Cheery's buttling diary: tea in one hand, plant pot in the other, running shoes on

Cheery_Daff

oh! And an MSE success story :j Friend had booked hotel (£150 between us for two nights :money: ) She'd given her card details so i got £75 in cash to give her. But i got to hotel first, and they didn't have her card details and wouldn't let me in the room til i paid :eek:

in pre-mse days that would have meant sitting in reception for an hour til she arrived (and i was SO very tired) But now i was able to just pay up without fretting about being overdrawn :j

Karmacat

That *is* a success story and your boots sound like a success story too. And the socks I could knit bedsocks, rather than buy them at M&S, even when they're on sale. Why not? Uses up a stash

Cheery_Daff

Does indeed use up a stash And gives an excuse to acquire more of a stash - probably at a slightly cheaper price than acquiring socks. And hours of fun! :j

Just reconciled bank and cash after my weekend of spendiness - bank was spot on with what I'd put into the app :j and I only had £1.90 cash less than YNAB thought I should have Considering there was lots of flinging money round for tips and snatching it back when we realised tip was too much given the service, that's not too bad! :rotfl: :rotfl:

Can't believe all the snow still up here - had completely forgotten about it as there wasn't any over the weekend :rotfl:

Wearing new boots in the house today Thinking I need to knit some ankle warmers to go with them if I'm wearing them with tights :rotfl: Something like these maybe

Although having poked around a bit I'm rather tempted with the idea of knitted spats :rotfl:

Karmacat

Ooh, I like the spats :rotfl:

The cables are lovely on the ankle warmers (can you knit cables? Respect!!!) but in my head ankle warmers are supposed to be so big they have to be pushed down, not sockless socks and I still have a pair that I knitted the first time they were "in" I actually wore them in this house before I got the new radiators

Cheery_Daff

Er, I've never actually tried knitting cables But how hard can it be?! :rotfl: (famous last words...) :rotfl:

Two money-related things today...

(1) just had a phone call from Triodos re my ISA, which reminded me that I put the money aside in YNAB but hadn't yet transferred it over to the ISA, so I've just done that now. Asked a few questions about different fixed rate ISAs, putting money away for 2 years (takes it up to 1.7%) or 3 years (1.9%) Not going to do that yet - relatively new to all this savings malarkey and not convinced we won't need it for something

Still, that's £1029 put away so far this year :j :j Two normal payments of £415 (I'm aiming for £5000 this year so that's the minimum!) plus what I saved on the house insurance (compared to what I budgeted) and the energy bill (reduced direct debit).

Not too bad!

(2) the roofer rang up rather sheepishly admitting he'd forgotten to collect the money from us :rotfl: I hope he wasn't thinking it was OUR fault - we were in when they did the work and they just drove off at the end without knocking on the door (we had the cash ready) and never sent an invoice. He's coming round on Wednesday. Daft sod

Right, back to work. Pleased to say there's a bunch of folks dismantling the scaffolding outside the back door :j :j Was getting quite sick of looking at it every time I went out and navigating the wheelie bins round it!

Cheery_Daff

Just a reminder to myself...

Car insurance is due 17th Feb so will start looking for cheaper this weekend :money:

And no idea why I got the idea that RAC was due this month too - possibly thought I'd taken it out when we bought the car? Turns out I just switched our old cover to the new car and it's not due til 20th May.

Ah well, tis all budgeted for now anyway so can stick the whole £7.50 a month I was budgeting for it for March/April/May somewhere else :money: :rotfl:

Maybe I'll add it to the patchwork fund

Cheery_Daff

Just waiting for bath to run, thought I'd sneakily start checking out some car insurance.

Existing one is with Asda - just logged in to see how much renewal is and it seems my options are

'confirm renewal'

or

'lapse policy'

but no indication of price! I'm not clicking 'confirm renewal' without knowing what it's signing me up for, so I'm afraid it's back to the comparison websites for me and Asda can !!!! off!

Go Compare seems to suggest cheapest is £248, but that includes roadside breakdown (which I don't want - although if I can upgrade it to be at home cover too it'll be cheaper to bung them in together and scrap the RAC... Hmm...)

Anyway, should probably get in the bath!

Cheery_Daff

Just doing some fiddling round on the pensions website

(and I have to confess, I had to ring the helpline because it wouldn't let me log into the online modeller - turns out I'm actually in the Final Salary scheme not the other one :rotfl: )

(although it seems that sadly that doesn't mean I get my actual final salary as a pension each year!) :rotfl:

Anyway, the LTA (life time allowance) section tells me I've built up £39,634 so far - which sounds like an awful lot! But then I suppose I pay £176 a month and employer pays 16% of my salary each month so I guess it adds up - been here nearly 5 years now.

If I stopped work now, when I got to 65 I'd get £1,723 a year and a lump sum of £5,170

If I retire at 55, and assume my salary is going to increase by £10,000 a year in the next 20 years (which isn't unreasonable, - I'm near the top of my grade now and I'd just have to get to the top of the next grade), then I'd get £7,519 a year and a lump sum of £22,557.

If I assume I'll get to the top of the grade after that (increasing salary by £23,000 - possibly ambitious) and still retire at 55, I'll get £9858 a year, and a lump sum of £29,575

And if I actually stay in work til I'm 65, and make professor for a few years

(oh, darn it, I've played with the adjuster thingy and it's gone wrong!!) :rotfl:

Ah well - if I work to 65 and make professor for a few years and leave on a salary of £65,000, I'll either get £27,000 a year and no lump sum, or £20,000 a year and a lump sum of £111,000 :eek:

Very much enjoying playing round with the sliders and adjusting the numbers :j :j

Karmacat

Sounds fun!

Erm, increase of £10,000 a year? Or in total? If you mean a year, I was definitely always in the wrong job, and I should have stuck by my first love of academia!

Cheery_Daff

In total! Gosh, £10,000 pay rise a year would be nice, wouldn't it?! :j

Neeed to do some reading about pensions - should i be making additional voluntary contributions?!