mogish
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Post by mogish on Sept 25, 2020 15:57:58 GMT
Paragon now no longer offering the 1yr fixed @ 1.3,%
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aju
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Post by aju on Sept 25, 2020 16:01:45 GMT
I admire your efforts Aju, truly diligent. I was thinking the same. I guess he's one of the people who make a bit of a hobby out of financial juggling - this gives them the rare distinction of having a hobby that actually puts money into their bank account (hopefully), as against all my hobbies past and present which have done precisely the opposite. Good luck to him, I'm sure he'll fill us in on his motivation.... Not really much of an effort if i'm honest its really common sense to me to be making ones pensions go as far as is possible with the minimum of effort. I've been retired since I was 53 (quite few years ago now too) so I've got a lot of time on my hands and with this covid malarkey it's really a no brainer. Of course anyone who knows me knows i have to balance returns with Mrs Aju's unending ability to spend it too!. I have other things I like to do to its just the sh*t has hit the fan rates wise all of a sudden and it's all hands to the pump in Aju towers a the moment. There will be considerably less to do soon when the P2P stuff clears out - although it mught be a long wind down for RS.
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beagle
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Post by beagle on Sept 26, 2020 5:50:58 GMT
I admire your efforts Aju, truly diligent. I was thinking the same. I guess he's one of the people who make a bit of a hobby out of financial juggling - this gives them the rare distinction of having a hobby that actually puts money into their bank account (hopefully), as against all my hobbies past and present which have done precisely the opposite. Good luck to him, I'm sure he'll fill us in on his motivation.... exactly that, if you enjoy it go for it. Just don't become absorbed by it. I for one haven't the patience for this level of financial management. In the spirit of the threat - I have invested in stocks - 6.1% up
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aju
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Post by aju on Sept 26, 2020 10:42:57 GMT
I was thinking the same. I guess he's one of the people who make a bit of a hobby out of financial juggling - this gives them the rare distinction of having a hobby that actually puts money into their bank account (hopefully), as against all my hobbies past and present which have done precisely the opposite. Good luck to him, I'm sure he'll fill us in on his motivation.... exactly that, if you enjoy it go for it. Just don't become absorbed by it. I for one haven't the patience for this level of financial management. In the spirit of the threat - I have invested in stocks - 6.1% up Being patient is not something anyone who knows me well has categorised me as but spending time analysing before jumping in is something I try to achieve. I do have considerable stocks too but the mostly they are free ones from working for a major comms company in the heady days of privatisation and beyond. I did buy a small number of RM shares too when I worked for them at christmas times after retiring back in 2007/8/9. The comms shares at the moment are not giving any returns (Dividends) so are not that fruitful, however I am keeping them for when the Div's come back as they are quite an addition to the funds - besides the sale price is way too low for me anyway. Apart from that the stock market is not that interesting to me as P2P aside I am a more defensive player and understand simpler things - a good spreadsheet helps and as an ex developer designer It keeps my hand in s/w as well. As you say if you enjoy it then play on so to speak but to be fair apart from flurries like the latest sweeteners and as a couple who made a huge ton of money on the HFX £30 a month for basically little work for a considerable number of years then I chase all the sweeteners if they are viable options like the recent £5 in the hfx again for what is basically re-routes (S/O in/outs set up and leave) just routing the £5 into an interest bearing account monthly - Marcus as a day to day fund account was good until recently. I did have the sense at the start of the year that the interest rates potentially would tumble so we also locked into higher fixed rates earlier in the year with funds that were finishing elsewhere and the P2P selling was begging to be placed somewhere where it still worked for us. The pandemic is not going to be a great game over the coming 6-18 months so one has to grab what one can where one can. As I have said in the past once this stuff is set up and working it's not that much of a pain and leaves time to play my guitars and cut the grass - keeping busy on things like this also mean that I have a brilliant excuse for not decorating the house which Mrs aju is always noticing when shes not spending!. To be honest majority of my time of late has been playing cat and mouse with the airlines and accommodation refunds battles for Mrs aju's holidays and theatre trips in the smoke we had planned for the year so I've spent quite a lot of time on twitter and phone with these companies and that has paid off enormously.
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Post by ruralres66 on Sept 26, 2020 11:24:33 GMT
Persuaded husband when he reach his state pension age 5 years ago to NOT take his pension (as we could manage without it then as I had occupational and state and he had occupational)). We have 'diversified" with purchase of assets over the last 15 years or so.
So it is accruing as a 'lump sum' with an annual interest payment of 2.5% over bank rate for the period left. So essentially it is a 'savings"pot (with interest better than anything other than P2P 5 years ago) by way of HMRC/DWP.
It can be taken at any time as a taxable lump sum. However, it husbands direct annual "income" (which excludes interest from savings etc) falls into a low earner threshold, if the pot is taken at the end of the tax year and he still has low earner status, it's I believe paid tax free!
