multiplied by 100% divided by the rate thats in square B3?

I failed maths o level


ETA - yes it does! I just did that sum on my calculator and it comes out to 300 **happy dance**

And it means ... okay, for every pound a month expenditure from a pension, I've got to have saved £300 in a pension, its *that* way round, isn't it? Assuming a SWR of 4%?