Paddling like a swan, to stay afloat financially

The average British salary has risen by 8% since 2010.

MPs salaries have risen by 39%

Because they are worth it🙂

@karmalady . We have also found our budget is getting tighter . We retired early planning to use savings/ small private pension to get us through to state pension age and we have to keep within this budget .
Are there any small economies you are willing to make ? You mention holidays ? We still take a holiday but book a long weekend , 4 days, instead of 7 . We also eat well, but have managed to shave a little of our food budget by swapping stores . You also mentioned hobbies , is there anything you could change to save a little . We had a vert basic leisure club membership but have changed this to winter only as we prefer walking outside in the summer.
The real questions are ; is the amount of depletion of your savings significant and are there any economies you can , and are prepared to ,make .
I am doing approx 4 hours of casual work a week and this really helps but not sure if this would be an option for you .

I know that equity release has a bad name but would your family really want you to be living in constant worry and there are some good flexible plans where you just borrow what you need. Have a look at the free independent Stepchange website where you can get lots of other free budgeting advice as well. PS I’m not in financial services!

But the cost of moving financially and emotionally is something to be thought about too.

I totally empathise with you. Being a widow for not quire two years yet the cost of living seems to be ever-increasing and savings do need to be plundered now and again to add to monthky costs. I have considered downsizing but where I live and nearby areas have a shortage of 2 bed bungalows and those that do come on the market are way much more expensive than my 4 bed detached. A flat or what now seems to be referred to as an apartment is just about the same cost. Only yesterday I looked at flats in a converted building I really liked but they were about 100K more than my house. Unbelievable. I can't understand why builders are not compelled to include small detached properties in their planning. It's all private for families, flats and social housing.

It’s very difficult isn’t it !? My husband had to go into care 20 months ago ,since my last stroke, and since then my savings have dwindled.

I dont run a car anymore
I don’t smoke
Haven’t had a holiday since husband became really poorly 17 years ago
And have to live in £40 per week
All due to care home bills and upkeep of house
My heating never went on once this winter as it was quite mild ….but so glad spring is coming now!
I don’t know how to budget anymore than I already do …so can’t give advice . But I do wish you luck with it all.

You can pay your council tax over twelve months which will give you a small bit extra a month

I’m widowed and I found I simply could not afford to run a car any longer, with tax, insurance, maintenance, fuel and parking costs. So when I downsized, I moved to Merseyside, where all train and bus travel in the region is free if you are over 60. Now I pootle around all over the place, no worries about MOTs or parking!

To be honest, I think many of us are in a similar position.

Because I have a portion of my late husband's private pension and my full state pension, I also have to pay tax. I put the gas central heating on for two hours in a morning and two hours in the evening but it is turned off during the day as I am pottering about and wear warm fleecy jackets and trousers. I worked out that when I receive the triple Lock pension increase next month, what with the increase in energy bills, council tax, Broadband, TV licence, water rates, home insurance and not counting groceries and the extra income tax I have to pay, I will be worse off this year than I was last year. I have just recently had my eyes tested and need new glasses so I have to organise that and because my dentist has closed down and sold the practice to a private company, I have to pay for dental treatment as well. So far I have not had to dip into my savings (not much in there anyway) but I have to pay for a gardener as I can no longer do it myself.

The problem is, like many elderly people, I am property rich and cash poor, I was even thinking of selling my home and buying a new caravan on the coast and living there 10/11 months of the year and for the other one/two months staying in a travel lodge at a reduced price for booking eight weeks, I would be able to afford to do that after selling my home.

All things have crossed my mind but I love my home and don't really want to sell. I cannot claim benefits, all I would like is for the Personal tax to be increased from the £12,750 it is now so I can pay less tax on my earnings because I know that by the time I have paid for dental and optical treatment I am worse off than the people on benefits.

I would love to have an extra £100 a week to spend on treats but even going to see my GP or the hospital means taxi fares as our bus route, as are so many, no longer available.

Another thought is how well are your savings working for you?
Opinions will vary, but some of the best saving rates are to be found in Regular Savings accounts where you put away a sum each month for a year. I have several of these at good rates and every so often one matures and gives me a decent lump sum for a holiday or house repairs or to put into an ISA or whatever.

