22 Foxhole East

beanielou

Good news on work. 

Happy carpet buying. What colour are you going for? 

mark55man

One last pension tip - if you are going to buy back years buy them back as late as possible before they time out, or when its clear you are not going to earn them naturally.  They are not good value if sadly you do not get to use them or if you manage to earn enough otherwise.

You should investigate Class C (I think) but self employed contributions.  They are are like a third of the cost and it is pretty much what you have been doing.  Not sure of the paperwork angles.  That might be worth doing earlier although I imagine the deadlines are the same

f0xh0les

Currently I have 25 years of full contributions, and for the princely sum of £342.40 can fill up another 2 years, which will bump me up to 27 out of 35 to qualify for £203.85 a week in ..... 2041 .   That is the maximum allowed amount I can get. It is not to be sniffed at! 

So I will do that with my magic ISA interest money coming in next week - It is not real money, it is ambient income.

Real income came in today, from January's week of work, so I am going to buy carpets for two of the upstairs bedrooms.  I am still refusing to decorate DS3s room until he tidies it.  It is a bombsite.  

I earned the money for his new carpet too, so will do that as soon as decoration is over.

Messaged work friend to let her know I have been offered work over Summer.  Just in case she wants to send off an email to the office. There is no point in secrecy.

I was auto-enrolled  into the work pension scheme in January - because I earned over a certain amount for a couple of weeks last year, they had to offer it.  I have ummed and ahhed over it, but signed up properly last night. It will be something, rather than nothing. Will investigate further later on, and read all the documents.

After the bills and carpets go out tomorrow, I will have  £83k in savings  = £50k in PBs, £21k in ISAs £5k in a fixed rate account and £7k easily accessible for emergencies.  

 I have switched this year's ISA with £1k in it to another provider and will take the 90 day interest hit because I could only fund it for the first 60 days, now it is with a new provider, I can dump some more into it before the April reset, then it can sit there and make me interest.

Fingers crossed for all the Premium Bonds watchers tomorrow.....

f0xh0les

beanielou said:

Good news on work. 

Happy carpet buying. What colour are you going for? 

It is a blue with a lot of silvery grey in it, made from recycled plastic bottles, bleachable, tight weave but still nice and  soft underfoot.   I went in for something completely different (long and fluffy) and they told me I would be back in 18 months tops with a matted, flattened carpet wanting a new one.  They have convinced me on the hard wearing durability - I told them it had to look good for at least 5 years because I did not want to buy new carpets if I put the house up for sale, they sold me a  'teenager-proof', 'stain proof', and 'castor-wheel-office chair-proof' floor that still looks good and feels nice on bare feet.

mark55man

f0xh0les said:

Currently I have 25 years of full contributions, and for the princely sum of £342.40 can fill up another 2 years, which will bump me up to 27 out of 35 to qualify for £203.85 a week in ..... 2041 .   That is the maximum allowed amount I can get. It is not to be sniffed at! 
<snip>

Yes for that money just do it. Fire and forget. Stating the obvious - but do read the forecast properly as for those with a work history before they changed the state pension its not as simple as (years / 35) - thats only true for those entirely on the new system - for us older others earlier years can be differently valued based on employer contributory shenanigans for and accounted for in the calc they made at transition. That said it doesn't change the fact that 2 more years is 2 more years - it just might change how many more you need

beanielou

f0xh0les said:

beanielou said:

Good news on work. 

Happy carpet buying. What colour are you going for? 

It is a blue with a lot of silvery grey in it, made from recycled plastic bottles, bleachable, tight weave but still nice and  soft underfoot.   I went in for something completely different (long and fluffy) and they told me I would be back in 18 months tops with a matted, flattened carpet wanting a new one.  They have convinced me on the hard wearing durability - I told them it had to look good for at least 5 years because I did not want to buy new carpets if I put the house up for sale, they sold me a  'teenager-proof', 'stain proof', and 'castor-wheel-office chair-proof' floor that still looks good and feels nice on bare feet.

That sounds amazing. 

Love the colours & the fact it is made out of recycled bottles. I only have carpet in my bedroom and would like to replace it at some point very far away. 

Viking_mfw

f0xh0les said:

they sold me a  'teenager-proof', 'stain proof', and 'castor-wheel-office chair-proof' floor that still looks good and feels nice on bare feet.

This seems like the holy grail of carpets! 

f0xh0les

2 Carpets being fitted on Thursday morning. 

Rang the Future Pension People (about 20 minutes of 'hold music') who said I have 18 years to pay in 8 years of contributions  and seemed totally shocked that I might want to pay in for 2  additional years now.  So might think on that one..... I mean he was really, really weirded out by the idea.  Poor chap.

Topped up last year's ISA to £5k.  It is so tempting to stick another £5k in there before April rolls round, but it is earmarked  for the bathroom fixing fund. I can't save everything!

I  won  1 x £100 on the PBs this month, so the return rate for my first 12 months worked out at just over 4%.  It is a lot of fun though for £2000+, much more fun than an ISA anyway!   £25k at 5.05% is £1262.50 interest coming in this time next year.  Will wait and see what my position is at the end of March ....

mark55man

I agree with man on the phone.  If you have 18 years to pay in 8 then although buying 2 now is really cheap if you are planning to work then it would be a wasted spend.

Just be careful though as you do a number of smaller jobs in parallel your contributions only kick in if you earn over the threshold on the income from an individual job, not from the income of all your jobs in one month/week - so just keep checking.  I'm not sure when your £400 for 2 offer times out - may be as well to keep an eye on it.  Now your kids are not earning you NI credits its all on you
  

beanielou

I would pay the £400 for 2. 

We are all different!