Part 273: Jobs, Birthdays, Cats, and Pensions

Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE.  This week I discuss possible changes to pensions and ISAs.  Also, possible progress on the job front, and more pictures of cats.

Weekly Update

It’s more of the same this week as I’ve continued my job search and spent much of my free time chilling with Oana.  We’re still playing a lot of Monopoly, and we’ve finished our rewatch of Deep Space Nine.

I bought a Lego set with some gift vouchers I received a while back, and we finished building it earlier this week.  It’s the new Tudor Corner set and it’s amazing.  

In respect of the job search, I’ve passed the first interview for one role, and I’ve since completed some tests they asked me to sit.  I’m waiting on those results and the next step is another interview.  After that, if they like me, I’ll have the job which starts in early February which means this could all happen very quickly.  By the time of Part 274 of this blog I should know one way or another.  

Some of the calls and messages from recruiters have been hilarious, and it’s clear that they’re just using templates in their messaging.  You can spot them a mile off because the part where they type your name is in a different font, or because of strange spacing before and after your name.  

I’ve also had a few conversations like this:

Recruiter: What are you looking for?

Me: My priority is a remote, employed position.

Recruiter: I’ve got a hybrid role available.

Me: What do you mean by hybrid?

Recruiter: Four days a week in the office.

Me: …

Recruiter: The office is just down the road from you.  In Doncaster.

Me: I’m in Sheffield.

Recruiter: So is it something you’d be interested in?

The whole issue around WFH/hybrid/in-person attendance is just baffling.  There are so many admin/office-type roles that can be done remotely.  Many of them result in more productivity by having people work from home.  Yet, many employers want people in the office and forget about all the claims that it’s about “culture”, “values”, and “collaboration”.  It’s a power play – nothing more, nothing less.

Cats

Our nearest decent-sized supermarket is a Tesco, and on the way, there’s a cat I’ve seen for the past few years.  She’s always friendly and as soon as she sees me, or me and Oana, she will come running over for attention.  For many months we wondered who the cat belonged to, and what her name was. She’s not a stray as she is clean and healthy.  

One time I happened to see the cat run into a nearby house, so that was one piece of the puzzle in place.  Some months later Oana and I were making a fuss over this cat we had named Squirrel and two young boys came over saying she was their gran’s cat and was called Rosie.  Since then we have tried knocking on the owner’s door a couple of times to say “hi” and ask about Rosie but there’s been no answer.  Anyway, we finally got talking to Rosie’s owner this week!

We had been to Tesco and Rosie was in her usual spot and we saw a woman at the window of the house.  So, we knocked on the door and she came out.  We introduced ourselves and had a nice chat with this lovely woman.  She loves cats and is aware that Rosie is a bit of a celebrity.  I always see other people stopping and petting Rosie, or saying hello, or taking photos.  

Here is Rosie:

And because I don’t want to leave Poppy out of this conversation, here are a couple of recent pics of Poppy:

Oana’s Birthday

It was Oana’s birthday during the week and we had a very chilled day.  We watched some TV and played a few games, and I made one of her favourite meals, a mushroom and chive risotto.  She wanted a lowkey day and I hope that’s what I helped bring about.  

My Dad paid for us to go for lunch with him last weekend as a birthday treat, and on Saturday my Mom and her husband paid for Oana and me to go with them for dinner at an Indian restaurant we’ve wanted to try for a while.  

The meal was a mixed bag.  The poppadoms and pickle tray were nice.  For our starters, we got a sharing dish which was a selection of dishes, like onion bhaji, lamb kebab, chicken tikka, and so on.  It was ok.  The lamb was decent, but the bhaji had no taste.  My Mom’s main wasn’t good as the chicken was very tough.  The other curries were ok but not at all memorable.  The drinks were gross though.  We all had coke (the drink, not the other kind) and they brought opened glass bottles to us that were all flat.  A cynical person might think these were old bottles refilled from a generic brand of cola.

On the whole, a disappointing experience.  In total, I would estimate about half the food served was left.  The staff did not seem to care, and when cleaning our table the waiter wiped a load of crumbs into my Mom’s lap.  It was one of those moments where I was too stunned to do anything and the waiter just walked off.  

Nan

It was around this time of year, in 2015, that my Nan passed away after experiencing a series of strokes.  She was the kindest, warmest, gentlest person you could meet.  Her generosity was without end, and it’s a sad fact some people took advantage of that throughout her life.  She was a rock though, and a source of strength for my Dad and me at various times in our lives.

I spent a decent amount of my childhood at her house as my parents were working and I’ve got many happy memories of that place and time.  Now and then I get a brief smell that takes me back there.  

In June this year, she would have been 100.  For the longest time, it seemed as though she’d live forever.  I miss her, and Oana and I talk about her often.  Oana was like the granddaughter that she’d never had, and the two of them would spend hours talking.  My Nan also loved science fiction, with a particular love of Star Trek and Stargate.  She would be fascinated by the world today, with the advancement of smartphones and artificial intelligence.  

Don’t take your loved ones for granted because you never know when they’ll be taken from you. 

Torsten Bell

There’s been some discussion around the new Pensions Minister, Torsten Bell, and the changes he may try to make to pensions in the UK.  Some of the suggested changes I agree with and some of them are a little concerning.

Triple Lock

The UK State Pension is protected by the triple lock, which guarantees that the pension will increase by the highest of inflation, average earnings growth, or 2.5%.  This is a great level of social protection and helps pensioners who have to budget week to week.  

Bell has argued for the pension to increase using an average of wage growth which would smooth out increases in the state pension.  In theory, it could work, but I’d want to see much more detail on it before supporting such a change.  

