lol-lol

This is the question and to some the answer as well ie how much does one need to live comfortably in retirement and with lump sum and annuity income, or drawdown, at what point does working became basically uneconomic ? It is still just over 4 years until I get my state pension, about £11.5k at the moment I gather, but recent report reckoned 20k is needed for subsistence living, 30k for a few niceties and £50k for comfortable living but that was for 2 people though I do not think it is far off for one person actually. A tax free lump sum can be kept in high interest accounts so it does not erode thankfully due to the current relatively high interest rates. Think I will take about half my current pension pot, which is no 4 pot to me, first was civil service, second pwc and third a tiny one I just get a small sum annually. Only the civil service one will keep up, our better inflation, other two private ones are tragic and will soon look very sad. Without a crystal ball it is a crap shoot. I still have £50k on a mortgage and with the markets now saying interest rates are going to stay higher for longer it is a worry about what interest rate I will be offered for its remaining years. Salary sacrifice in to pension remains one of the best tax avoidance and I look to use it to near the max to avoid 40% income tax and the national insurance tax too. Still paying lots of tax with the allowances frozen but at least the Con government has not only preserved but extended the annual amount one can put in to pension tax free and therefore only pay the lower rate of tax upon removal and no NI !

Volkswagen fail in Europe but do much better in China........

Great win for Ross County against Glasgow Rangers, their first win against them, ever !

Difference is, I think, Russia could well win the war against Ukraine but Iran winning against Israel/USA etc is almost impossible to imagine.

With the new tax year started 8 days ago and the new minimum wage introduced at the start of the month as well many workers will be reviewing their finances and rewards package. One relative is quite happy to see the £1 an hour rise in the minimum wage in addition to the reduced NI contribution. Not many will be happy with the continued freezing of tax allowance, only that government will have more spending power, more monday to spend on military, rather than the NHS as many might hope to get waiting list down. April is an odd time for quite a lot of private employee as it is annual bonus time, from bankers who make get twice their annual salary to others who get about a month or weeks extra pay and this year will lead to them getting big tax bills as their salary is catapulted in to 40 or even 45% tax bands, wiping out of tax free allowance. They may get it back lat in the tax year, I have seen negative tax amounts in payslips which I did not know could happen. Tax avoidance, I predict, will be at record levels with the use of salary sacrifice for electric cars and pension pots. Interesting times with government policies that seem to leave few happy, ie pensioners to name one main one.

Yes about 110-120 ballistic missiles and IDF say 7 got through, Iran claims 14 got through so IDF claiming. Some people need to go back and do some basic maths. 7 in just over 300 is about 2% so about 98% were stopped or about 96% if one goes with the Iran figures of 14 getting thru. Going back to WW2, V1 drones/cruise missiles were much easier to stop than V2 rockets.

Apparently there were over a hundred Ballistic missiles fid by Iran against Israel and also that 7 got though, mainly the ones aimed at the F35 base which the attack on the Iranian embassy in Syria was mounted from. No pictures yet of the Netavim Air Base damage. Some of the ballistic missiles were intercepted outside the Earth's atmosphere adding a new dimension to human warfare. US downed some of the ballistic missiles with its advanced anti-ballistic missile system.

Interesting YouGov poll.... Scale is 2012 to 2024 and horizontal lines are 20%, 40% and 60%. Base line is 0% as can be seen in link. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/04/14/imploding-snp-faces-electoral-disaster-scotland/ Responses to 'If there were a general election tomorrow, which party would you vote for?'

Over 300 drones/missiles fired by Iran the Israeli military report. An Israeli military base hit in the south of the country but no detailed report of casualties except a 10 year old girl hurt by falling debris. Expect Trevor Philips of Sky and Laura Kuensberg Sunday morning programs will be refocused. Some missiles were ballistic it is reported.

Sounds like RAF assets from Akrotiri Cyprus and US naval assets in the Eastern Med involved in combating Iranian drones/missiles incoming to Israel.

Air Raid/ War sirens on in Tel Aviv and missile interception systems appear to be working. Al Jazeera and BBC showing Tel Aviv and Eilat skyline to show Iron Dome, Patriot and David Sling systems in action probably.

New outlets reporting that Ian has launched over a hundred of missiles at Israel, Biden return from his weekend away to Washington DC. Iranian Republican Guard take over 150,000 tonne MSC cargo ship in Persian Gulf. Will Israel fully retaliate with air strike directly on Iran ???

Public Electric charging companies must get geared up to charging the plugged in account say 50p a minute when a car is plugged in but getting no or less than something like 2 kws per hour imo.

Should have got a Renault Zoe and could have got 22 kws AC charging.

