Anyone else had trouble getting a credit card when having a drawdown pension as their only source of income? I just tried to get my credit card limit increased at First Direct and when I told them my source of income they said no as the drawdown can be taken in full at any time leaving me with no income. I said in that case they should reduce my current credit card limit! I pay it off every month but its a pain having to make interim payments if I’m getting close to my credit card limit.

Obvious answer is to take out an additional credit card which I did have with Amazon but Amazon have now pulled the plug on that relationship so the card has now gone. So, any advice on where to get another credit card from that takes drawdown as a source of income?

X above the seagul

Say what you see ;-)

External help is problematic because there’s a whole bunch of contractual and legislative gubbins involved. As a random example: if I went to offer my technical services free of change and caught sight of subscriber details, as a non-employee that’s a potential GDPR breach.

I get that @Cougar but there are areas where people can provide expertise and not trip over these things. For example, Mark said one problem was caused by a testing oversight so I’m sure someone with a testing background would be happy to help out reviewing/contributing to the test strategy and test plans if such a thing exists.

With the resources that many of the publishers much larger than us have at their disposal for audiences smaller than ours in many cases, we are at a disadvantage from the start by comparison. Our tech are highly skilled and experienced at what they do but they are just a small team dealing with a very complicated system with few resources.

Unfortunately, that’s where the problems lie. The team invariably have to take short-cuts or code sub-optimal solutions because of these constraints, which later comes back and bites you on the arse. It will get to a point where the technical debts is so high you will have to consider a major investment to put things right.

Now that we have a bit of a break from the WC I can recommend this investigative journalism video of how bent the board of the National League are. It investigates how the Covid money was split between the clubs in the NL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhs6B8FyDKc

I reckon I could seriously **** up a pigeon.

Have you ever tried to kick a pigeon? Even if you zero in on one with one leg you can’t do it.

RIP Sean Lock

the main one being they can’t reduce their contributions. All they can do is exit the scheme for a fixed time (and lose death in service benefits) or reduce income by working less. There is not an option to pay lower contributions.

Given the problems this is causing it should be a relatively easy change to pay lower contributions. In my scheme you just went into an online portal to change your contribution %.

Further down the parody tweet it shows CNN Portugal broadcasting it as real news

It took me a while…… EDIT:2nd tweet

Same panelist called out his spaceman suit.https://t.co/1kzKjO4iRg

— Ricky (@RickyRonaldinho) November 21, 2022

Strasbourg should be in Germany, not France

It has changed hands a few times over the years

Amazon as usual dropped the prices of Firesticks. 4k one is now £27.99.

your dd doesn’t represent the cost of a unit of fuel though does It

Yes it does. I signed a 2 year fixed price deal this time last year so I guess that’s the major difference between LPG and Oil.

link

Worth a read if you are interested in the FTX debacle.

I don’t doubt it. Nice little cash cow that .

Not really. I’m on a similar top up scheme for my LPG but my monthly DD is the same. It just means I don’t have to worry about running out as the tank has telemetry to report back to base and they top up to around 80% when it drops to ~30%.

I’m just about to take my borked immune system off for jab number 6. Had a blood test yesterday which was negative for Covid anti-bodies :-(

No offence taken, and I withdraw the offer made above.

I probably should have stopped when i got to around £9k as the last £1k was a bit of a struggle with most of my accounts gubbed. Now I’m retired I’ve wondered whether I should ask people if they would be interested in me setting up accounts for them and do the matched betting for them – called Gnoming. The going rate seems to be 25% of profit goes to the ‘donor’ for doing pretty much nothing apart from setting up a bank account with say one of the new digital banks. If anyone is interested then PM me but we will have to move quick as there will be a ton of money to be made through the World Cup offers.

I made £10k over 2 years before I was finally ‘gubbed’ by every bookie.

Worth talking to Citizens Advice Bureau before you make a final decision on what to do?

Looks like the Russian’s are finally getting into 21st century warfare and having quite a bit of success with the Lancet loitering drones.

92.7% born in the Uk in my area. You can play around with the data for your own area here

@andykirk

The annual allowance is currently £40,000 for most people.

However, you can also only receive tax relief up to 100% of your earnings.

So if your earnings are lower than £40,000 you’ll be entitled to tax relief only up to the amount you earn. If you earn less than £3,600, you can pay in up to £2,880 and still get tax relief.

Darwin award goes to the Russian soldier who posted a Telegram video of the inside of his barracks which was a school that was easily identifiable to Ukraine forces. Needless to say it will need more than a lick of paint before the kids can return.

I don’t mind the fees for advisers and not even for the fund managers,

I absolutely do and they eat massively into your gains. My strategy is low cost trackers which should charge around 0.25% per year. For novice investors the Vanguard Lifestrategy fund is a good start but has been coming under pressure lately due to drops in both equities and bonds.

Biggest faff is taking them out to then put in earphones.

When I got mine I went for ones with Bluetooth connections so I can listen to stuff from my phone. HAs are optimised for speech so music sounds rubbish but there’s so many good podcasts around I just stick with those.

A ban on bottled water

Or at least only making it available for sale in the country of origin.

San Pellegriono, Evian, Volvic, Perrier – nope

Highland Spring, Buxton, Brecon Carreg – yes

They must be using Kaspersky for cyber security

Vast majority of my investments are in low cost trackers so not getting high volatility e.g. iShares World ETF is down 6.43% year to date. Average returns with lost costs is my long term strategy.

The triple lock benefits pensioners but is paid for by everyone else.

It actually benefits everyone who will make it through to pensionable age. Also, almost 8 million pensioners are now paying income tax.

One of the episodes of Cracker featured an attack on Penhaligon and ‘her flat’ was across the hallway from my mates flat in didsbury. Robbie Coltrane knocked on my mates door to apologise for any disturbance they were causing during filming and was invited in for a cuppa. Genuinely nice guy.

Great that you found Maggies, they are a brilliant organisation. Also good to hear some good news from you which hopefully will continue.

Tbf her hobby seemed to be cooking / entertaining

And by having 2 kitchens she got exactly what she wanted. One of the best builds I’ve seen.

https://twitter.com/aljwhite/status/1580282141329719296?s=20&t=-1ynGaL1n_6-HbOllIkGrw

Eh? Pretty much anything invested 10 years ago will have done very well since then, despite the recent dip

Just about to post something similar to the above. Here is a link to devices which support 1080p streaming on iPlayer.

Also, firestick supports GCN app

Takes about 5 minutes to jailbreak a firestick and install kodi alongside the other apps.

Worth investing in a stove top kettle if you have a gas hob.

The Least Expected Day season 3 seems to have dropped in quietly on Netflix. Covers the inside story of Miguel Angel Lopez spitting the dummy at the 2021 Vuelta amongst other things

+1 for the Dutch bike rental heading east around the lighthouse

Drinks at the rooftop bar in the Hotel Molina Lario with views overlooking the cathedral and harbour

High speed train up to Cordoba takes an hour where you can see the Mezquita which is seriously impressive

I’ve just started using the Link My Ride app which looks to solve this problem. Tom Pidcock is the celebrity face of the app but as it’s new, adoption is still low at the moment. Link

Heating is LPG which has only gone up marginally on my recent 2 year fix. We’re currently using £125 per month on electric but that includes a Plug in hybrid. For those with a smart meter you can get an app called Loop which integrates with the SM and gives you quite a bit of useful data. We were away for a couple of days last week and still using £1.44 when not in the house which seems quite a bit. Double that number for the upcoming rise then x365 and it comes to a grand!