Prosperous soul embraces creativity & mortgage neutrality

jwil

boxofpaws said:

Jwil, I didn’t know that. I thought it was pot luck who would have a battery recycling point! I always put spent batteries straight in my coat pocket so I remember to take them to a shop next time I’m out, and was really surprised that they took them off me at the garage when I enquired. 

Re duplicates and scissors. You can never have too many pairs of scissors. 9 seems a very sensible amount to me.

Yes, it became law a few years ago.  If I remember rightly there are exemptions for very small shops who may only sell a handful, but any of the big stores will be included.  I love the idea of keeping them in a pocket - we always used to forget them!

MovingForwards

Be careful putting batteries in your pocket and not wrapped up, years ago I accidentally had a coin in with one and saw steam coming from my bag before I heard the hiss.

You're doing well SH, decluttering and having time for art too is a great achievement.

boxofpaws

Oh my goodness, I had no idea! thanks for the warning

savingholmes

Thanks Jwil and MF

Well I made it to the park. I got to see both a half moon and sunset over a lake so it was beautiful. 

I nipped to the C00p and picked up some YS chicken jambalaya and chorizo half price so happy with that. I'd have it again - but only got one as I was unsure if I'd like it. Bought a few other items too. 

For those of you who wonder why I go on about pensions - I just wanted to illustrate my very small private pension and the growth it has had. 

• Last year on 31/12/20 it was worth c£3287
• By 31/12/21 it was worth c£3820
• A difference of c£532
• Of that £532 only £150 was money I put in - and I only put it in during December. With the tax relief effect - that money became £187. 
• So if I take £532 - 187 = £345 = my growth for the year
• If I divide 345/3287 * 100 = 10.5% growth (excluding the money I added and the impact of the tax relief).
• If I add in the impact of the tax relief - it's the equivalent of a 11.6% return for last year.

So for those of you fixating on - it can lose money - you are quite right. In the last 9 days - my pension has dropped 1.18% - however it doesn't matter as I'm investing for the long term - and on balance my pension is on an upward trend. Hope that helps some of you with your thinking re weighing up the risks for different types of investing/savings.

Are there years where it lost £? Yes but if I look at the £3774 of today's value £2051 is growth. The graph below may be useful. I'm treating 2006 as year 0 in this example.

So the blue, red and grey line are on the left hand axis - with the percentages (yellow) shown on the right.

The best part of it is - that this was a pension I only discovered I had in the last couple of years. I only contributed to this scheme for about 6 months and left the organisation - so had thought I'd cashed out the pension but it turns out I hadn't for which I'm now very grateful.

savingholmes

The compound interest website suggests that I've had the equivalent of around 6% return compounded - so I've applied that to the future which is not guaranteed - and assumed I make £62.50 pcm deposits for the length of my mortgage. This is the impact it projects it could have - if I got the same average return moving forwards. 


In year 22 of my mortgage if I continued it that long - I would have the equivalent of £48.5K. While it's true that I would have deposited £16.5K - and may only be able to release 25% tax free so closer to £12K - I hope it is still a very tax efficient way of growing £ towards repaying the mortgage. I am not an IFA - so please don't this as advice - this is me just playing with numbers and speculating about what they may mean. Obviously stock market returns aren't guaranteed - and none of us know how much inflation will eat away the value of the pension etc. 

Hope that helps.

Fortune_Smiles

savingholmes said:

Really pleased with how my art turned out. I used small flat canvas boards this time and was more mindful where I put the tape. It worked really well. There was no ripping and only occasional paint bleed. @Fortune_Smiles - how do you deal with paint bleed?

Oooh - not sure on that one SH.  I've not used tape in my work before.  I have used masking fluid and I know with that Ihad to make sure the paint was properly dry before I removed it.

Fortune x

girlatplay

Interesting, SH, thank you.

Tahlullah.H

Great returns on your pension Savings.  I keep watching mine, hoping it will pass it's next big milestone, but due to fluctuations, it keeps going up and then down - more down than up at present.  But, I am getting 12.93% time weighted annualised returns.  I am watching my pension carefully, but not doing much with it as I have other places I need my money to be focused on.

SandyShores

Amazing pension graphs saving.  I suspect pensions are a bit like property, in that they generally will go up if you leave it long enough.  I'm glad our youngsters have started early.  I might have to do some graphs like that with Mr Shore's pensions - so that when the time comes we can make a better decision about whether to withdraw and pay some of the mortgage off etc. but not at the moment - it will be a future graphing task

I love your art and I'm planning to do some of the taping effect in the future.  I've decide to do a bit of sewing first, but will move on soon.  Art supplies are being put in place.

StripeyTightsSpottySocks

Hi savings - posting on here before my diary - it was interesting reading about the tidying / organising. Today i had decided to empty a bag - i knew where the items in it were going - they were going on the shelf in one of the cupboards i'd organised recently, but not cleaned. I'd only done this 1 shelf. I have the other shelf still to do. I knew i'd need to lift things out and organise again. But it was easier because i'd done it once recently. So i emptied it, cleaned the shelf. Put the items in there from the bag along with a few other things. From reading your posts i realised the bag had sat there because i couldn't deal with doing everything at once - i knew the place the items were going but that place needed to be tidy first (loved the hiding tidiness in cupboards someone mentioned). I also made sure i dealt with everything for this one task before moving onto something else. So the cleaning rags were put to the washing, cleaning stuff put away etc. i think i read that from greenbee possibly on here - all these posts helped. 

Some things i have need to have a proper home where they will live and some things have a home already but we have more items than space (our home is very small) - eg following Christmas (gifts) we now have more bottles of alcohol than the small cupboard space we usually allocate for this. There is no more cupboard space where they could go though - hence they are sat on worktops untidy. they will eventually be used and at that time will save us money but what to do in the meantime.

Anyway i felt reading the posts on here helped me focus and complete the task. i felt so much lighter after doing it.

Pensions - i do need to look but i'm quite risk averse after previous experience.

Glad you had a good walk and got to do some art too.