Cheery's country living adventure

Chiglepig

Cheery_Daff said:

Been mulling it over, and subject to a few checks, I'll take the temporary option. Just need to get a guarantee that I myself get to make the decision about whether it's permanent or not, rather than them. Don't want bosses to change their minds and make me go back to full time if I don't want to - and equally if I've taken the temporary option and changed my mind, I don't want them to prevent me from going full time again. Will check what the deal is tomorrow.

Realised the latest batch of covid vouchers has been sat in my spam folder for several days... so have transferred the equivalent dosh into the kitchen fund, which now stands at £517.67. Yay!

Absolutely get it in writing @Cheery_Daff, a year will give you the chance to see if it is genuinely a four day week or (as I've found) a five day week squeezed into a four day week. The number of emails I get that say "I know it's your day off, but . . . " and even if I don't open email I still have the guilt (and the work) to deal with.

But the kitchen fund is looking very healthy .

Karmacat

Great work, Cheery, all round and Chiglepig makes some very good points about ensuring 4 days work in 4 days working (just been reading Chiglepig on the Fire thread too).

Cheery_Daff

Often a difficulty with a non-hourly job I've found... I'm anticipating something similar to now. Part of the year I do five days work in five days, during term time I do six in five, and over the summer I probably get away with 4-4.5 in 5... Still anticipating term times would be hectic - but at least with Fridays off. 

I was just talking to a friend who works 3 days a week in our dept, who pretty much confirmed my thoughts - height of teaching there's often a bit over, but other times there's sometimes a bit under.

Anyway, I've emailed the union to see whether there's anything I need to take into account with this temporary thing, need to reply to the boss to check too.

Greenhouse thermometer has turned up, so I'll be able to officially see whether my seedlings are being scorched/frozen...

ElmoR

Another one urging caution with the 4 day contract and getting it in writing. I did something similar with one year at 3.5 days/week and another two years at 4 days/week. Looking back, I feel a bit cheated having taken the salary (and pension) cut, but not seeing a significant change in my workload. All it did was stop me feeling guilty (about not being at work) on days I spent with my baby/toddler (and then guilty not being with my daughter when at work!).

They allowed me to put my contract back up to 5 days but another colleague wasn't allowed to some years later, they said their role no longer existed at full time?! Very unfair.

The sweet peas in my greenhouse look a bit sickly after the latest cold snap. They've been out there all winter without any heating, I think this latest cold snap was a bit of a shock for them. The coriander plants died back too, but new shoots are peeping through again...no more cold snaps please!!

Cheery_Daff

OK. Response from the union. Apparently there's a light touch process where any employee can apply for a temporary reduction in hours. You can only apply once a year, and it automatically reverts back to full time at the end of the year. You can apply again at that point, for temporary or permanent - but there's no guarantee you'd get it (they wouldn't be able to *stop* you going back to full time though).

They did say it's rare for people to be refused though - and they also said it's rare for people who've dropped to four days to want to increase again... 😂 

Part of me is tempted to do it temporarily to see how it feels... but I KNOW how it feels, having done it before, and I would be SO cross if I got to the end of the year and they wouldn't let me do it again...

Cheery_Daff

Oh, and in terms of dosh today... Prolific is standing annoyingly at £9.37 - but I do have £1.81 pending. As soon as I'm over £10 I'll cash out. Exciting! Good job as MB was down AGAIN today and is currently standing at £42 - the rate I'm going I'll be in minus figures for the month! 

Put the thermometer in the greenhouse - is it meant to hang up?? I'm intrigued at how warm it is under the fleece so I've shoved it under there with the seedlings... let's see how cold it gets overnight...

Cheery_Daff

Morning MSE chums! 

Checked the thermometer - it's under the fleece with the seedlings, and the lowest temperature last night was 1.1 degree (it was 13 ish when I checked). Let's see how high it gets during the day! 

