Brogden's Debt Disaster & Self Managed DMP!

Dansmam

Ooh Brogden, last word on pallets, promise (if you'd wanted a pallet thread guess you'd have headed it palletsrus or similar). Son does pallet bookshelves. Free, easy and hold masses of books. Pallets. End of x
Trees, lilt, we still have trees...
DM

Dansmam

And if you remember I am the council tax queen. Don't ever remember taking anyone to court for smoking chimneys. Not this far north, anyway. Might be harsher daarn saarf though

liltdiddylilt

There is a law on bonfire smoke before a certain time in the evening where my dad is. Chimney smoke can come under fire and there is special smokeless coal but it doesn't really apply out in the sticks where my dad is as everyone has wood burners so they all use it. The smokeless stuff burns 3x as quickly and costs more to boot so there is a tacit agreement in place.

Brogden

liltdiddylilt wrote: »

There is a law on bonfire smoke before a certain time in the evening where my dad is. Chimney smoke can come under fire and there is special smokeless coal but it doesn't really apply out in the sticks where my dad is as everyone has wood burners so they all use it. The smokeless stuff burns 3x as quickly and costs more to boot so there is a tacit agreement in place.

OMG !!

You are taking me back to being a little kid. A 'smokeless zone' I seem to remember and you are mentioning some sort of fuel the 'coalman' could deliver (there were no online orders at the time.....:D)

There used to be a 'pop man' too who sold 'Corona' lemonade in GLASS bottles :rotfl:

Dansmam

Ooh, still a theoretical smokeless zone here but don't think anyone really cares or notices. Lovely smell of woodsmoke when I do the late night dog walk. We burn all sorts.
DM

Aloofdragon

We used to have anthracite for our park ray as a kid proper bum warmers.. O and the alpine pop man pineappleade was amazing. The corona factory is/was about 2 miles from me they've revamped it into a gig place now its fab they've kept the original structure.

in_need_of_direction

Wood burns cleanly and is allowable in smoke free zones.

Brogden

in_need_of_direction wrote: »

Wood burns cleanly and is allowable in smoke free zones.

Sorry......it's become a bit of a talking point this.

The trees are conifers. I'm a bit of a non-starter because the house does not have an open flu - no chimney. I'll just have to get on with my pampered life (and try to afford it !!) Gaz & Leccy here only (not good news I know!)

liltdiddylilt

I grew up with all these things in my timeworn of a village. There was a man when I was growing up (12 years ago?!) who had never been further than the nearest town in his 70+ years of life. And he went there on 'holiday' once. :rotfl: and he rode around in a horse and trap. That is what you get for growing up in the middle of sherwood forest

P.S the coal man and the pop man with glass bottles still exist every other thursday for the pop man, and the coal man comes when he is called

Brogden wrote: »

OMG !!

You are taking me back to being a little kid. A 'smokeless zone' I seem to remember and you are mentioning some sort of fuel the 'coalman' could deliver (there were no online orders at the time.....:D)

There used to be a 'pop man' too who sold 'Corona' lemonade in GLASS bottles :rotfl:

Brogden

I haven’t posted for a while as I have been thinking and thinking more about the finances. I am awaiting some modest funds and will be putting a few grand old predator names to rest shortly and I should be very pleased about that. I am also making sure that Mrs. B will be debt free. In a moment of madness I have also offered to pay for her holiday. The offer has been accepted providing the DD’s do not find out so it is shhhhhhh…….;)

I have an absolute mountain of debt and whatever settlement offers I have accepted I will be carrying on with some tens of thousands…….:(

I have been stressing over the mortgage too and for a while I favoured making capital payments from the freed-up income. Maybe I will do a little of this but I am, am , am, am going to make pension contributions. I am a member of three pension arrangements…..one defined benefit, one defined contribution and a SIPP. I am going to pay enough to the defined contribution scheme of my employer to get me out of the 40% tax bracket so…….it will cost me £60 to have £100 in the fund – makes sense. The reason why it never made sense before is that I was tied to having to buy an annuity at shockingly bad value or ‘drip out’ a little through income withdrawal, not being able to access more than a fraction of the fund as cash .

With the ‘pension freedoms’ from April 6th this year, I can (if I’m mad) draw the whole lot out if I want after age 55 – there’s a tax bill of course but…….what if I don’t have a job? Will I be paying tax? Well……I might have a free tax allowance. Mrs B may have one too so it makes sense to pay to a personal pension for her at the same time. I need to ‘fine tune’ all of this but I cannot see that there is anything better for me than to get stuck into ‘serious’ pension contributions. :T

My intention would be that pension vehicles look after debts, mortgage and of course retirement income. Whilst saving money to pay a bit off my mortgage immediately saves me interest, if I can invest £60 to have £100 invested and have future access (keeping an eye on tax,) this could be much more efficient. You see……I am not sure that the mortgage will ever be fully paid off – maybe enough to downsize which I am dying to do at some stage but if I chuck all available funds at the pensions at least I have funds. From funds comes security and the ability to have choices in future years. The ability to finally make good the bad……..hopefully all of it.

Thanks to anybody who’s made it to the end of this post. My immediate priority is those F&F’s on a few debts over the next few weeks and then it may be ‘pension city!’ :cool:


Brogden :eek: