An in-between phase

EssexHebridean

Haha - an awful lot of my productivity has been extremely short bursts of doing stuff followed by rather a lot longer sitting about thinking “blimey it’s hot!” 😂

The ISA thing isn’t quite as straightforward as just working out how much interest you expect your savings to earn and then shifting enough into an ISA to leave you with a tax liability of zero - because you also need to do the calculations around whether in fact you would be better off by just getting a higher interest rate in a non-ISA account and then paying the tax on the resulting interest..! 😆 I know…it’s a pain, and makes your head explode. I think there may be a tool on MSE that lets you compare ISA -v- non ISA account interest though - which helps. 

badmemory

What interest rate you need depends on whether you are already having to pay tax on savings & at what rate you are paying that tax.  If taxed @ 20% then a savings account @ 5% would need an ISA account @ 4% to break even.  The big problem is going to come if they decide to remove the 0% savings rate on the £1k.  I was hoping they would put this up to £2k instead of putting the dividend rate down to £1k.  It is amazing how quickly you can go from not even making £200 in interest to suddenly being over your £1k.

PennysIntoPounds

Thank you both very much for your comments. I have put in on the to-do list for this week to set aside some time to have a proper think about it (and probably a bit of a cry afterwards 😁)

vic_sf49

Hiya Pip, just delurking to mention the Savings Starter Rate, which is up to £5000 (taxed at 0%), in addition to the £1000 that's often quoted.

Don't know whether the above is applicable to you or not, but is worth looking up, as you may not need to use an ISA. 

Info about it is on the government website (and various others obvs), and there's also a few threads on mse Savings and Investments forum.

And I haven't tried the following, but the maths for working out whether an ISA or non-ISA is better, is in this screenshot... 

PennysIntoPounds

Thanks so much @vic_sf49 I'd not heard of that, will definitely look it up- appreciate you delurking to let me know and feel free to do so anytime!

PennysIntoPounds

Had a little walk before it got too hot to Aldo.
Their wine that's 10p cheaper is okay but their wine that is 10p dearer is so much nicer that I feel it's okay to spend 10p more if I'm not at a stage of budget that requires all the scrimping

Put a few things on V!nted and Mr PIP put some bits on eb*y, what with my ignominious chucking off that site

Did an extremely boring Y*ugov survey. Yes, I have heard of all these countries. No, you haven't provided a 'select all' button. No, I don't have a positive or negative opinion about any of them, like all countries they'll have good and bad aspects. Yes, I am annoyed about living in a world where everything is distilled down into black and white with no room for let alone appreciation of nuance
No, I didn't need to rant about it here, my apologies (though grr 😁)

Entered some competitions, including on another site that's also hosting the bundle of marigold gloves, so since I've doubled my chances, you could well be bragging that you know someone living the marigolds high life @Blackcats

Found another 20p on the street, are people just throwing their money on the pavement these days?! Fine by me

Zopa, which I usually love, is not allowing payments IN unless from a linked account. Great banking guys, super helpful for people to not be able to give their accounts extra money. What could possible go wrong with this financial business model

Walked to shady pub garden with Mr PIP and my leg partially collapsed halfway there, had to do an embarrassing and ouchy limp the rest of the way. We got there and they had no suitable beers on- except for one which was £9.90 for a pint! It was a no thank you from me. On I hobbled, lopsidedly but indignantly

Blimmin glad not to have been doing that street stall I mentioned in this weather, so that was a blessing in disguise

Is anyone doing the McDon*lds M*nopoly thing? I haven't before but found three 'tickets' on the street. My chronic pain condition issue of needing to stare at the ground to tell where my feet are is paying off!

foxgloves

£9-90 for a pint? Bloody hell! Was it brewed from actual gold-infused angel tears?
F

PennysIntoPounds

It would've bloody been infused with my tears had the barman not warned me in advance @foxgloves I was aghast and no mistaking!

EssexHebridean

There can be a place for a beer at that price IMO - but it needs to be the sort of beer which most folk simply wouldn't be ordering by the pint - so an 11% imperial stout or something along those lines, I might have a third of it to try - probably shared with MrEH too, and I'd feel that £3.30 was a reasonable price for something that would have been expensive to brew. If it was the sort of thing I'd be ordering a refreshing pint of on a hot day with a strong feeling that "this one's not going to last long" though - nope. Good work from the barman in warning you. 

vampirotoothus

Hi I'm not sure if anyone else shared this High value winners | NS&I (nsandi.com) V x