The above is my understanding. If anyone knows any better do enlighten me!
Managing our financial affairs is very necessary as 2 family members have long term chronic illness which has prevented them working. Interesting as it is it's no hobby I can assure you!
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Post by danny101 on Sept 26, 2020 14:09:51 GMT
As I understand it, you can take a lump sum payment as you started deferring 5 years ago(not available now. The lump sum will be added to other income and taxed according. The first £12500 is tax free, the rest taxed at 20%. It doesn't change anything by taking it at the end of a tax year or beginning. One difference (to other income) is that the state pension lump sum will not be liable to higher rate income tax if it does push you into this bracket.
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aju
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Post by aju on Sept 26, 2020 15:29:12 GMT
Persuaded husband when he reach his state pension age 5 years ago to NOT take his pension (as we could manage without it then as I had occupational and state and he had occupational)). We have 'diversified" with purchase of assets over the last 15 years or so.
So it is accruing as a 'lump sum' with an annual interest payment of 2.5% over bank rate for the period left. So essentially it is a 'savings"pot (with interest better than anything other than P2P 5 years ago) by way of HMRC/DWP.
It can be taken at any time as a taxable lump sum. However, it husbands direct annual "income" (which excludes interest from savings etc) falls into a low earner threshold, if the pot is taken at the end of the tax year and he still has low earner status, it's I believe paid tax free!
The above is my understanding. If anyone knows any better do enlighten me!
Managing our financial affairs is very necessary as 2 family members have long term chronic illness which has prevented them working. Interesting as it is it's no hobby I can assure you! I get your point on deferring state pension and at the time it came to decisions earlier in the year there were a number of factors to take into consideration. Deferring is not quite what it used to be these days as deferal for me would only get an effective increase rate of 5.8% per year. Another important factor to be aware of is that if I take my pension on year 1 and compare a 12 month delay which effectively increases my pension start point by 5.8% then if I've got my quick fag packet calcs correct (well another hastily thrown together spreadsheet to be precise). Then it takes the following catch up times assuming 20% tax in both instances and a few pension increase rates. YrIncrease rate - catch up year 0.5% 17/18 1.0% 18/19 2.0% 19/20 2.5% 20/21
I've thrown it together very quickly but I then checked what which magazine said a while back and have copied their statement here. Also my state pension is not full as I did not have enough years after 2016 to beef it up further with class 3 voluntary NI contribs.( Pension is £154 week in my case but still not to be sniffed at in my view - would have been a lot less on the old scheme due to Contract Out rules!) So i guess it depends whether one thinks one might benefit or not. From my perspective since I had contributed also the Class 3 NI and they paid back in 4 years or so it might have improved things but I took it that It was swings and roundabouts to a large degree. Fingers crossed I live long enough to be in profit from the Class 3 NI extras. Can relate to your comment regarding family issues we have one of our kids, well a 40 year old nearly, who has MH issues and cannot work either but still lives independently albeit with help from us. Managing money is as you say not a hobby for me either but at least I find it somewhat liberating to get the best out of ones resources.
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aju
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Post by aju on Sept 26, 2020 15:44:31 GMT
As I understand it, you can take a lump sum payment as you started deferring 5 years ago(not available now. The lump sum will be added to other income and taxed according. The first £12500 is tax free, the rest taxed at 20%. It doesn't change anything by taking it at the end of a tax year or beginning. One difference (to other income) is that the state pension lump sum will not be liable to higher rate income tax if it does push you into this bracket. Would have changed my calcs above if that was the case for me and later Mrs Aju but none the less I've not factored in the returns we get from investing the spare cash from the SP - its not been that long so would'nt really change the bigger picture anyway.
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Post by investor1925 on Sept 27, 2020 10:56:21 GMT
We've not been involved in sweetners, as sometimes starting up a bank account, even on-line, can be such a pain.
However, as a couple who love holidays, our latest is cruising.
Had one booked for May 2020 which was cancelled. Took the 125% offer from them & booked another for May 2021, all free, then put the rest of the 125% cash (£700) towards another in Feb 2022.
Got another booked for Feb 2021, so if that is cancelled, we'll take the 125% again & book for Summer 2022, free, plus a healthy deposit for the one in Feb 2023.
So far it means we'll have gained over £1000 from them at 25% mark-up, which is a lot better than P2P at the moment (even when SS was offering 12%)
This has 2 big potential problems though:
1) If you don't like cruising, it's a waste of time. 2) If they don't restart soon, they may collapse, then it's up to our travel insurance & credit card for one of them to pay up.
