The hardest challenge yet

Wednesday2000

elantan wrote: »

so what's happened in your ten years ?

It's not nice but in 2009 I tried to kill myself with an overdose and almost succeeded. The doctor at the hospital told my husband that I wouldn't be waking up. Luckily I did wake up against the odds and then in a few years afterwards had to nurse my husband when he had cancer.

It's ironic but now we are a few years away from retirement at quite a young age. If those bad life events hadn't happened I doubt we would be in the good position we are today as it made us work more for it.

elantan

Wednesday2000 wrote: »

It's not nice but in 2009 I tried to kill myself with an overdose and almost succeeded. The doctor at the hospital told my husband that I wouldn't be waking up. Luckily I did wake up against the odds and then in a few years afterwards had to nurse my husband when he had cancer.

It's ironic but now we are a few years away from retirement at quite a young age. If those bad life events hadn't happened I doubt we would be in the good position we are today as it made us work more for it.

human endurance is amazing, we face adversity and learn so much about ourselves whilst becoming different beings, I'm glad your still here and well done on nearing retirement, what age will you be ?

elantan

Todays plans were to climb a local wee hill, it's a wee hill but a toughie, but the weather is dreich, so instead it's down to inlaws to do a few out standing things that have needed done for a few days.

I checked the money tub, we have £190 left to do us till 15th, I've put last nights left overs in a tub and into the freezer, it will do as a quick grab meal when we need it to, I'm gonna divide the soup up so that we can have some go to soup as well, tonight's meal will be spicy mince and either cauliflower rice or I will make cauliflower soup and use pasta or rice for the spicy mince.

I've sorted the freezer innthe house so that we have 1 drawer with grab and go food, so there is soup, mince and tatties and some stew for Mr El in there, I've squashed the rest into the other two drawers and got rid of some of the food that we wont use

it's a good start but we have a long way to go

Wednesday2000

elantan wrote: »

what age will you be ?

I was talking about this to my husband yesterday. The plan was when he was going to be 53 but because his birthday is in November and it is better to retire after April it will probably be when he is 54 so 2024 is the estimate now. I will just have turned 48 in April 2024 so we will still be relatively young to retire.

Grr, our washing machine and TV broke over Christmas and we replaced them so we have basically wiped out the £600 we put away in savings.

We only have about £6,500 in savings now. A few years ago we had almost £50,000 in savings!!! We did pay off our mortgage since then though.

Oh dear, anyway. Back to the plan. I suppose there isn't a point of having an emergency fund if you don't use it. :D

elantan

Wednesday2000 wrote: »

I was talking about this to my husband yesterday. The plan was when he was going to be 53 but because his birthday is in November and it is better to retire after April it will probably be when he is 54 so 2024 is the estimate now. I will just have turned 48 in April 2024 so we will still be relatively young to retire.

Grr, our washing machine and TV broke over Christmas and we replaced them so we have basically wiped out the £600 we put away in savings.

We only have about £6,500 in savings now. A few years ago we had almost £50,000 in savings!!! We did pay off our mortgage since then though.

Oh dear, anyway. Back to the plan. I suppose there isn't a point of having an emergency fund if you don't use it. :D

very true that's exactly what they are there for, weve been kinda lucky our last machine lasted 10 years so we got our money's worth out of it, when it went on the bung we went second hand and paid £90for our current one, it's nearly 8 years old so cant really complain, weve also thankfully inherited TV's I would happily not have one ( we have 3) but hubby cant fall asleep without a tv on in the background. that tv we bought from a scratch and dent place paid 300 for it but cost new was over 800, the one downstairs we have we used nectar cards gift cards discount cards for and landed up only having to find 150 for ( cost 600 new) so we couldn't complain, the tv innthe living room was a freebie from Ph's parents it's been on the go for 6 years or so, previous to that it was a gifted one from friend who wanted a new tv we kept it for 8 years till it died, she had replaced hers twice by then and couldnt get over how ours was still going and the tv before that was over 20 years old when it died ... I like to get my money's worth, and dont care too much if its top of the range

great plan and wonderful ages to retire at, our plans are me 55 oh 60 not as young as we would like but we got into the idea late so have a lot of ground to make up. Oh birthday is November as well we were thinking of retiring the September before it, and living off savings for 6 months till the pensions kick in so that we can get the tax back, any particular reason your waiting till after the April ? can I ask also are you using savings for your income ? I cant access my pension till 55 so would need to bridge the gap if I were to retire before then, so I'm curious to know how others manage as it will help me learn

