The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

chris_m

GDB2222 wrote: »

PN, this is pretty straightforward in principle, although it's not something I've done myself, so I may not have the nuances correct. Perhaps Michaels will fill in any gaps.

Assumptions:
1. You are over 55
2. You do not fully utilise your tax free income tax allowance.

What you do:
1. Pick a personal pension plan, pretty much at random. You just need one without high charges.
2. Contribute £2880 from your bank account into the plan, invested in the cash units (so it won't fluctuate in value). The government adds £720, to take that up to £3600.
3. A couple of weeks later, tell the pension company that you want to take 25% of the fund as a tax free lump sum on retirement.
4. Tell them you want to take the balance of the £3600 as a lump sum under pension freedom. That's taxable, but see assumption 2 above.

Result is that you put in £2880 and get £3600 out. You can do this once each tax year. It's effectively £14 a week of extra cash, for very little work.

That tallies with my understanding, having gone through the very long thread to which michaels gave a link.

I'm certainly going to be looking into how it can be made to fit with my forecasts/plans, even though I won't hit 55 until next year and I've probably got only £500 or so difference between my pension and the point at which I'd have to pay any tax. Even if I were already over the personal allowance, the government's generous donation of £720 and being able to take 25% of the resultant balance tax free results in a gain of somewhere between 6 and 7% on the original sum - better than I could get elsewhere.
I'll probably aim to take the £900 (the 25%) plus just enough to keep me within the personal allowance each year, and leave the rest in to be paid out, les tax, later.

Thanks, michaels, for the suggestion - it's not something I'd even considered before.

Pyxis

Twice today I have logged out of MSE, using my long-winded method, and twice when I returned, I found I wasn't logged out.

What's all that about?

ukcarper

I was at school in 60s it was a secondary modern, 3 streams of about 30 people, only top stream expected to take O levels. We had no choice as to what subjects we took and as I change classes I managed to leave school without studying chemistry, physics or a foreign language. Only about 30 people went into 5th form the rest leaving aged 15, no one went to 6th form. Careers a quick interview.

LydiaJ

SingleSue wrote: »

I remember the grid too..and the fact my parents were not involved in the decision.

My biggest bugbear was that I couldn't do physics/biology but only chemistry/biology or physics/chemistry. I was hopeless at chemistry, needed biology for my future plans and top of the class in physics. On top of that, history clashed with them too, so couldn't take that either.

That old chestnut! It's still raising its ugly head. It's true that if you want to do bio at A-level then you really need at least some chemistry beyond Y9, but if science A-levels aren't in the plan, then there's nothing wrong with the bio/phys combo. I teach with someone who did A-levels in bio & phys without chem, and just this morning I was advising a Y9 girl that there's nothing wrong with not doing chem if the only science you might choose in 6th form is phys. (Independent school, still teaching separate sciences and letting kids choose.)

Loanranger wrote: »

Same here, no input whatsoever from parents into subject options. Unnecessary for us as it was all explained to us by the school and since we were grammar school pupils they probably assumed were able to understand the ins and outs and also in terms of what careers we were excluding.
No parents evenings either but in my subsequent career I did more than my share of those.
Parents generally had a hands off approach, never came to watch us play sports on a Saturday; never did our homework; never came to the school to complain. All in all, I learnt to make my own decisions and also learnt that when these were poor decisions, the responsibility was mine, too.

Parents who are paying for education (both those at the school where I teach now, and my own when I was young) expect to be included in these things, and generally are. Mine came to parents' evenings, and to concerts etc. For options, we were all given out sheets with the grid of things to pick from, and told to take them home and discuss them with our parents. I can't remember whether there were information evenings and so on. It's a long time ago now. Howvever, I can still remember exactly what was in each of those 6 boxes back in 1982.

michaels wrote: »

I suspect there is probably the same difference between different schools as there was then.

My parents probably weren't as involved with extra-curricular activities as we are but they definitely took an interest in what went on at school, scrutinizing reports and attending parents evenings. Had I not wanted to do sensible gce/a level options I am sure pressure would have been brought to bear.

I decided that even if I could have persuaded DD1 to do triple science which I think would leave the most choices later on it would have been counter productive as she might have rebelled in the classes or just been miserable. It would amaze me to think a parent would leave it to their kids to make this life changing decision at 13 but then I am a firm believer in the value of experience. Not older and smarter but older and more knowledgeable.