Cabbie 21,

I have a savings account which pays interest and do try not to touch it. It is when I have something going wrong with the house such as water leaking under the sink, tiles blown off the roof during the gales which I find is cheaper to pay for myself than have to pay the insurance company minus the excess for repairs. I did find out that the excess I had to pay before the insurance company got involved was more expensive than the plumber charged me. I no longer claim on my insurance for small repairs, I either do them myself or get someone in who has been recommended to me also saves my insurance premium from rising the following year. I have become a dab hand with the silicone gun when something needs sticking back down and mixing concrete is like making a cake. I will be out next week with my silicone gun, sticking back a small length of upvc on the carport facia that fell off. My hot glue gun and silicone gun are my best friends, when things are stuck, they are really stuck.

Living alone means that I can regulate how much I spend on groceries and energy bills, but when my family visit me I do like to splash out a bit on little extras.

JollyJilly

To be honest, I think many of us are in a similar position.

Because I have a portion of my late husband's private pension and my full state pension, I also have to pay tax. I put the gas central heating on for two hours in a morning and two hours in the evening but it is turned off during the day as I am pottering about and wear warm fleecy jackets and trousers. I worked out that when I receive the triple Lock pension increase next month, what with the increase in energy bills, council tax, Broadband, TV licence, water rates, home insurance and not counting groceries and the extra income tax I have to pay, I will be worse off this year than I was last year. I have just recently had my eyes tested and need new glasses so I have to organise that and because my dentist has closed down and sold the practice to a private company, I have to pay for dental treatment as well. So far I have not had to dip into my savings (not much in there anyway) but I have to pay for a gardener as I can no longer do it myself.

The problem is, like many elderly people, I am property rich and cash poor, I was even thinking of selling my home and buying a new caravan on the coast and living there 10/11 months of the year and for the other one/two months staying in a travel lodge at a reduced price for booking eight weeks, I would be able to afford to do that after selling my home.

All things have crossed my mind but I love my home and don't really want to sell. I cannot claim benefits, all I would like is for the Personal tax to be increased from the £12,750 it is now so I can pay less tax on my earnings because I know that by the time I have paid for dental and optical treatment I am worse off than the people on benefits.

I would love to have an extra £100 a week to spend on treats but even going to see my GP or the hospital means taxi fares as our bus route, as are so many, no longer available.

Please do not buy a caravan to live in. Watch last week's Panorama on BBC iPlayer, which covers the plight of people who have done so, and also check out the Holiday Park Action Group on Facebook.

are you paying single person occupancy on your council tax?
I'm sure all of us sympathise though

It isn't much I know but you could perhaps supplement your income by selling plants if you have a garden. I have been surprised at how many I have sold on Facebook. I only have a small garden but lots of the plants spread themselves so I divide them, pot them up in pots which I get free from our local garden centre and sell them for a few pounds. I just say to people who want to buy them that I will leave them outside the front door so please help yourself and put money through the letterbox. So far everyone has been honest.

It sounds like you need to make those savings work for you. No need to keep dipping into them and reducing. Invested in a diverse portfolio you can provide an income from dividend payments.

Thank you for the information. I will read up on it.

Yes single occupancy. To be honest, I am okay at the moment, plodding along but it is the maintenance of the house that costs money. Gardeners and diy people charge the earth and because I live in a 3 bedroom detached property with an extension and massive gardens all around and being a pensioner I think when they arrive to give me a quote for jobs doing, all they can hear is the ching, ching of money in their mind. Luckily I am not a fool and have all my wits about me and know exactly what I want to pay and always ensure I get a written quote not an estimate before they even start. I have lost count of the number of times I have been asked if it is an insurance job for repairs. When I tell them no, I never hear from them again. All they want is the money. I would rather climb a ladder and do it myself than pay these cowboys a penny.

I once claimed on my insurance as quite a few ridge tiles blew off and they sent round a roofer to replace them. A few weeks later, there were gales and the same ridge tiles blew off again, when a different roofer came, he told me that whoever had fixed the roof tiles a few weeks ago had not cemented them in, just put cement around the edges to make it look like it had been done. I complained to the insurance company and they refunded my claim. It is a minefield. My late husband always dealt with things like this and the older I get the more I worry about things going wrong.