This is pretty I think Where as this is really plain..... (My VRSs mark 1 and 2 were slightly better).

New entry in EV database for new TESLA Model Y long range RWD. https://ev-database.org/car/2186/Tesla-Model-Y-Long-Range-RWD Charging expected to be at full 250 kWs in the lower range of the State of Charge tailing off to more like 100 kW between 80% and 95%, Lithium Ion battery tech. When we UK get RHD version and what is the maximum Lithium Iron Phosphate they might get in their using the latest generation of LiFEPO4 batteries ? Retail cost probably about £46k, £47K I would guess but some cracking salary sacrifice deals logical to expect after initial early adopter demand. 0-60 5.9 seconds reportedly in EV DB.

Finally the long range TESLA some of us yearn for ie bigger battery but just the single motor for the rear wheel. Welcome 400 mile WLTP range as well as pretty impressive acceleration...

My mum use to work at a senior person home and the owner of the home just took up at the postal voting forms, put down voting for the Cons/Tories, job done, never even consulted the residence.

Usually two sides to the coin. So little deep thinking going on. How best to use an EV. Thinking of starting an ev charging business. I come around and park close and charge someone's ev. I charge up my batteries in the van on cheap rate lecky and charge it out at higher rate during the day and evening. Sounds a good business model. They do it in the States but not seem to have caught on here it seems.

Here we go, here we go, here we go. Many of these Business Users are such people as midwives who got to the point they cannot carry on doing there job as they were increasingly need to subsidize the government trying to run a car on 25p per mile for much of the year. Actual company cars are quite rare these day unless it is under the government EV salary sacrifice scheme which can be of course a real cost saver for drivers if they take the EV plunge (ie pick a model 3 SR+ TESLA, probably, still under £40k without extras). Yes there perks, car allowance etc (all taxed and oft at 40+2 % as part of salary) but te fact the mileage allowance has not gone up in years despite huge inflation in the UK is bad news for public services as well. Listing to how a business had been able to order a Audi e-tron or Porsche Taycan for hundreds a pound less the equivalent ICE car is irksome but the governments EV salary sacrifice scheme does not have a low enough limit in my opinion so order a Porsche which should be well over £1K a month and paying less around £600 is nice for some but not proper use of government subsidies IMO, give the midwives a mileage rate after 10k miles per year they can live with I reckon.

Works out at 43.3p a mile so he would be out of pocket if crosses the 10k business miles a year. The 45p and 25p per mile over 10k miles is a national disgrace which has been raised in Parliament but when the country is worse than broke what do you do ?

Got to be a hundred by now, please. Let us hope we get to a hundred and fifty before GE at least.

As somebody who has had a K500 code, ie taxation starts at minus £5k, higher rate started at about £7k I know you pain. Few can fathom why the Con party decided to wack pensioners. The clue is in Hunt's making work pay comments ad he appears to want people of all ages, over 18 it seems, even those late sixties and above to work and earn and pay income tax. Only way round I have found is to put masses into pension and the quarter thar is lump sum is the bit that avoids the tax, and national insurance hits.

That is so wrong. UK pension is already one of the worst in Europe. I am trying to do the maths to keep my pension income to less than £12.5k when I retire possibly quite soon and take the lump sum and live of that plus pension income. Over a million pensioner still work I gather. God, what a system. Hopefully a new government will raise the tax threshold by at least inflation !

Not so sure about that. They have done some very conservative things in relation to personal tax. As of the weekend and the start of the UK tax year, in combination with what they did in January the two cuts in NI really help those already on a good salary to keep more if it and that is very Tory. Whilst someone on minimum wage, £11.44 an hour I gather, £22k a year if doing a 37.5 hour week, the NI cut will hardly be noticeable at all as most of the wages are untaxed so 2% of about £10k is £200 a year or £4 a week. Somebody on UK average salary of about £30K will give a £700 a year saving. £51k and above the saving is over £1,500 a month. Very Tory ie give the less well paid very little but those earning two, three and more much more. The only bit that I find weird is that the Cons did both 2% cuts on NI and nothing on the base rate of income tax nor raise Tax thresholds when we have been seeing so much inflation recently. This has really P1ssed off pensioners many who will start paying tax on even quite tiny extra bits of pension. Bizarre. I know there is much less than no money left ie £2.5T of UK national debt but what little they certainly did not give something back fairly. Also raising the amount per year wealth can put in to tax avoidance pension pots from £40k a year to £60k a year is not much of a vote winner to what they might have done as well as the NI cuts taking nearly all the headroom they thought they has to spend. Out of touch has never been so prevalent in government and I have never seen such a high percentage of government MPs say they are not going to stand, even quite young ones.