Both my kids have been very happy to listen to my opinion and advice, and have made sensible decisions in the light of what I said, both for GCSE, and DS for A-level. Similarly, my parents were happy with the things I wanted to choose. IIRC, I came home with the grid and explained to my parents that I had to do these four, I wanted to do those four, and I was having difficulty picking 2 more out of 3 that I was still considering. They were happy with the things I was sure about, and made suggestions of things for me to bear in mind while pinning down that final piece of the puzzle.

In the case of DD, the school (a state grammar) make them all do 2xEng, maths, triple science, a language and at least one of hist/geog. With all that determined for her by the school, she doesn't really have any stupid decision possibilities open to her. There's no need for me to interfere in her decision between French/German, or hist/geog. Likewise, her choice of her last two subjects can't wreck her future whatever she picks, so if music and design are what float her boat, then I'm happy to let her pick them.

My advice is quite directive. I've said things like "It's your decision and if you really want to do A-level theatre studies you can, but in my professional opinion, anybody who loathes and detests writing essays as strongly as you do would be ill-advised to choose an A-level that's 40% essay writing."

The only decision I imposed was when DS's options didn't fit the timetable, and he suggested just doing 9 instead of 10, as his fellow dyslexic friends were mostly doing. I reminded him that he may have a specific learning difficulty, but he's not academically weak, and he was to do the full number of subjects.

LydiaJ

Loanranger wrote: »

Noone had an automatic right to enter the sixth form. If you weren't able to pass the requisite number of O levels at a certain grade you were not able to stay on for academic A levels. On the other hand you may have been eligible for entry to a vocational course at a local college.

They still don't, in many places. DS's school has minimum entrance requirements for (a) the sixth form in general and (b) each subject he wanted to do. A friend of his got the GCSEs to get into the 6th form, but didn't do well enough in English lit to be allowed to do it for A-level, so had to do geography, which she did have the grades for.

DS was worried about GCSEs, fearing that he might not get a 5 in English lang and might not be allowed to stay on. However, his tutor explained that exceptions are often made for well behaved and hard working students who just miss a grade or two. Meanwhile, troublesome students and those with wildly unrealistic ideas of their own capabilities are much easier to deal with if there's a policy they can point to. In the end, he got his 5, so that wasn't a problem.

Pyxis wrote: »

Would have been nice to have had some interested shown, though.

LydiaJ

This discussion has really drawn me down memory lane. I remember being about to be handed the O-level grid, and saying to myself, "well, the ones that are really important to me are X, Y and Z, and as long as I can do those the others don't matter so much" and then taking my first glance at the paper and being horrified to find that the first box was a choice between X, Y or Z. Panic! It was all right, though - both X and Z appeared in other boxes as well, so I was able to do all three of them. Phew!

ivyleaf

Aw, Pyxis ((HUGS)). One of my DD1's secondary school friends was particularly bright, and I remember DD coming home and telling me that her friend had got 98% in a maths test, but instead of being pleased with her performance the poor girl said "Oh dear, they won't like that - they'll want to know why I didn't get 100%."

My brother went to a boys' grammar school in a provincial town in the 1950s; he said none of the boys were encouraged to work towards going to university. The Headmaster expected everyone to go into either the Civil Service or the Forces. (Or, presumably, teaching.)

The thing that really annoyed me when choosing my options for O-levels was that I wanted to do History and Geography, but could only do one or the other.

silvercar

PN wrote:

Looking at the list of "notable past pupils" on wikipedia, your school has a list of 22. Mine has 3.

Wrong school.

vivatifosi

My school doesn't have a list of notable past pupils. Nope, not one.

SingleSue

Jazee wrote: »

My experience of careers advice is similar to PN and I left school in the early eighties. It wasn't even suggested that you might be able to do A levels. I mentioned that I'd like to be a nurse, but was given the application to do secretarial stuff at college.

Fortunately, I now thirty years later have the chance to get out of that and do something else. As of yet, I haven't decided exactly what!

Ours consisted of asking us what we wanted to do and then trying to steer us towards YTS in everything other than what you had just told them.

By the time I saw the careers advisor, my dream of being a nurse was all but over (blooming teacher strikes) and I already had a guaranteed job to go to after school. For some reason she couldn't understand why I laughed at going on a YTS job at £27.50 a week. She still couldn't (or wouldn't) understand when I told her the job already set up was paying almost double that. She kept telling me I was making a mistake....

This was in 1986.

I was one of the few not to go onto a YTS pLacement and one of the few to be in a very well paid job by the time I was 19, the others were expert at making tea and coffee though :rotfl: