Simple living in the country - back to basics

Cheery_Daff

On a super go slow here today - three hours later and all I have achieved is booking the hotel! Goodness me. Not particularly bargainous- £135 for a night with no breakfast 😮 Could have got a Premier Inn cheaper, but this one is half a mile from friend's house (so we can walk) whereas that one was almost 4 miles away (so realistically we would have got a taxi there and back, which would have eaten up most of the £20 we would have saved).

Anyway, that's booked now. We're going to try to see some other friends while we're down there which will be nice 😁

Suppose I'd best get on with something else - lunch might be a good start! Possibly the leftover defrosted pasta bake we didn't finish in the car the other night. Not appealing but I don't want to waste it...

CathT

I've got a freezer surprise defrosting. Can't think for the life of me what I batch cooked at the time! 

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, exciting Cath! 😂😂 do let us know what it was! 

Mr Cheery has taken over holiday finding - I do not have the patience 😂 I have, however, done the washing up, cleaned the bathroom, and had a chat with my sister. 

Going to get the hoover out, and then we wanted to get a bookcase upstairs and a mattress downstairs so that should occupy us for a while!

Cheery_Daff

OK, progress. Downstairs hoovered, bookcase emptied and taken upstairs (it's a floor to ceiling one and rather a tight fit, so this was quite an enterprise). Wall and floor hoovered (there were a LOT of cobwebs 😮). New useless bed brought back downstairs and stored in outbuilding - final destination unknown 🙄 Mr Cheery has shifted a load of stuff in the living room so we can play musical bookcases as well, so that'll be another two to shift tomorrow (!) And a load more cobwebs that needed to be hoovered 😂

Pizza for tea, and no more moving things for today!

Suffolk_lass

You said:

LAPTOP/ADMIN STUFF
* book hotel for visiting friend in a couple of weeks
* book holiday! Need to decide dates first
* get Mr Cheery to pay his NI contributions now they've finally sent us the letter
* check if the scythe confirmation email included details about payment and fuel (do I need to fill up the petrol can?)
* cancel the gym membership - they gave me a phone number to ring so this might have to wait til Tuesday

Can I ask what letter please? We haven't paid any since stopping work but various friends have said they were notified when the year was incomplete and we never have been. I have a feeling he is approaching SPA so it might be the "if you pay voluntary cont's totalling £x it will increase your pension by £y" but just checking.

Cheery_Daff

Suffolk_lass said:

You said:

LAPTOP/ADMIN STUFF
* book hotel for visiting friend in a couple of weeks
* book holiday! Need to decide dates first
* get Mr Cheery to pay his NI contributions now they've finally sent us the letter
* check if the scythe confirmation email included details about payment and fuel (do I need to fill up the petrol can?)
* cancel the gym membership - they gave me a phone number to ring so this might have to wait til Tuesday

Can I ask what letter please? We haven't paid any since stopping work but various friends have said they were notified when the year was incomplete and we never have been. I have a feeling he is approaching SPA so it might be the "if you pay voluntary cont's totalling £x it will increase your pension by £y" but just checking.

Annoyingly, I can't find the blithering thing now! I'll dig it out later and check exact wording, but yes, basically that. He left work in 2008, and has been self employed since, but I think there's a threshold above which they take them automatically? And he's always been below it, so they were voluntary contributions. Did they take them automatically for a few years then stop? I can't remember, but I know they've not taken them for several years.

The year we moved house (2018) it showed as a debit on his account (it was only about £120 I think, and said voluntary) so we paid it, because there was all kinds of nonsense going on with the mortgage and I didn't want that to become an issue too. But it never got allocated to the national insurance, it just sat there as a credit for months, and eventually we requested it as a withdrawal and they sent it back. 

He's missing a few years for full state pension, but the most recent just said 'awaiting calculation'- even going back to about 6 years ago. I can only assume someone finally calculated something, because they've now sent a letter asking for £78. Goodness knows how they've calculated that amount - the letter didn't say, and also didn't say 'this will increase pension by xx'. 

He's not big on bureaucratic phone calls... and they've not even answered the few times he's tried, so it's all still a mystery.

He's only 60 later this year though so a while off state pension age yet, so there's still time to catch up. Do need to get on the case though - and finding this letter would be a good start. Clearly I put it in a safe place... Will have a look round later...

Tescodealqueen

Suffolk lass sorry to jump in . DWP used to send letters about eighteen months after the end of the tax year if a year didnt qualify for State pension. I left the DWP in 2011 retiring early and have never received one so think that may have stopped. I check on my pension by signing up to the pension forecast system on gov.uk and have recently paid some voluntary contributions. I had to phone HMRC for a reference number so they were allocated to the year I wanted to pay for when I did some temporary work and wanted to plug that gap cheaply. I have subsequently applied to pay quarterly and will receive a bill each quarter. Don’t think this is the same as Mr Cheery as there is a different rate if you are self employed which I think applies to Mr Cheery. Sorry for butting in but hope it might help

Cheery_Daff

Please don't apologise TDQ - sounds like you know far more about it than I do! 😊

badmemory

Another one butting in.  It is possible that you have enough contributions to get the full state pension already.

Cheery_Daff

Mr Cheery certainly doesn't already have enough- I've checked. He's not far off, but worth topping up.

Finally found the letter. It says

'We have revised some of the entries on your tax return',  then says tax due is £78.40, due by 31st Jan (didn't actually get the letter til March, so...). They said they can't do it automatically because he didn't do tax return before 31st Jan, but he did, so who knows.

Had a small panic there as the letter says TAX due, not national insurance, but the accompanying tax calculation clearly says 
Tax £0
Class 2 NI £78.40

Will do that today. Wonder what they've revised?? Who knows.