What are you going to do?!

As always I will be withdrawing my interest in full and then using it to live off for the next month. Of course I have other sources of income as well and I don't rely on saving stream interest to survive but all my income at the moment is from various investments and savings accounts that I have.

I won't bore you with the details but I have got 2 quite good pension schemes I am in but I have to wait another few years before I can draw them without suffering an actuarial reduction.

I worked full time for 30 years + in a quite well paid job and I was of the generation where I was brought up by my parents to save a little all the time. Well if I am honest I regret that now to some extent. I was fortunate to always earn an above average salary but I didn't live an above-average lifestyle because it was drilled into me by my father that I should always put money aside in the building society every month for a rainy day. So while I could have lived in a big house and driven and expensive car the reality was I lived in a modest house and drove an average quality car. I bought average quality High Street Clothes and I went on average priced holidays.

The upshot of all this is that when I got past the age of 50 I had a considerable sum of money in bank and building society accounts and remember I was saving in the days when you got good interest in the building society. And of course I only ever had one very small mortgage that I had paid off years previous . Think about it, I was stuffing hundreds every month away into Building Society accounts and then living a relatively humble lifestyle and telling myself I couldn't afford this or that that I would have really liked and actually could afford and had worked for.

In addition to my habitual saving over a 30 year period I was fortunate to have 2 modest inheritances from family which of course because of how I was brought up, I also stuffed into building society accounts and never spent or enjoyed in the way I am sure my deceased family members would have wished me to.

I spoke to my father about it once when he was quite old and he admitted to me that the way he was and the way he instilled me to be was probably because he grew up as a child in war time and it was all about ration books and it affected his way of thinking and he had this thing about living frugally and saving money and you never know what the next disaster will be around the corner.

I suppose the positive from all of that is that I was able to retire a little early even though my pensions weren't quite due because I had so much money in banks that I couldn't really see the point of working anymore. Another factor is that unfortunately I don't have any children and I also am an only child so I don't have any nieces or nephews so when I go everything will be going to charity.

So what I have done is put some of my money in high interest places like saving stream and I used that to live off so even though I am still not eating into my capital. I guess it's very hard to change the way you. Hey ho.

I say to everyone today don't be reckless but enjoy yourself in life because you never know how long you have got on the planet and you never know if you will have a tomorrow.