I'm by no means destitute but we're certainly less well off in retirement than we had hoped to be, despite downsizing drastically.
We've had to help our children more than we expected recently and are being very careful at the moment. We particularly don't want our two children who have families to be living hand-to-mouth. One of them is definitely going to repay regularly so this will help us.

It is hard, isn't it?

Have you sat down and gone through all your expenses and checked whether you could save some money somewhere?

I have found that keeping an eye on how much electricity and water I actually use helps keep costs down.

Do you need to run a car and have a bike as well?

There can as already mentioned be a vast difference in insurance .

Filling the washing machine up and only using a dryer when the weather is too wet or cold to dry clothes outside helps too.

Food prices vary greatly depending on which supermarket you shop in.

FarTooYoungForThis

It sounds like you need to make those savings work for you. No need to keep dipping into them and reducing. Invested in a diverse portfolio you can provide an income from dividend payments.

This is not good advice for anyone who is not experienced in trading shares. As we all (I hope) know, their values rise and fall at the whim of the market and you have to have a very great many shares to have a hope of any worthwhile income from dividends. A crash can wipe you out, and if you’re not clued up you won’t see it coming. Never invest what you can’t afford to lose - at the end of the day, it’s nothing more than gambling.

Bad advice re share trading fartooyoungforthis. I was a share trader in my spare time, did well, was asked to join the society of technical analysts. I used to manage my husband sipp and doubled its value. Anyway that is not the point, fact is that at a certain stage in life, it is sensible to invest in very boring, risk averse assets. I have know some who have treated share trading like gambling and have lost their homes. I was very objective, reading real-time graphs.

I would not recommend share trading for an amateur

Tin soldier, I think you will find this interesting. It explains the sum I needed to pay to get an extra £25 a week for life, bearing in mind that the £25 is escalating and equivalent to an annuity. It is on my pension statement as top up, it is now £30.91

taxvol.org.uk/index.php/category/pensions/

I decided I was healthy enough to take this on. I was 68, hence the £21k.

What a flipping minefield this pension malarky is

I resonate so much with many of the posters here, savings yes, a decent standard of living yes but having now to draw on the experience we gained when we were younger, knowing hoe to stretch a penny. Basically not wanting to be a financial burden to anyone and the potential to live another 30 years. Savings means choices and want to be able to make choices about my future

sandytoes, it is not a significant depletion of my savings, (yet) more of a drip process, little by little. The sort of drip that if it continues, will have some significance. Only my fixed income comes in these days

There are lots of empathetic posts on here. Thank you

Jollyjilly, that tax band being fixed at £12750 was very deliberate. Called fiscal drag, it will affect many more people year on year. Designed to increase tax revenue to the government

What a flipping minefield this pension malarky is

It certainly is.

I rarely advise anyone now about their pension.
Hard enough working out my own.
Not helped[not sure if I have written on GN or elsewhere] by whoever you have to ring up, sometimes.

And people have different scenarios going on.

Thank you karmalady. That’s very interesting. I hadn’t know about that scheme and see from other sources that it was only open until 5 April 2017.

I assumed you were adding missing years but I see now that that it’s a one-off top up to additional state pension - what someone would have paid SERPS or SP2 contributions towards; in your case, notionally between 1978 when SERPS began and when you were 60 in 2008. In other words, what you might have paid over a 30 year period to earn an extra £25 a week in additional state pension. Does that make sense?

I found this on another site:

State Pension top up scheme

If you are entitled to draw a State Pension you can increase your State Pension and get a guaranteed extra income for life with the ‘State Pension top up’ scheme.

The scheme allows you to pay a voluntary Class 3A contribution lump sum to boost your State Pension by between £1 and £25 per week. The cost for every extra pound of pension is based on your age. This scheme only runs until 5 April 2017 so if you wish to take advantage of it you will need to pay your voluntary contributions before 5 April 2017.

If you have gaps in your National Insurance record, it may be more cost effective to make voluntary NICs first.

Yes, what a malarkey. I’m conviced the only person who really undersands all this is former Pensions Minister for LibDems under the Coalition, Steven Webb, now a partner at law firm Lane, Clark, Peacock. He’s written lots of pension papers published on their website.

This chap:

www.lcp.com/our-experts/s/steve-webb

A man who says he finds pensions endlessly fascinating! It could well have been Webb who came up with the top up scheme so he would be the man to ask if you had any queries about it.