Meanwhile, to get back to the point of this thread, the only one I've put cash into recently is loanpad
I'm actively taking it out of RS (Metro takeover) FC (deafults & low returns) Assetz (closed GBBA accounts) Plus, of course the ones that have defaulted LY, FS, MT, GS & Col(if ever)
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beagle
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Post by beagle on Sept 27, 2020 11:00:24 GMT
I've bought into several properties and gold. p2p I'm letting be for a little while.
saving accounts, I'm not really interestred in and have some bonds but if it doesn't beat inflation I'm not too keen.
I try to keep a bit of cash (circa 50k) and the rest is invested.
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aju
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Post by aju on Sept 27, 2020 14:59:10 GMT
I've bought into several properties and gold. p2p I'm letting be for a little while. saving accounts, I'm not really interestred in and have some bonds but if it doesn't beat inflation I'm not too keen. I try to keep a bit of cash (circa 50k) and the rest is invested. I'm not really a fan of paying inflation tax either and at the moment with cpi @ <1% and rpi @.5% it's not too hard to beat it. I'd like the inflation to rise up in September as that determines my work pension increase but not too bothered. I've just rebalanced our investments to leave 30k in easy access and with all the current account interest falling off in TSB and I guess others will follow suit that will bolster the day to day fund too. Since we have reduced quite a bit by bailing out of RS and Zopa we had to pick somewhere and fortunately we fixed on a couple of 12 month fixes just before the nose dive. Zopa Bank @ 1.29% for the year is not brilliant but it will do as long as it beats inflation. My son keeps banging on about gold but it's one i've never really understood apart from the fact it looks pretty!
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spiral
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Post by spiral on Sept 28, 2020 7:03:36 GMT
I have way too much in cash which causes me a problem in keeping up with best rates. My biggest bug bear is how difficult it can be with some accounts to get the details of cut off times for deposits and withdrawals as well as their daily transfer limits. Some accounts let me transfer as little as £10K per day whilst others are unlimited.
Some transfer funds immediately, some same day but not immediate, others next working day or in certain circumstances, the day after that. Some need to receive their funds by a certain time to credit it the same day else they're credited next day.
A combination of these rules lead to this situation earlier in the year. I was closing an account which had become uncompetitive (old) and opening a new account (new)
the old account was one of the accounts that withdrawals are received in your nominated account on the next working day but at an unknown time (I actually contacted them to ask if they could tell me when withdrawals were processed but they couldn't be more specific than by end of working day).
The new account needed funds by 1530 in order for them to be credited the same day so to make sure this happened I took the funds from an alternate account which processed withdrawals and deposits immediately (Alt) I was then able to transfer from alt to new before the cut off time and transfer from old back to alt when the funds arrived from old.
All of these accounts operated through the same linked account which permitted transfers in £10K amounts max.
As you can see explaining this is a little complicated so imagine how I felt then a couple of days later when a phone call was received from the alt account to ask me why I'd transferred a five figure sum out of the account only to replace it later in the day. I ended up having to provide them with statements from the old account so as to prove my story for AML purposes.
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aju
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Post by aju on Sept 28, 2020 7:13:24 GMT
I have way too much in cash which causes me a problem in keeping up with best rates. My biggest bug bear is how difficult it can be with some accounts to get the details of cut off times for deposits and withdrawals as well as their daily transfer limits. Some accounts let me transfer as little as £10K per day whilst others are unlimited.
Some transfer funds immediately, some same day but not immediate, others next working day or in certain circumstances, the day after that. Some need to receive their funds by a certain time to credit it the same day else they're credited next day.
A combination of these rules lead to this situation earlier in the year. I was closing an account which had become uncompetitive (old) and opening a new account (new)
the old account was one of the accounts that withdrawals are received in your nominated account on the next working day but at an unknown time (I actually contacted them to ask if they could tell me when withdrawals were processed but they couldn't be more specific than by end of working day).
The new account needed funds by 1530 in order for them to be credited the same day so to make sure this happened I took the funds from an alternate account which processed withdrawals and deposits immediately (Alt) I was then able to transfer from alt to new before the cut off time and transfer from old back to alt when the funds arrived from old.
All of these accounts operated through the same linked account which permitted transfers in £10K amounts max.
As you can see explaining this is a little complicated so imagine how I felt then a couple of days later when a phone call was received from the alt account to ask me why I'd transferred a five figure sum out of the account only to replace it later in the day. I ended up having to provide them with statements from the old account so as to prove my story for AML purposes.
I coudn't agree more been doing it quite a bit of the same recently and so far got away with it. Am waiting right now for a large sum from ns&i to goto zopa bank and may have to do it again from marcus via lloyds.
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travolta
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Post by travolta on Sept 28, 2020 8:16:57 GMT
I reckon most of us are struggling with banks delaying cash as everyone drops their Nsandi income bonds and transfer big sums....somewhere?
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bt
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Post by bt on Sept 28, 2020 8:19:22 GMT
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