Gracie’s Life Experiment

Yes, it’s the start of a new year and I am again getting the twinges of the secondary wavefront of my early mid-life crisis.  This time it’s pensions.  I know they’re meant to be a good thing (as hey, I’ll need to eat and keep myself warm when we’re old).  But sometimes I do get a bit flummoxed by it all.  Currently for some reason I have 3 pensions that I have paid into.  One was a company I only worked for in the summer holidays between Uni years.  For some reason they always seemed to get my name wrong, I’d correct them each summer only for the plan date to come with the wrong name on again!!  I’m guessing this pension won’t be fruitful at all seeing as I’ve only worked a cumulative 18 months there!  Then there’s the Uni pension which is going well, but again have no idea, even with all the flashy web gizmos that help you predict this that and the other (seems like everything apart from the weather) that the pension company provide.  The third one is the state pension, where our NI goes.  During the years of summer placements I ended up with a few years where the contributions weren’t complete so had until April this year to pay up if I wanted to top those years up.  Decided I may as well do it to boost my years – now I’ve officially been in the world of work for 10 years.  According to the bumpf I’ll get about 16 squid a week once I hit 60 (I guess that age limit may be raised by the time I get there) – hmm guess not quite enough to retire now

Summary of the day: Took the Christmas tree down (boo), Made wonton soup