284 days

Till my 62nd Birthday, its not going to be my actual final day here in NL but its the cut off point I've set as my retirement date. I will stiill have a final few days of work to wrap things up and close out the year. As well as to  hopefully finalise the last few things before we head off to Thailand.

We might get there before Christmas, or just after, there are things we won't have total control off until the house is actually sold, but we have set that target date to keep us focused on the clock ticking down.

can't wait.

Ahthankyew

Delay chats are hard

How bizzare

I got a letter, an actual paper letter :D from HMRC. Which actually detailed the confusion over the allocation of some class3/2 payments. 

Given it was in response to a letter I sent dated 9th Dec, replied to on 20th Feb, and recieved 7th March... its kinda out of sync.

But it does confirm they messed up the allocation of my payment which was a combined class2/3 payment for different things.

Yesterdays post about it all being resolved means that my email 2 weeks ago has in fact resolved things. So it does now kinda make sense why my NI shortfals went mental for a few days... and then all got fixed..

I also got a bill, an actual paper bill as well, fom HMRC today for...0 pounds and 0 pence.... for 24/25 class 3.. :D 0. zero.. I might have to save up to pay that.

ummm ok, there will be a bill in a few days I assume for class 2 which I will gladly pay.

It might be petty to bitch about something after its sorted but... its not a very effective system is it...

oh well..

Ahthankyew

Lots of good things

The concern about the NI payments has been resolved, and much quicker than expected. No email response, that may come later but checking the site today, I can now see that ALL my payments have been accounted for and I'm now close to the full amount of pension entitlement when Im 67. There are stll 5 years of payments to make, and I think 4 or 5  shortfall years left that will take it over the minumum contribution needed, but I'll make the shortfall payments comfortably now, and that wll give us the full amount when I hit the official age.

REALLY  happy about that. I will pay all the shortfalls even though there's no real benefit to it, since the future is uncertain I don't want to get trapped by a government change that says you need to have more years contrbution that I have now..its not a massive amount of money and the return is well worth it, so I will do my bit to keep the UK revenue funded :D

Also, though I was fairly sure about this before, a collegue at work caused me to doubt myself, and I had to call the bank to check. He suggested there was a penalty for clearing the mortgage early. Which is indeed not uncommon in the UK and other places.. But I was sure I had read somewhere that there were no charges with my bank...I called to confirm and indeed... no charge for clearing the mortgage early :D.

And a final bit of good financial news, when we sell the only real expense is the real estate agents fees, called makelaar here, about 1-1.5% yeah it sucks but needs to be paid. I've factored that into our costs. 

Our finances are firming up really well now, every month that goes by our savings are increasing and small things get sold to added to it. Time is now starting to really move fast, I mean its March already.... only 10 full momths to go.

Ahthankyew

There's some dumb shit going in in the world

Its astoninshing isn't it.. just how utterly disturbing the world is, and how its more and more being run by utter utter idiots. 

So much so that I'm starting to really lose faith in humanity. The rise of conspiracy theories in particular fascinates me. Flat earthers being one main group, who just like religious zealots utterly refuse to spend even a few moments reading a half decent science book to take note that ermmm gravity is real....and the earth is not flat!!

I mean... going through life denying the most basic of facts, we have known for 1000's of years and these days can even point to fucking photo's of... which apparently are fake.

WE, collectivly are entering an age where opinion, no matter how absurd,  is more valid than fact, and if fact does not support or even disproves our opinion, then the fact is wrong and someone, somewhere, a mythical they.... are behind it to keep us all in the dark.

Madness... just madness, flat earth, moon landing deniers, young earthers, anti vaxxers, 5G death rays, Cloud buster copper tubes, Lizard people, grounding, Adrenachome harvesting, QAnon, holistic meds, auras, spirit channelling, etc.... those are the ...good??? ones..

Not one of which, not fucking one, stands up to even a primary school kids level of scientific research... but still grown men and women proclaim proudly on social media that they know and have the truth, and gather followers to their cause.

It's levels of stupidity that I find appalling to see, and of course you get grifters cashing in writing books and holding courses to increase the following and all these idiots gather their confirmation bias as proof of their positions that have no prood of their positions.

This is clearly something hard wired in our human brains, before social media, even before literature we had religion indoctrinating the stupid into people, now its open season on whatever bullshit you want to spread.

And now... we come to politics... where more and more and more we see that history is repeating, the rise of Nazi germany is now a blueprint for political grabs for power and consolidation of that power and we have the stupid now leading the stupid to vote in even more stupid people into power... and we know what happens when you give power to people who have no idea how to use it?

We are most certainly on a road to damnation as a species, nothing can stop the march of opinon over facts, and it wont be long befoe we see cvilizations end when some moron wants to see what happens when you press the big red button.

phew... rant over... not sure I feel better, because I still have 30 or 40 years to live and watch this get worse and worse.
 

Ahthankyew