Teaching kids about finance.....

I see from the MSM that teaching kids about '...personal finance...' will become part of the UK National Curriculum from September this year.

No doubt a laudable objective, but has anyone seen how this will actually be done in practice, by whom, and what specific subjects are to be covered in the curriculum ?  God forbid that sharks from the major banks are allowed to be visiting lecturers....

I'm really looking forward to the day 10 or 15 years hence when someone sues the State because their teacher happened to mention to an eight-year old that he/she has an account, investment fund or holds shares in any particular company, which then goes tits-up soon after the first students from this new regime manage to get enough money together to invest in it.

Watch this space....

Financial Planning - 2014 Review

Towards the end of the previous tax year, I set up several Excel worksheets and established a 10-year plan for our savings, investments and pensions.   A bit like the old Soviet Union, I know, although theirs was always a moving five-year plan !

Although we've been saving and investing for many years, it was decided to create a more formal plan to focus our efforts to match our goals, and establish annual targets against which to review the performance each year.  

Like a roadmap to a destination, if you don't where you want to go, or the route you're taking to get there, then it's difficult to know where you are at any point in time, or if and when you've actually arrived.   

Many blog commentators monitor their similar plans at the start of each new year but for several reasons I prefer the end of March, at which time I can also better predict our income tax liabilities for the following year.

In-sourcing as a way of life...

In my formative years, firstly as an apprentice and then a junior engineer in a large engineering company in the late 1970s and early 80s, I did the usual things like regularly drinking to excess and wasting money on useless expensive toys, but in those days I wasn't earning too much and so looking back I can see my wages were heavily supplemented simply by doing things myself.

Many's the hour I would spend under the car bonnet (that is, the 'hood' to those across the pond), or stripping motorbike engines or doing DIY improvements to the first house I bought.   Also, Saturday mornings spent in the local scrapyard climbing on piles of old cars stacked four high, with tools between my teeth and also hanging out of every available pocket, just to get at that elusive water pump or starter motor I needed.  Funny how the models I was after always seemed to be at the top of the pile, but that's life... 

For younger readers, this is how second-hand car parts were to be had in the good old days, long before the breakers started stripping parts themselves and offering them off-the-shelf, at hugely inflated prices of course because they now have to factor in their own labour costs.

I think the now all-pervasive 'Health & Safety' culture must share some of the blame, although it's also fair to say that these old scrapyards were potentially dangerous places to be if you didn't have your wits about you. 

The cost of minority trying to move to mainstream.....

When Countryfile was considered a 'minority' programme and tucked well away out of sight on BBC2 on Sunday evenings, it was actually quite worth watching.

But the mandarins at the BBC decided that this programme was attracting a sufficiently large audience to be transferred to what they erroneously perceive as being their primary channel, BBC1.

However, being overpaid and over-pensioned public television 'executives', they failed to spot the obvious in that those people who watch Countryfile are not necessarily the same as watch Eastenders, The Apprentice or Strictly Come Dancing, just a few examples of how the BBC abuses its legally-enforceable compulsory taxation status and therefore wastes shitloads of its too-easily obtained and ill-gotten gains on these and other equally crap populist programmes.  

I'm not totally knocking this type of stuff (well, I am !), if that's what you're into, but they could all easily find a home on commercial television channels, where success or failure would rest or fall on their ability to attract private subscriptions or advertising revenues.  However, there's no justification for a body funded solely by legalised theft to be seen as trying to compete with the professionals in that particular game.

In the process of moving Countryfile to BBC1, they sacked practically everyone of adult age who was remotely connected with the original, and popular, version of the programme, which apparently has subsequently been the subject of several lawsuits over alleged 'ageism'.  

I say sacked all, but they hung onto good old John Craven, best known for trying to present news programmes to seven-year olds in the 1970s and 80s.  That says it all.....

The current crop of presenters, all probably from the home counties* and regularly clad in designer gillets and woolly bobble-hats, presumably because they've never been outdoors in what the rest of the country perceives as being cold or even a little cool, are a complete disaster.

To add insult to injury, they screen Countryfile at 7.30 to 8.00 pm in the summer and autumn months, when anyone with an ounce of sense would know that a large portion of their likely target audience, i.e. those who actually work the land, are still outside during the light evenings, tending their livestock and harvesting produce etc.

It's time to end this state-sponsored TV licensing fiasco, and the sooner the better....


* I can detect a slight Geordie accent from one of them, but he's obviously from the richer parts of Newcastle or the surrounding towns and villages.  Still, one presumes he must have been outside in cold weather before...

The Great 2014 Kew Gardens 50p Rush.....

Must be a very slow news day today....

A couple of the mainstream media sites are running a story about a limited-edition fifty-pence piece from 2009 commemorating Kew Gardens that might be worth a good few quid to collectors.

So, it was time for exploratory abdominal surgery on poor old Perky, and to take a good look around inside her - just in case...

Unfortunately, despite retrieving exactly seventy of the little blighters, not a Kew Gardens type in sight.  There's 58 of the usual Britannia, 6 more which I think might simply be Welsh, and only 6 commemorative types, two of which are the same.  Click on the photo for a larger image if you're even remotely interested.

Five of these commemoratives are only a few years old, but there's one there from 2000 with the legend '...Public Libraries...' if anyone wants to make me an offer....

And don't worry, Perky is fine !

A good big'un beats a good little'un ... Growing Big Vegetables in 2014

We've decided this year to try to grow larger varieties of a few vegetables :-

• Onions - Kelsae
• Leeks - Exhibition Pot Leeks
• Tomatoes - Beefeater
• Carrots - Sweet Candle

In mid January, we sowed 120 onion seeds and 60 leeks.  We started them off indoors in covered cells.  By indoors, I mean on the various south-facing window cills in the house, particularly the kitchen window which is 2.4 m (8') long.

To give us even more growing space within this large window, I've built a rough-and-ready free-standing shelf from white MDF furniture boards, and this now sits on the cill.   It's very much a temporary addition, for the winter months only, and it'll be dismantled and removed to the shed as soon as we can get the plants out into the greenhouse when it warms up a little outside.

six seed trays in the kitchen window...

Living on £10k pa in the UK ?

I spotted this posting on the Firestarter's blog, one of the many fine FI blogs I visit occasionally....

http://thefirestarter.co.uk/is-it-possible-to-live-on-10000-a-year-in-the-uk/

.... and so I thought I'd carry out a similar exercise myself.  Click on the Table for an enlarged view.