How much to live on

helensbiggestfan

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82025486#Comment_82025486

That's interesting. My handyman/mechanic recently said one of his other clients had a Honda Jazz for sale. They do look nice.

Savvy_Sue

The Jazz is VERY popular with my siblings! Been in a couple of them, nice passenger experience.

Organgrinder

Well, it's now 6 weeks to go. One of the nice things about retiring from teaching is you finish on July 17 and then get two full pay packets at the end of July and August. Plus, as an exam marker I get another £2k or so in August.

Which thankfully is just as well as somewhere between my employer and teachers' pension something hasn't gone to plan. I resigned and submitted my pension application towards the end of March. Over 10 weeks later and I've heard nothing but a glimmer of hope is that my service history now runs until Aug 31 and I believe this only happens when the process starts. Fingers crossed although I've been warned it might not get sorted for September but will get backdated.

With this in mind I've spring cleaned my finances and all is looking ok. I no longer seem eligible for bank switching offers, having been I think with nearly every major bank bar Virgin in the last few years. So I thought I'd review how else I've been supplementing my income or saving money. I've listed these before so apologies if you're reading it again. I should add nearly all of these have been ideas from other forum users and for that I'm very grateful.

My current saving/cashback is as follows.

1. Clubcard challenges. These run I believe around 4 times a year. I usually get about 2500 points each time netting me £50 in holiday vouchers. So £200 a year.
2. Chase new cashback scheme. I have to keep £1000 into Chase savings which loses me £20 in interest, but every month it will generate £15 in cashback. A net £160 a year.
3. My EV charger can throttle back my charging should the grid need the energy elsewhere. For this they pay me £5 a month. So £60 a year.
4. Being with Nationwide gets me another £130 or so a year from the fairer sharer and the interest on my current account.
5. I purchase all my insurance products, switch energy or buy goods online through cashback sites. The actual deals can be a little more expensive but the cashback means that between these things I get a net saving of approx £200 a year.
6. I subscribe to clubcard extra because of the two 10% off shops. I would shop at Tesco anyway for my main shop. After the fee I make a net saving of £100 a year.

This is on top of stoozing. Currently stoozing £45,000. Difficult to say exactly how much this brings in annually but after any transfer fees I would estimate it's a net £1,700. On average I have one transfer fee a year on say £10,000 so around £300 and the £45,000 is on average earning £2,000 in interest.

So a grand total of £2,550. It's the equivalent (for me) of another month's income. And it's on top of coupons etc.

If anyone has any other ideas, they'll all be gratefully received!!

jackieblack

I understand Teachers Pensions have massive backlogs… there have been various pieces in the media over the last several months with reports of people having waited multiple months with no progress being made…

This just one, from April https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2026/04/teachers-pensions-scheme-delays-payments/

louby40

Retired teachers are slowly being paid the backlog now, it's taking time but it's actually happening. Teachers Pensions had a timeframe to do it but they have massively failed in this. It's only teachers that retired a while ago that are waiting for the shortfall (after the McCloud judgement).

New teachers retiring get their pensions as stated when they apply. I retired last year and my pension was paid on time in September.

savingpennies

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82025486#Comment_82025486

I bought a Jazz ten years ago for about £5000, it's still running and used by one of my daughters now. Brilliant car. Apart from wear and tear (brake pads, tyres and a new battery once), I've not spent a penny on it. Once you fold down the back seats it's almost like a van. Lots of room in the back for passengers. When my 12 year old Qashqai gives up, I'm thinking of replacing it with a Jazz - downside is there are no fully electric models only hybrids at the moment.

Organgrinder

I contacted TPS today - and all is now being processed - thank goodness. Exam marking this year has been a nightmare due to the conflct in the Middle East which means some centres are unable to sit exams for the students doing International GCSE's and A Levels. This has meant assessing a body of work - and it's a pain! More so because of delays making the work available for scrutiny which means I now have 3 overlapping contracts and a rather large headache!

Much to my surprise EDF have given me £50 for switching to an EV rate (not like me to miss that) - I already get £5 a month back for allowing my charger to be throttled - so currently I'm on for a new fuel cost of about £1 a month!

With only 3 and a half weeks to go it's all starting to feel very real. I've been very conservative in my estimates of additional income next year too - I estimated approx £4000 gross from exam marking. In reality it's potentially more like £6000 but I'll stick with the lower estimate for now.

louby40

You won't regret it! 😀

louby40

All of my working life I've never had any contact or interaction with HMRC. Always paid through PAYE.

Today I rang them to try and get the £1100 in tax I've overpaid. I've never spoken to such an apathetic, unsympathetic person in my life.

He had a loud fan running in the background and I could barely hear what he was saying and I constantly had to ask him to repeat what he had said. Five minutes before the end of the call he turned the fan off!

I told him my situation (teacher for 30 years , claiming teachers pension from last September but working with supply agencies on an ad hoc basis) yet he still asked me a list of questions (obviously read from a script) one of which was "had I earnt any money from working on off shore oil rigs". I nearly spat my coffee out at that one. His tone was monotone and uninterested.

He asked me questions that I didn't know answers to, questioned me about the names of the supply agencies (one of which has a different name on HMRC than what they are known as). I must have said "no" to 99% of what he asked me.

Anyway because I have zero clue how much tax I've paid on the measly amount of savings I have they can't process my refund until all information is gathered.

My refund will arrive anytime between now and November. But lesson learnt - keep a record of all those 3p, 2p etc my current accounts earned.