Steadying the ship - a perilous voyage across the financial middle

rtandon27

oooo - thanks for the tip @Suffolk_lass - need to add that one to the shopping list

edinburgher

Y Live appear to be alive for another month, my £50 turned up yesterday evening. I have thrown a few £ in the general direction of my SIPP.

Thanks for all the input re. all things household goods. My home-maker muse @Suffolk_lass has never steered me wrong before, although I do blame her for a multi-year Soak & Sleep addiction! At least, I think it was her 😊

I have ordered some lovely heavy towels from her suggested site which, while quite expensive, seem reasonable value as we typically buy a new set every 2-3 years, swapping out whichever existing set is oldest/scabbiest. I also ordered the cheapest reasonable looking food processor I could from Argos (another Cookworks item), a snip at £30 or so. I managed to double up with a new laundry basket, too, taking £5 off £50 and getting 10x Nectar points. Tea towels will wait for now, although I'm in Glasgow tomorrow and can walk past a big Nisbets.

I have been made an unconditional offer of a place on my Masters course, which starts in about a month!

Shortly to go into a management briefing about a proposed new wage structure that would allow my employer to address unfair pay based on gender. I am a bit conflicted because there is some good and some bad in there. From what we have been told so far, I would gain accelerated progress to nearly the top of my new grade but the new grade would pay c. £1,700 less after allowances are done away with. At the same time, I don't think that in the interests of basic fairness, my job warrants allowances for any specific reason. I would likely be better off for the next 4 years but then slightly worse off afterwards. Projected personal loss of £15,000 by retirement. I understand having to settle equal pay liabilities, less certain why some of us need to take a pay cut to make it work. A more sensible approach would have been something like "fiscal drag" (i.e. nobody takes a pay cut but some people don't get a pay rise until the new baseline wage surpasses what they current earn). That would be far too sensible…

themadvix

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82106315#Comment_82106315

Yes, that's the one! 😂

rtandon27

Woohoo - congratulations on the unconditional offer!

South_coast

Remind me why you've started pinging odd bits towards the pension again, Ed? I thought you'd decided you were OK on that score for a bit and the priority was the extension?

P.S. Sorry to hear you may lose out financially, but why on earth is unequal pay something we're still even talking about in 2026 🤦‍♀️? I'm no feminist, but it does rankle that I'd be earning more if I was a man. I've been in charge of a department for 9 years now, and this job is the first time I know I have clear blue water between what I earn and what my team earns. In my last job, after the first salary review (I'd been there about 14 months by that point), my boss told me I was now earning the most in my team. Then I got a new boss, who after a salary increase about 18 months later, told me I was now earning the most in my team - clearly the old boss lied to me!!! (I also found out later that I was on the most by only the tightest of margins) I don't want to oppress the workers by any means but I do think the boss should earn more, regardless of their gender 🤦‍♀️!

2PS. Apologies in advance if I now send everyone off on a tangent 😅

edinburgher

@South_coast - pension = general quality of life in retirement anxiety/uncertainty around a few current life changes. From my personal spends, general direction of financial planning unchanged.

Completely agree about unequal pay. While agreeing this needs to be fixed, the new system introduces several new area of unfairness. These include (off the top of my head) - women being most of the people affected with ££,£££ pay cuts, managers earning less than the people they manage, 20% of jobs not being evaluated yet but still being subject to new pay scheme, and those with less experience in a role losing less than those with decades more experience.

New pay scheme was approved by Council, now to see the trade union responses 🤦🏻‍♂️

edinburgher

A relaxed sort of weekend for the most part.

Got my hair cut yesterday, picked up laundry basket #2 (the last of our planned household purchases for August), and had a fancy grown-ups dinner of pan-fried tuna steak with prawns, black pudding, watercress salad and a couple of M&S prepared salads that I picked up when I was in the office on Thursday.

Today we went for a family swim in Glasgow, visited the swimming pool café, and had a bit of a play in the adjoining park. Children were knackered after that, so we mostly hung out and helped DD1 with her application speech for House Captain 😍 We had a bit of a cooked breakfast, so dinner is a fairly straightforward Spanish-style one-pot with chicken legs, chorizo, peppers, onion, garlic, tomatoes and butter beans.

£6.16 paid into my SIPP yesterday and today (a combination of sin tax and micro payments), £7.70 after initial tax relief.

Finances are looking perfectly respectable for August, current position in Zerosum is c. £200 lower than the end of July, with Mrs E's wage of c. £2,200 still to arrive 😊

Happy Sunday all - I hope the Sunday blues/scaries are leaving you alone.

edinburgher

I am so nervous for DD1 today! She seems more relaxed than I am, so trying not to annoy her 😅

£6.91 withdrawn from Prolific, £1.92 to SIPP (£2.40 after initial tax relief), meter readings submitted to Eon for the first time.

Work should be quite relaxed. One meeting, with a hefty workplan to draw up for the rest of the week.

rtandon27

Oh Ed - that is so sweet! She'll be OK!

teapot2

I hope DD1's speech is well received and she gets the captaincy 🤞🏼