Eating Soup

I have just finished one of the most relaxing vacations I have ever had. The only downside of the well needed break was to highlight to me the gap between it and my 'normal' life. I feel so much better for a week of fresh air and either walking or doing nothing...neither of which are exactly expensive activities. So why don't I do more of this? Simply the lack of time! Working harder and harder to earn money which if I am not careful will simply go to buy a temporary feeling of worth or status. In a car park I use often, the open roof on the top floor has been meshed over to stop the pigeons getting in and doing what they do best. Occasionally one does get in and finds it impossible to get out..they keep flying up but can't get past the mesh. What has always struck me as odd about this is the fact that all they have to do to escape is fly down one level where they would find a huge entry and exit..but they never do. They are, I guess, programmed to fly i...

Recently a major corporation has kicked it's employees in the pension pot by winding up it's final salary pension scheme. The rights and wrongs of doing this are not the central issue, it is the effect on the people who are on the ground rolling in agony. One of the less publicised issues was that the company is changing the level of pension you get if you retire early - from 3% a year to 6 or 7% a year.  There are two issues that are faced for these particular employees;  1) That their pension pot will be smaller than expected  2) That their ability to retire early has been affected These points may not sound devastating , but the reality is with the pressures on jobs, there is a now a risk gap between when people are likely to have a job until and when they can afford to retire. In may industries finding a job when you are 50 is tough, really tough. Not an issue if you have factored that into your pension planning and worked out you can afford to live wi...

There are some things the really used to be a lot better than they are now. Summers were hotter, winters did have more snow, Mars bars were a LOT bigger and pensions used to allow people to actually retire. I mention this last point because although I am quite a few years off retirement yet, it is clear to me that by the time I get there I will not be able to enjoy my retirement in the way the brochures advertise it. And the reason is simple. In days gone by, people worked until they were 65, transitioned from 'work' to 'not-work' overnight and after a year or so of discovering that work had been a useful distraction from the rest of their lives, promptly stopped living. Today, and looking forward, the chance of a full time job until 55, let alone 65 is pretty remote and with modern health benefits, we (touch wood) will be outlooking 90+ not 70+. Twenty more years retirement from ten less years less time to save for it. Hmm, do the 'math' as our f...

In case you had not read your Daily Mail recently, we are in a recession...or is it a depression? No, wait...there are “green shoots” and the worst is over because house prices have bottomed, Woo Hoo. Actually run that past me again, why are rising house prices good? The Myth of Rising House Prices;  During times of property booms, as typified by the never ending stream of TV property shows in the mid-naughties (“Changing locations in the sun" and the like), there was a perception that the rising value of houses was being manifested in the appearance of piles of cash in the understairs cupboard. This money, presumably brought by some kind of House Fairy could be spent on huge televisions, Pine clad hot tubs and exotic holidays with her blessing and meanwhile the world would be just lovely. There are two things wrong with this (and I'm not including the Fairy bit); House price rises assumed that you could sell your house at it's nominal higher value, a value which mo...

Just a quickie...I found this link today http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/05/7_ways_to_be_happier_at_work.html It's an American article and I guess the UK summary of it would be "don't let the buggers grind you down". So today I am going to smile and be happy throughout all the conference calls, meetings and water-cooler moments and (although I'm not sure how I do it) I'm going to smile in my e-mails too. And when my face aches so much from smiling I'm going to walk into town and buy some more anti-wrinkle cream because smiling does really bring out the worst of those lines. DOH, supposed to be POSITIVE.... "Smile at a complete stranger, it confuses the hell out of them".

I was with some friends down the pub the other day, having those conversations that only a few pints and a large slice of self righteousness can bring about. The topic wandered briefly on to trying to get a 'work life balance' but was soon changed as the answer 'fat chance' was proposed and no one could come up with a counter proposal. The perennial question "do you work to live or live to work" falls into the category of sentences that has become endowed with a level of wisdom far greater than it deserves. Other such sentences (and I can feel my blood pressure rising as I type) include the statement "yes, but rent is wasted money" (unlike of course mortgage interest) and "you should use a bus because it's cheaper" (not if you are talking about the incremental cost of that journey). I am sure I will come back to both of these personal bugbears (what is a "bugbear" by the way?) but in the meantime back to the point. The answer ...

One of the painful truths of the current downturn is that many of us, Squirrels included, have been living our lives based on expanding our spending to fit our income..or worse, exceed it. Early on in our career (-verb, to run at full speed, usually downhill) we have to compromise and buy say a small car, or rent a less than ideal flat. Later, if we are lucky, we get more money and we arrive at the wonderful position of having 'enough'..a reliable car, a nice house and can afford two weeks in the sun. This is where the problems start however. If the career is going well, pay rises have (traditionally) followed and usually with them arrive a whole heap more work, more stress and less 'life'. We compensate for this by using the extra money we earn to either buy new toys or shoes or upgrade the toys we already have, like a faster car or new house, new kitchen, new wardrobe, new hairstyle, new sofa and more new shoes (your list may vary!) . The law of diminishing returns is...