I didn’t just get a phone call from our new Probate case manager on Wednesday, I got an email too. A proper email that introduced her to us and apologised for our experiences thus far. She said that our case manager is supposed to touch base at least every 4 weeks…Well, what a luxury that would have been. I was just delighted to hear from her and speak to an actual human being.
She confirmed that interim payments had been processed the day before and asked me to let her know if mine didn’t arrive by ‘next Wednesday’ (i.e. tomorrow, now). It arrived 15 minutes after midnight (apparently) on Thursday morning. And that meant that for my morning session at least I was going to be busy.
I was up with the poet again on Thursday morning, but because he was working from home, we had a 30-minute lie-in on the day before. I was straight at my desk again – early again – while he stayed in the living room on Teams calls and various other calls. Much of the morning was spent with numbers as I calculated various things, like putting regular monthly savings into a holding account.
I made a phone call to the state pensions people to see which of my missing years would bring me up to the actual state pension, and I was told that the first 2 – the cheapest 2 – wouldn’t net me a single penny as they were pre-2016. My missing 7 years would bring me to within a hair’s breadth of the full state pension, while an extra year would bring me right up to date but would only be an extra £1-odd a week.
Well, £1-odd a week is £52+ a year for the rest of my life, and in the next 7 years, there might be a cheaper year I can buy back instead. But I calculated how much all 8 years would cost at today’s rate, and allocated that to a holding account within my really good savings account.
With my banking app, I can have different ‘pots’ within the same account, so all the money accrued earns the most possible interest. (Gosh, I’m turning into a right money bore.) I can decide in the future whether or not to buy back those years, but I’ll still have the money earning good interest in a savings account while I decide.
I put some money aside to cover the dog’s vet bills for the next year, I put money aside to pay for us to get our teeth fixed, and I put some aside to cover a regular monthly savings account. Most of the rest will be locked up then until at least when the poet starts to draw his 3 private pensions. I’ll already be drawing 2 of mine. When the balancing payment arrives, that will also be locked away.
And that was my boring morning. Usually, that would have filled my day and it would already be teatime and getting dark. It’s amazing what getting up earlier can do. It all went into my new day book, so I wasn’t scratching around for scraps of paper to jot things down on. We nipped out at dinner time to get a few things from the supermarket, had a continental lunch, and both went back to work for the afternoon.
I began the afternoon catching up on a couple of blogs before settling down to the proofreading again. The poet went to band practice, I finished off a few loose ends, then closed the office down for the long weekend.
Your banking system is so much more efficient than ours. Glad it’s all working out. Have a great week!
I get more done between 6-10 AM than in the rest of the day combined.
I’ve never really been a morning person, and 6am is a bit too early for me. But I am getting loads more done at the moment.