Serial Switching for Rewards. Not good.

System

You really don't like any crtisism of your actions do you!

masonic

scgf wrote: »

I strive to be kind and as a teacher I am very aware of how the students' personal circumstances can affect their attitude in school.

scgf wrote: »

I receive a teacher's pension of some £22K per annum.

I don't even earn enough monthly to be eligible for an HSBC Advance account.

Very kind of you to continue teaching on a voluntary basis after retiring!

masonic

scgf wrote: »

You really don't like any crtisism of your actions do you!

I think it is immoral to do so.

Why not answer my points, rather than making personal judgements about me?

In answer to your question, in all honesty I can't resist challenging faulty logic, factually incorrect information and other types of fallacy. Call me a pedant, but I can be quite useful in this respect.

Besides, criticism is not what is happening here. Criticism involves reason and discourse. What you are doing is unfounded condemnation. You consistently refuse to enter into any discussion about why the thing you are condemning should be condemned.

Willing2Learn

I am pretty [STRIKE]annoyed[/STRIKE] disappointed at the suggestion that my income from property investments is somehow 'tainted' and immoral. It is because of this income that I can afford to work, or choose to work for charities and NGOs, sometimes without any remuneration whatsoever.

dreaming

scgf wrote: »

To be honest I would only try the sample if I felt I might buy some for myself, assuming I liked it.

What I have found interesting is that you see my post as unwarrantied. A forum such as this exists to facilitate discussion on budgeting and bank accounts and because I expressed a view you do not share you feel it was not welcome.

Your analogy of approaching smokers to tell them you do not approve of smoking by extension suggests all members of this forum indulge in serial switching just for the rewards. Absolutely not the case.

I think this forum is the ideal place to place my post. Where else should it go other than in a forum where users discuss switching for reward?

To answer your question about whether the responses have changed my point of view, I have to say no. I still feel strongly that money gained from serial switching is tainted. I don't even like money gained from the stock market or interest from large investments. A rather puritanical view, but that's how I feel. Money earned from working is something I'm comfortable with.

scgf wrote: »

I receive a teacher's pension of some £22K per annum. I have paid into the teachers' pension scheme for 38 years and one of the reasons for choosing teaching as a career was the pension. I'm not sure I would describe it as lucrative though. I don't even earn enough monthly to be eligible for an HSBC Advance account.

How do you think pension schemes work? The cash you pay in is not kept in some dark vault until you retire but is invested in any number of money-making investments - some of which, over the 38 years of your career, would undoubtedly have been in what we now would think of questionably ethical standards. Are you comfortable with this?

I have no objections to your original post other than instead of just stating that it was your personal opinion that some serial switchers were immoral - later changed to just their actions being so (and I fully support your entitlement to hold that view) - you seemed to try to back it up with some vague religious references even though you later say you are not a Christian but that you "see the wisdom in the reported sayings of a range of religious leaders". Each of these "leaders" were just people (men) who other people followed and venerated. You might just as well say you see the wisdom in the reported sayings of Ron L Hubbard (Scientologists) or Sun Myung Moon (Moonies).

System

dreaming wrote: »

How do you think pension schemes work? The cash you pay in is not kept in some dark vault until you retire but is invested in any number of money-making investments - some of which, over the 38 years of your career, would undoubtedly have been in what we now would think of questionably ethical standards. Are you comfortable with this?

No. I'm not. Having said that I genuinely believed the teachers' pension scheme is funded by current teachers, as I funded retired teachers' pensions while I was working. Is this not so?

Regarding your other point about non-religious people - yes I do value what they say if they are of a similar moral standard. It is useful for us all to think what these wise men and women might do in a particular situation and use them to help us lead ethical lives.

masonic

scgf wrote: »

No. I'm not. Having said that I genuinely believed the teachers' pension scheme is funded by current teachers, as I funded retired teachers' pensions while I was working. Is this not so?

"Is the scheme funded or unfunded?

Unfunded. It is paid for out of general taxation, not an underlying investment fund."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11446829

So your teacher's pension is being paid out of general taxation. Not sure if you would consider that more or less tainted than a pension funded by investments.

System

masonic wrote: »

Why not answer my points, rather than making personal judgements about me?

In answer to your question, in all honesty I can't resist challenging faulty logic, factually incorrect information and other types of fallacy. Call me a pedant, but I can be quite useful in this respect.

