Cheery's country living adventure

ElmoR

Pension waffle is good. It's helping many, including me.

The pension/mortgage dilemma is tricky. As you know, I went full on towards the mortgage OPs but I have 'emotional' drivers for that too. That said, I did sign up for added years AVC payments on the pension at age 30 something and am now extremely glad that I did that. The schemes may change over the years (decades in my case), but that is set in stone. That will result in DB returns that are worth a lot now relative to anything I could try to add or set up now, and they have to continue to honour that agreement.  Future me thanks past me. Current me thanks the forum for opening my eyes 3 years ago and setting of on the MFW journey.

In academia, you can usually get some quite good salary bumps if you are hitting the KPIs. Remember that you can apply for discretionary increments too - when a grant is successfully funded (which it will), be sure to convert that into an increment application. Male colleagues are far better at this than females, fact. We tend to hang back and feel that we haven't done enough yet. They go for it and don't worry about knock backs. You can also do external examining at other universities too, that's worth a couple of £1000 a year too - both as an exams board one (usually a 3 or 5 years appointment) and for one off PhD or MRes viva exams. Once you are a senior fellow of the HEA, you would be eligible as an external for exams boards. It's pleasant work too, gets you out of your own work environment bubble, a blast of fresh air usually. There is also money to be had reviewing grant applications for other countries national funding rounds, they pay well for a few hours of work. Ask your colleagues about those in your field and ask them to suggest you as an alternative reviewer when they cannot complete one. These things can leak into your own time, but they pay well. I always flung that additional money at the mortgage.

Hope that helps,

ElmoR xx

South_coast

Sticking my head above the parapet to say I feel a teensy bit on the recovery driver's side 😮! Cars are meant to be run, and the flat battery at least could probably have been avoided if you'd taken it up to the end of the drive every week carrying the recycling boxes to put them out for collection. Add to that you're probably not the only person who has had a car sat doing nothing for the last few months and then called him out for a flat battery, and you're probably just the unlucky one whose house he was at when his pent-up frustration bubbled over!

(Running away now, before people start throwing things at me!)

Cheery_Daff

Ha SC, I'm not going to throw things at you! Thing is, I KNOW I shouldn't have left the damn thing sitting there, but with Mr Cheery being ill and everything else going on, it just happened, and once it had already happened, my only choice was to ring the recovery people (or let it sit there and rot because I was too embarrassed to ring them, I suppose - always a tempting option). I likely would have rung sooner if I hadn't thought I was going to get a lecture. Yes I get he was likely frustrated too - but equally I wasn't asking him for a favour towing me to the garage - I'd paid for a service, so didn't expect quite so much huffing and puffing about it!

Still, I suppose his lecture has had the desired effect - I've added car maintenance to dentistry and the other things I feel embarrassed about not doing properly, and it will therefore cause me enough low level anxiety that I'll behave better in the future!

Thanks for the tips ElmoR. I hadn't even thought about discretionary increments (although I've been informally told this grant in particular would make a very strong case for promotion, rather than just one increment). You make a good point about external examining - I did apply for a couple of positions but stopped after a while to focus more specifically on other stuff on the promotion criteria. I've got a few external positions at the minute (that don't pay, but are more useful career-wise) and everything was getting a little unwieldy...

It's all a balance, isn't it?

Karmacat

I feel for you, Cheery, you've been carrying a lot, you paid for a service, what you wanted was within the terms of that service, and it sounds like he definitely overshot "useful feedback" way, way beyond the land of "huffing and puffing", straight to "dumping his bad times on you".

Academia sounds very weird and wonderful.  Utmost respect to all of you who manage to thrive in that environment.

Cheery_Daff

Garage just rang... unsurprisingly it doesn't sound good... 🙄😂 Looks like both front and back brakes need replacing as well as the battery, and they've still not managed to release the spare wheel from being trapped in its cage, but can see that the rubber has perished 😮 so we'll need two new tyres as well.

£600 all in, so we're ditching it - that will go a good way to a new one. Garage is going to put it back together, and have given me the name of some scrap people who'll collect from them. 

Going to fetch the last of the stuff out of it tomorrow afternoon, so I'll see if I can sort out scrap collection for early next week. 

And so the search begins for a new one...

Karmacat

Botheration!  Though I feel sorry for the spare tyre, trapped forever in its cage now 😂 Would you take back the tyres so you can grow potatoes in them next year?  Though there's mixed information online about doing that, toxins in the tyres themselves, or stuck to the tyre from the road, I'm not sure?  Loving the scrap people!

beanielou

Sorry to hear that Mr Cheery has been ill.
Boo to the car.

Cheery_Daff

Thanks beanie 😊 

Not going to be rescuing the tyres - I've still got four in the garage from when we swapped to all season tyres a couple of years ago 😂 Do need to pop in and collect the last of the accumulated rubbish in there though.

Not done us too badly - it cost £1500 in about 2014 I think so we've had our money's worth. Scrap people have offered £182, but that doesn't take account of the fact that it doesn't work...

rtandon27

182 isn't bad Cheery - we only got 50 for our old one when it died a few years back and had just put new tires/tyres on it!

Cheery_Daff

I can't imagine we'll get much more than that for this one once they realise it doesn't start.   This is literally the starting quote - if you accept it they ring to discuss condition. Whatever we get will hopefully just about pay labour for the garage having a quick look at it but I'm not expecting any more than that...

Yawn.

Pension chat was far more interesting than car nonsense!! 😂😂