Wednesday2000

elantan wrote: »

great plan and wonderful ages to retire at, our plans are me 55 oh 60 not as young as we would like but we got into the idea late so have a lot of ground to make up. Oh birthday is November as well we were thinking of retiring the September before it, and living off savings for 6 months till the pensions kick in so that we can get the tax back, any particular reason your waiting till after the April ? can I ask also are you using savings for your income ? I cant access my pension till 55 so would need to bridge the gap if I were to retire before then, so I'm curious to know how others manage as it will help me learn

I'm not entirely sure why it is better to retire after April. My husband just mentioned the other day that an older guy at work was advised by a pension adviser to wait until after April to retire. I assume it is something to do with the tax year? I really have to start reading more about the subject actually.:o

My husband can't access pension advice from his employer until he is over 50. We are putting away money into an AVC and we will have around £45,000 in there by 2024. We just want to have some savings as well as a backup. He is probably going to start claiming his pension at 55. He has a Final Salary scheme at his work.

We are also thinking about moving house at some point so we need savings for that too.

elantan

aye it probably will be a tax thing, we were thinking work from the April till September ( was gonna be November, but I need to renew my registration in the September) then use savings from October till March, pensions kick in April and we get a tax rebate back for tax paid from April to September when we worked.

Were also planning on OH taking his tax free lump sum from one of his pensions at 55 and drop feeding it into my pension the reason being to reduce his tax bill every year ... still need to find out if we can legally do this, we will also lift approx 10k a year and drop feed it into my pension, he will pay tax on it but I will get the tax relief on it so tax neutral on that point, but I wont pay tax when withdrawing it where as he would.

Does that make sense ?

Wednesday2000

elantan wrote: »

aye it probably will be a tax thing, we were thinking work from the April till September ( was gonna be November, but I need to renew my registration in the September) then use savings from October till March, pensions kick in April and we get a tax rebate back for tax paid from April to September when we worked.

Were also planning on OH taking his tax free lump sum from one of his pensions at 55 and drop feeding it into my pension the reason being to reduce his tax bill every year ... still need to find out if we can legally do this, we will also lift approx 10k a year and drop feed it into my pension, he will pay tax on it but I will get the tax relief on it so tax neutral on that point, but I wont pay tax when withdrawing it where as he would.

Does that make sense ?

Eek, I'm not sure, it sounds good, but I'm not the best person to ask.

I did read some of the pension advice on MSE at one point but I think it's different for us as not many people have a final salary scheme these days.

My husband just got back and I asked him why it was better to wait to retire until April and he said he thought it was something to do with him being a higher rate tax payer.

We are trying to log in to his pension details now as we should really understand this more. The log in is not working of course!:mad::rotfl:

elantan

yep OH is final salary scheme as well, although we think he will come out of it shortly... it's a very confusing minefield that deff needs to be tailored to the individual what's right for one is not right for another, most people would say were nuts coming out of the final salary scheme, but when u know the full story it's a case of your nuts of u dont...

good luck getting the passwords

Wednesday2000

Do you have any information about the pensions you can access online Elantan?

We had to register again as the old log in didn't work.

We were playing around with the different scenarios if he retired at age 53, 54 or 55. Wow, it's amazing how much difference even one extra year makes to how much you get a year in pension.

My husband was on annual leave but he just got a call and got offered overtime this week (someone called in sick, suspicious as it is just before New Year's Eve!) and he took it to make up for the money we lost replacing the TV and washing machine.

Quite good timing really as that money will come in handy. I said he didn't have to do it but he wanted to and we didn't have anything planned to do this week.