I'll tell you why. You may have good skills when it comes to debating a topic and were we debating something of a more factual nature I would engage more fully. I'm putting my personal feelings out there with the expectation of being attacked, but feelings are not always easy to defend and I can't accept they are necessarily a result of faulty logic. A personally held point of view is not destroyed by a good debater. I have been on the other side of the fence being attacked by parents when I've tried to promote LGBT positivity in school. Apparently being gay is wrong because God says so. There really is no way to argue that one. In the era of Thatcher's Section 28 where it became effectively illegal to promote homosexuality in schools I ignored the law and carried on doing what I felt was right. Had it come to it I could not have defended myself in a court of law by saying I felt I was doing the right thing.

What I'm trying to say rather clumsily is that I cannot easily defend my feelings. You may feel you're running circles around me but it's all rather ineffective when it comes to how I feel.

dreaming

scgf wrote: »

No. I'm not. Having said that I genuinely believed the teachers' pension scheme is funded by current teachers, as I funded retired teachers' pensions while I was working. Is this not so?

Regarding your other point about non-religious people - yes I do value what they say if they are of a similar moral standard. It is useful for us all to think what these wise men and women might do in a particular situation and use them to help us lead ethical lives.

Hmm, I have to grant that you may be on more solid ground there, as I have just checked and teachers' pensions are directly funded by the government, ecept for AVC contributions which are run by Prudential. Apparently it is very rare so maybe you can rest easy.
The other point I made was not about non-religious people - both people I mentioned are seen as religious leaders to those who follow them, otherwise I might have used Donald Trump as an example, or the Queen. I can't say that I ever think what anyone else (religious leader or whomever) would do in certain circumstances as it can only ever be my imagination or a heavily influenced interpretation of what they might do. I do ask family, friends, people I know and respect and/or professionals what they might do in any given circumstance and then weigh up their responses against my own (personal) moral compass. In the case of serial switching I followed the suggestion of Martin Lewis, thought about it and decided to go for it to augment my £11k pa pension.
So I think this is an interesting train of thought. It is possibly something I will bring up with my philosophy group when we next meet which is, to my mind, a more fitting arena for this discussion. However I have also learned something (about teachers' pensions being directly government funded) so the day wasn't wasted.

MisterMotivated

scgf wrote: »

To be honest I would only try the sample if I felt I might buy some for myself, assuming I liked it.

I didn't ask whether you would try the sample. I asked what you thought of people who try the sample with no intention of buying the cheese.

What I have found interesting is that you see my post as unwarrantied. A forum such as this exists to facilitate discussion on budgeting and bank accounts and because I expressed a view you do not share you feel it was not welcome.

Do you often attempt to facilitate discussion with an opening statement along the lines of "I don't like it when people (including a number of people likely to read this post) do X"?

scgf wrote: »

I am obviously only speaking for myself, but this doesn't automatically invalidate my point of view.

Your immediate defense of your opening statement suggests you know that the majority of people respoding will disagree with your statement.

Your analogy of approaching smokers to tell them you do not approve of smoking by extension suggests all members of this forum indulge in serial switching just for the rewards. Absolutely not the case.

No it doesn't. It simply narrows my audience, it doesn't change the fact you knew you were going to (or were even trying to) offend/annoy a number of people on here with your broad condemnation. But if it makes you feel better, let's assume rather than going up to an individual smoker, I went into work and announced my dislike of smoking to everyone in the office - smokers and non-smokers alike.

I think this forum is the ideal place to place my post. Where else should it go other than in a forum where users discuss switching for reward?

Ideally some forum on morality and ethics, far away from here. Budgeting is not being discussed in this thread. Nor are bank accounts for that matter. The only thing being discussed is your perceived misuse by an unknown number of forum members, of said bank accounts, giving the very loosest of connections to the forum topic. You might as well have started the thread by saying "I don't like it when people use their bank accounts to receive money from renting property to people or selling bitcoin".

I don't even like money gained from the stock market

How do you feel about the money gained from the stock market that is used to help fund the majority of pensions for the retired population?

or interest from large investments.

How large does an investment have to be before the interest earned becomes unpalatable to you?

Money earned from working is something I'm comfortable with.

Well, that's a whole different topic. Let's save that for your next thread, which I imagine will start:

I don't like it when people who are struggling to find a job or are unable to work due to a disability are given money by the government to pay their bills. And I don't like it when people earn small amounts of interest in return for lending their money to the banks, which the banks in turn then leverage to provide loans or mortgages for people who want to buy cars, houses, etc. And I really don't like it when people rent property to people who can't/don't want to get on the housing ladder. I also hate it when people provide funding to entrepreneurs in order to help them realise their dreams of starting a business. I don't even like it when people accept an incentive for switching their current account to another bank, even if they stay with the new bank for the rest of their lives. Nor do I like it when people sell their money-saving website for millions of pounds. And most of all, I don't like it when retired people expect to get paid £22,000 per year, every year, from their former employer, despite not paying hundreds of thousands of pounds into their pension pot during their working life