Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

Spirit_2

GDB2222 wrote: »

I'm fairly sure that early retirement is not good for longevity. However, the statistics are confounded by the effect of people in poor health retiring early. Also, it depends what you do with all that extra time at home. From the point of view of longevity, it may be better to work for longer but on a part-time basis.

:(:(
I tried the going part time rather than retirement, and you all know I had left it too late and ended up retired anyway.

The part time route gives a step down in income but you still have at least 80%of your previous income and you still have your savings. i/t is a chance for you to build up a life outside of work prior to giving it up altogether.

zagubov

Spirit wrote: »

:(:(
I tried the going part time rather than retirement, and you all know I had left it too late and ended up retired anyway.

The part time route gives a step down in income but you still have at least 80%of your previous income and you still have your savings. i/t is a chance for you to build up a life outside of work prior to giving it up altogether.

I've said before I think more people should have the chance to phase out their work and gradually adjust to retirement, by maybe working one day in the week less each year.

SingleSue

PasturesNew wrote: »

I distinctly remember the years "before all these tax credits top ups" were invented. Post-16 I did a 2 year secretarial college, full-time, so 9-5 Mon-Fri. I remember that after the first year my pocket money stopped and so did my dinner money, as mum wasn't getting child benefit any more. No real skin off my nose as I had a Saturday job so was already buying my clothes and funding my exams and all my course books, pencils, notepads etc. But I was a bit annoyed that my sibling's pocket money increased when mine stopped! Parents, eh!

It was £1 pocket money -v- compared to £7 earnt on a Saturday job and about £1/hour for temp secretarial work in the holidays.

I told my parents to stop my pocket money once I started earning significantly more in my part time jobs than the pocket money, so from about age 13. At one point in the summer of when I was 14 and for a period of about 6-8 weeks (and had 5 part time jobs), I was earning more than dad!

In 5 weeks I paid for a holiday to Spain with my nan, got a whole new wardrobe of clothes, saved up all my spending money and still did my normal day to day spending (and still had enough to put some in savings)

Oh those were the days....

vivatifosi

There are also different steps you can take. In my case I have chosen to work closer to home and not have a stressful commute. Once the mortgage is paid, DH will go 80% if he has the chance. He is due to retire at 60.

michaels

vivatifosi wrote: »

There are also different steps you can take. In my case I have chosen to work closer to home and not have a stressful commute. Once the mortgage is paid, DH will go 80% if he has the chance. He is due to retire at 60.

I would love to work locally - life is so much more relaxed when I occasionally have a week or two in the local office but I don't think there are local jobs for my skill set and alternatives might only pay in a 5 day week what I earn in 2 or 3. DW working would not help much either - if she worked full time it would be unlikely to cover much more than the childcare bill, if she got one of those mythical part time school term jobs it would bring in less than a day (half a day?) a week of my work. Perhaps the best bet is to try to get our capital working harder, i.e. use the cheap line of credit that is the mortgage to earn some money - with a btl it might be possible with a fixed rate mortgage to lock in a 5-6% return on capital that costs 2.5% for 5 years - of course there is capital risk in that approach. May be something like corporate bonds are a better more diversified investment but to get high yields you seem to have to invest in some risky sh*te....

silvercar

OH commutes, but northbound rather than south, so against the traffic and a far more pleasant journey in his car rather than the horror of the train. His previous job was within a mile of home; that was pure luck. Before that he commuted into London.

mystic_trev

I heard on the Radio this morning that today is 'Hug an Aussie day' I imagine Generali will need a lot of :grouphug: after Tottenham's performance last night!

ivyleaf

'Small pleasures in life' dept - I have a new mousemat. It is round and has a picture of Smarties on it

I was surprised to find that currys/pcworld had only two mousemats in the shop. Of course we're all supposed to have a tablet these days, aren't we? But an awful lot of us haven't.

Quite funny really, they had all this technology in there and I didn't know what half of it was

SingleSue

Not used a mousemat in years and haven't really had to. I know an old school mouse needed one but once optical tracking came in, they became unessential...well to me anyway.

Mine is used on the quilt (where it is right now to be honest), my leg, the laptop tray...anywhere really that is a flat surface.

tom9980

PasturesNew wrote: »

I've never got on with mousemats, I've never found one that actually works. I currently sit with my knees bent/feet up on the sofa and I plonk a laptray over my feet and use that to hold the TV remote, my reading glasses and it is a mouse mat/table too

I've never had/used a tablet, wouldn't know how to!

Just had a mini hail storm here!

Technologically challenged folk tend to "get" tablets easier given your finger is basically the mouse cursor and no double click this or or right click that is involved. Next time your in a shop with one displayed try out the display models.