MB is on a complete downward spiral, reinforcing two lessons I already know - doing casino only isn't for the faint hearted (or those without a safety margin), and doing minimum spin sizes on everything is sensible if you can't stand the swings! I've fairly recently upped to 40 or 50p spins (rather than 10 or 20p) - entirely because of time. Everything was taking so long! Even now, it can take me an hour to work through the morning's offers. I'm usually doing something else (talking to you lot, reading, knitting etc) but can't wander off completely. Don't want this to take all my free time, so for now I'm doing higher spins, which takes less time, and accepting that there will be more swings, both down and up. 

On that note, I'm on a down swing, and April's total has dropped to just £13, eek! Hey ho. Still, reassuring myself that at this point in March I'd only just got into positive figures anyway, and I still made £182 overall... 

Right, work. No meetings today, so we're going to sneak to the cafe for a cuppa this morning. We were keeping the day 'free' for Mr Cheery to potentially go to the dentist (which currently needs both of us as it's an hour away and he's still having spates of dizziness so doesn't want to drive it), but it looks like he can hold out til his own dentist is around tomorrow. Which means I'm going to ring the breakdown people and get them to sort out the other car. Hoping they'll say it just needs a replacement battery, but if not, they can tow it to the garage. 

YAWN.

First though, best get on with a little bit of work! 

Cheery_Daff

Sorry, more boring pension waffle coming up... (the novelty of this will wear off, I promise!!)

I realised that my part time salary calculations were based on CURRENT wage, but actually I'll be going up an increment in September anyway (most years the whole scale shifts up as well, but that didn't happen last year because of covid or whatever, so I'm going to assume it won't happen this year either).

I'd been working out what we could afford based on a rough £500 a month drop in salary, but now I've found the right tax code, and used the increased salary increment, I'm actually only going to lose £421 a month.

Normally I'd throw this extra at the mortgage... but given my new pensions knowledge... I'm considering paying extra to buy out some of the reductions they'd make it i took my pension early. You can only buy out 3 years worth, which would effectively bring my normal pension age down from 68 to 65 - meaning if I retired early at 58 (which will probably be the minimum by the time I get there), instead of reducing by a huge amount because I was taking it 10 years early, effectively I'd only be taking it 7 years early, so there would be less reduction. 

(Sorry if this is waffle, writing about it is really helping me get my head round it).

Reducing by 3 years means increasing pension contributions by 2.58%, so if I did that from September, along with the increment increase, and dropping a day, I'd be getting £490.09 less than now - which is still £10 a month more than I was working on for my original calculations. 

Feels sensible to do that at the same time as the rest of the upheaval, then I won't notice it so much.

Then I can ignore the pension again for a while and focus on getting rid of the mortgage. 

Sound like a plan?! 

I do want to check:

1. What would that extra do to the mortgage if I used it there instead?

2. Would it actually be better to increase pension contributions, rather than buying out the reduction?? If there's a bigger pension, a bigger reduction would make less difference - so is doing it one way more cost effective than the other way??

I think at some point I'll get bored of all these calculations but not yet... 😂😂

Chiglepig

Cheery_Daff said:

Sorry, more boring pension waffle coming up... (the novelty of this will wear off, I promise!!)

I realised that my part time salary calculations were based on CURRENT wage, but actually I'll be going up an increment in September anyway (most years the whole scale shifts up as well, but that didn't happen last year because of covid or whatever, so I'm going to assume it won't happen this year either).

Ahh, I remember increments - and below inflation pay 'rises'. Those were the days!

Sorry, not at all helpful, but do carry on with the pension waffle - our circumstances are very silimar (although you are  younger than me) so it helps me too!

Baileys_Babe

I enjoy the pension chat. It highlights to me how little I know. 

I have decided to prioritise the clearing mortgage over the pension even though I know it makes better long time sense to use the money for retirement investment, I want the security of being mortgage free and the peace of mind this will bring both myself and OH.