ISA Lifetime Limits

I’ve also read the Resolution Foundation, which Bell was the Chief Exec of, has argued for a lifetime limit on ISAs of £100,000.  Although this would only impact a small portion of the UK population, I’m guessing it would affect a large proportion of my readers and fellow FI followers.  To be blunt, I’d be pissed if such a change was made.  

Private Pension Changes

Other changes that have been mentioned by this new minister involve a cap on the tax-free lump sum that one can draw down from a private pension.  Currently, it sits at just over £268,000, but Bell once suggested it could be capped at £40,000. 

Another suggestion is to increase the age at which people can access their private pensions.  Again, I don’t have any major opposition to this in theory but I’d need to know more detail.  If people were facing a cap on their ISAs and were unable to access private pensions until they could access the state pension, then it just strikes me as massively unfair.  

Fighting the wrong war…

Rather than changing the law to stop people retiring early, we need to ask why people want to retire early and then seek to address those issues.  The fact is, the world of work for many people is miserable, and for others, it can be traumatic.  

There’s no real reason why the “working day” lasts between 8am and 6pm.  It’s just tradition.  We could decide to change the working day so that it lasted only from 10am to 4pm, and there’d hardly be any impact.  What’s more, people would adapt.  Just look at how we adapted during Covid.  

A lot of work is just busy work that adds little value and makes absolutely no difference.  I bet that everyone reading this can think of at least one task or responsibility they have at work, that if it stopped, would have zero impact.

People want to feel like they’re making a difference.  They want to feel valued.  Asking people to complete pointless tasks runs counter to that.  If people felt valued, inspired, and challenged by their jobs, they would be more likely to want to keep working rather than seek the first opportunity to retire.  

Unfortunately, it all comes down to power and is linked to why some employers don’t want people to work from home.  

I’m not saying we should have a utopian world where no one works; that’s not realistic.  If the government wants to encourage people to work longer, make work more attractive instead of making retirement more difficult.  

Oana’s Job Search

Oana is also looking for work and not having a huge amount of success despite lots of experience and qualifications.  She did receive an invite to interview with G4S and it happened this week.  It was… different.

When Oana mentioned G4S my mental alarm bells started ringing.  They are not a company that has covered itself in glory.  I’d struggle to think of many businesses with a worse reputation in the UK.  There’s nothing to lose with an interview though, and it can be good practice so she went through with it.  

The interview was thirty minutes with no preparatory information sent ahead of time.  The interviewer read questions out in a monotone voice, which Oana answered as best she could.  They then asked if Oana had any questions, which she did, but before she could ask any the interviewer placed her on hold for a few minutes and then came back and offered her the job.  However, they could not tell Oana the following info:

• Start date
• Probationary period
• Training period and content
• Working pattern after training
• How performance is monitored
• Day-to-day responsibilities
• Salary

Following the interview, Oana received an email stating that the role was subject to “medical procedures.”  

I have no words…

Although she desperately wants to work, she’s not that desperate.

Oh, and one other thing they said; “you’re not allowed to stand up except when on break.”

What I’m Doing

Listening: Truth of the Divine by Lindsay Ellis.

Watching: La Palma (Netflix).

I finished Axiom’s End, and the story continues in Truth of the Divine.  It’s not like any other sci-fi I’ve read, and I mean that in a good way.  I’m looking forward to seeing how the plot develops.  The author has put a lot of thought into developing the ETI in the story, and it shows.  

We watched La Palma on Netflix and, for the most part, enjoyed it.  The last episode was frustrating though.  If there’s one thing I can’t stand in fiction it’s when tension is manufactured by people behaving in a completely unrealistic way.  Until the last half an hour of the last episode, I would have given the show 8/10.  This dropped to 5/10 by the end.  

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Financial Update

Assets

Premium Bonds: £30,000.00.

Stocks and Shares ISA: £91,485.52.

Fuck It Fund: £13,052.13.

Pensions: £92,542.08.

Residential Property Value: £237,228.00. 

Total Assets: £464,307.73.

Debts

Residential Mortgage: £184,492.19. 

Total Debts: £184,492.19.

Total Wealth: £279,815.54.

Some decent growth this week puts me within touching distance of a new all-time high for my wealth figure.  I’m anticipating breaking the previous figure in the next month or so.  I’ll probably have to use some funds to help subsidise our cost of living until we receive earned income again.  

My ISA transfer is finally in progress despite poor service from the new provider.  On their website, under the section for transferring an ISA from another company, it said you needed to complete a form on the website which you could then print and post back, or you could ask them to post the form to you.  As we don’t have a printer, I asked them to send me the form.  Days passed and they sent me the wrong forms.

I went back online for a webchat with them and got disconnected.  So, I figured I’d just fill it out online and then save it as a PDF and ask someone to print it for me.  As I was completing the request the site popped up stating I could actually do the transfer online.  However, at no point further on did it state the request had been submitted electronically and I just saw the instruction to print the form that had been generated.  

I downloaded the form intending to print it at the library the next day.  When I woke up the next day I had a message from the new provider stating the transfer was underway.  I went back on live chat to check this, but they cut me off again.  So I called up and after waiting a while I finally spoke with someone who confirmed it was in progress.  

Things should not be this difficult.

That’s all for this week. Thank you, as always, for reading. Please leave a comment if you have any thoughts on this week’s post.

Disclaimer

The views and opinions in this blog are my own, and do not represent the views or opinions of my former, current, or future employers, nor should they be considered advice.

If you want personalised financial advice, seek an appropriate professional.  If you are in financial difficulty, seek advice via the resources below:

StepChange

MoneyHelper

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