Travelling On

Karmacat

Suffolk_lass said:

There's a link here to Gov.uk that says you should get an invitation to claim your state pension no less than 2 months before you reach state pension age, but you can claim up to four months before. This page has got the apply button on too.

Although you have 42 years it is still worth checking how much you will get and understanding if making up 2016-17 and buying the few years since you stopped work might increase you from the Basic to the New State pensions. There is a Guardian article that is worth reading here (although this presumes a public sector worker it applies to anyone with an occupational final salary pension where their time there was opted out of the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme or SERPS).

Thanks for this, SL.  Reading official guides to pensions makes me go blurry I'm a bit ashamed of that, but its true.  Plus I don't have any occupational pensions at all - I have small private pension pots, but thats it.  At the end of that article, though, there was a link to a Royal London guide to topping up pensions, and its a pdf where they helpfully say "you don't have to read all the way through, just follow the steps to make sure you read the relevant bits".  Thats good!  Pension stuff is as bad as tech stuff in my head

Karmacat

Anyway, yesterday, I had a fair amount of digging in the garden - and I realised why the back/ middle of the south facing border, where the fence collapsed, is so bad.  I used it, about five years ago, to dump some black bags of leaves, to decompost and add to the soil.  Of course, the bags have broken open, and decomposted fully in that time, but the soil has been used for a tangle of weeds   It's in a really bad state, and no way is the scabious going to go in there, but I'm reaching the brambles that are growing from roots underneath the fence itself, so thats something.  Lots of clear earth there now.  I was shattered, and made sure I could just go collapse into bed - all this malarkey is very, very tiring!  Has to get done though, I'd like to be really up on having the garden sorted by the end of this year, which means the fence in too.

teapot2

Ooft that sounds like hard work getting that bit of the garden clear KC - well done.  Hope you are planning a more restful day today though if your weather is like here its too windy to be out in the garden!
On the subject of  the state pension, funnily enough I checked mine yesterday as am on the countdown now that a birthday has passed.  I found it v easy and quick to check.  I looked on the GovUk site and signed in using the same ID as I use for doing my tax return.  I then got a big box showing on the screen of how much is predicted, weekly, monthly and annually.  It also stated if I would be able to improve this [I can't] and there was also a link to click to painlessly check each of the 48 years of my NI contributions if I wanted to.  There was sentence or two about when and how to claim as well. Am also not a fan of reading lots of complicated official stuff but thought this was very painless, clear, quick and informative  .

Hazelnutty

Karmacat said:

Lovely posters - people who know my garden fence very well, a returnee (hi Hazelnutty!) and a new-to-me poster (hello Staffordia!  I've passed through Stafford on the train all my adult life, every now and then, always strikes me as a nice place).

Hello! And thanks for the shout-out. I love your diary, such a welcome and comforting interlude in the day to catch up with it

Karmacat

Hi Hazelnutty, hi all I gave myself most of the day off yesterday, after all the digging on Saturday, and I *knew* I'd need to get going on the finance list today.

So, I'm doing the urgent thing right now: seeing if I can get a refund from AO for the router that's designed to use phone lines, since the new free talktalk one is set up ready.  And bless them, they have a 100 day returns policy!  I bought on 20 May, so plenty of time.  They've accepted the online registration of the return, and sent me a label to print (for my local shop) but I don't really want to instal four new cartridges on my printer - I want to take them up on their offer to send a label.  So I'm currently on hold to their service line, which isn't too bad a wait (22 mins from the start) and has one of the best playlists I've ever heard. 

Dishwasher is also halfway through doing its thing.  This is going well so far, gulp ...

Oh, and I put in a Boots online order yesterday, made sure it came to over the amount for free delivery - sanitiser, moisturiser, vitamins, that sort of thing.  I'll sort out the rest of today once I've spoken to AO. 

Karmacat

Excellent news from AO - rather than send me a printed label, they're going to collect it from my house tomorrow so I still don't have to have entered a shop

apple_muncher

Yay! to AO!

Hazelnutty

I've found AO pretty good to deal with too and the cashback through Quidc0 is handy too. I'll need a couple of new appliances for the kitchen refit so will probably use them again. Good customer service definitely pays - just a shame more companies don't realise it!

Karmacat

So, the normal nonsensical claptrap is going on, with HMRC - I decided to log on, which you have to do to check out the Pension Forecast.  They threw me off!  Told me I can apply again in 24 hours!  Maybe I answered the question about "when did you last open an account" wrongly?  So, no pension forecast for me today.

I've also added 5 items to that list   so its now twenty items, oops.  Things like a magnetic knife rack that I don't think has turned up yet, the caravan holiday refund, the Amazon writing payments (given up on the seller account), plus £240 in a dormant cahoot account. 

Anyway, for today, not bad:

- lovely AO refund started processing.

- spoke to sister.

- dishwasher on.

- washing machine on.

- pension forecast fail: do the passport-based check next time! 

For the rest of today: start updating my security document, pack up the modem and assorted tidying, possibly some gardening later on, and a bit of fun now: I'm doing a project on foraging acorns - doing a photo once a month until they're ready to mature.  I shall pootle off and take July's photograph today, I enjoy stuff like that.

rtandon27

oooo - so nice to hear about good customer service - well impressed that they will be picking it up from your house!