What have you been doing today?

Justin Passing said:
They look quite good, I'll give them a go. I always ask what my prescription is. I found they can be reluctant to tell what you your interpupillliary distance is, because that's not part of the prescription but it's needed by who ever makes the glasses. By doing that they're trying to make it hard for you to get specs made elsewhere. It doesn't change though. You can read it off decent binos or binocular microsopes.
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It's easy for absolutely anyone else to measure, but you have a right to walk out of the opticians with your full prescription, they cannot refuse you.
 
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Justin Passing said:
I've been moving some cash about. I don't want to lock things away, because rates might change, or I might want to spend some or something.
Found a strange account at First Direct.
It doesn't often come up in the "Best of" lists because it's not "Easy Access", and for a fixed rate it's not the very highest.

The odd thing is that you can have several accounts. Closing them costs a flat £100, no loss of interest.
Normally you expect to lose 90 days', if it's possible to take the money out at all.
If you have say 40k in one, closing it loses you less than 3 weeks interest, and pro rata.

So I'll have a few with ratios of 1,2,3,4 or 1,2,2,4,8,12, or something. You'd close the largest which suited the amount you wanted out.

About the best for Isas I found is Virgin Money, 2 years /90 days loss of interest on early withdrawal.

An andvantage for you of holding a long fiixed non-isa rate is that you get to keep that rate if rates fall, but it can be criticial to your tax, too,
if earnings say this year push you across a tax threshold. If you defer the availability of the interest to when rates are lower, you'll have less comng in now, from other accounts.
The other thing you can do on that is buy stocks which pay good dividends. Mine bought for the purpose have yielded several percent, which is taxed separately from other income, and at lower rate. (Allowance is dropping, watch it).

I went through all this for a mate, who's retired and got himself stuck.
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I‘ve got to move a bit of cash around at the end of this month too. I did stick my premium bond money in a one year fixed bond but interest rates have gone up quite a bit since then and I’ll end up paying tax on that so I might move the max amount into my ISA as that one year fixed is up around the same time. There’s only a 0.1% difference in the best one year fixed ISA and a one year fixed bond so it’s a no brainer - at the moment!
 
Went and had a peek at the drain works and had a chat with the workers today. The sewer is actually on the other side of the road near to the pavement. They told me they've run a 4” clay pipe from my soil stack to the manhole, then a 6” clay pipe to the sewer and the sewer is a 9” clay pipe which they should be teeing into on Monday. Then they just have to fill in, tarmac and make good my neighbours drive and the road and then they are done. They reckon they will finish a week early. I asked what the massive iron pipe is in the middle of the road (in yesterdays photo) and they said that is for surface water.

Surprised Mrs Mottie by painting the garden fence today while she was out at work and then caring for her mum. We'll need new panels next year as they are a bit rotten at the bottom where the soil in the beds on both sides has been banked up. Will need some gravel boards next year too to stop it happening again. Our neighbour will go halves with us as we went halves a few years back when we last replaced it. I did a proper job today though including carefully removing 4 trellis's without damaging the climbers and painting those separately before painting the fence, refitting them and reattaching the climbing plants.

I had tea ready for Mrs Mottie when she got home, knackered. (Her mum has got dementia and it’s quite draining for her). We had our usual Friday fish for tea - Salmon stir-fry this week. The dog always gets a treat on Friday's too - the skin of whatever fish we've had. :ROFLMAO:

IMG_0939.jpeg
 
I asked SpecSavers to measure my PD about fifteen years ago. It actually turned out to be the same as my own estimate, using a ruler and a mirror. I felt quite embarrassed asking, because it was a free consultation. We have developed a very strange model in this country, where the big optician chains give you either a free or very cheap eye exam, and then hope to make the money back by selling you overpriced glasses. I read that the real cost of the exam should be at least £60 and that was quite a few years ago. I also read that, in some other countries, that is still how it works. You pay a proper price for the exam, but then the glasses are much cheaper.

More than ten years ago now, I noticed that my local SpecSavers changed the way they wrote their prescriptions. My new prescription was completely different and it looked like gibberish. After Googling, I found out there are two ways to write them, "minus cylinder" and "plus cylinder". The convention, for many years in this country, was to write the prescription as "minus cylinder". But SpecSavers, with all my family members anyway, started using "plus cylinder". This makes it very difficult to compare these Specsavers prescriptions with other ones you have had. I think they do this to confuse you and make it difficult to see how much your prescription has changed. For instance, the axis for the cylinder (i.e. the angle of your astigmatism) is 90 degrees different. And the rest is completely different as well.

EDIT:

For instance, my right eye on my very old Rx from SpecSavers says:

SPH -1.75 CYL -1.75 AXIS 10

but my newer SpecSaver Rx says:

SPH -3.50 CYL +1.75 AXIS 100

However, these Rxs are actually identical, just written in a different format.
 
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Had the new wheel stud and nut fitted yesterday

Apparently it was bit of a bu99er, because it's never been apart before.

Last week, he quoted £50 to fit the stud, but despite it taking him a heck of a lot longer than he thought, he only charged us £25.

Polar opposite of the Honda garage.

So, instead of 500+, it cost us 210 and 70 of that was for recovery from the Honda dealer.
 
JonathanM said:
I asked SpecSavers to measure my PD about fifteen years ago. It actually turned out to be the same as my own estimate, using a ruler and a mirror. I felt quite embarrassed asking, because it was a free consultation. We have developed a very strange model in this country, where the big optician chains give you either a free or very cheap eye exam, and then hope to make the money back by selling you overpriced glasses. I read that the real cost of the exam should be at least £60 and that was quite a few years ago. I also read that, in some other countries, that is still how it works. You pay a proper price for the exam, but then the glasses are much cheaper.

More than ten years ago now, I noticed that my local SpecSavers changed the way they wrote their prescriptions. My new prescription was completely different and it looked like gibberish. After Googling, I found out there are two ways to write them, "minus cylinder" and "plus cylinder". The convention, for many years in this country, was to write the prescription as "minus cylinder". But SpecSavers, with all my family members anyway, started using "plus cylinder". This makes it very difficult to compare these Specsavers prescriptions with other ones you have had. I think they do this to confuse you and make it difficult to see how much your prescription has changed. For instance, the axis for the cylinder (i.e. the angle of your astigmatism) is 90 degrees different. And the rest is completely different as well.

EDIT:

For instance, my right eye on my very old Rx from SpecSavers says:

SPH -1.75 CYL -1.75 AXIS 10

but my newer SpecSaver Rx says:

SPH -3.50 CYL +1.75 AXIS 100

However, these Rxs are actually identical, just written in a different format.
Click to expand...
That would imply you'd get something completely wrong from an online supplier. I was told astigmatism ( cyl) is always nearly east-west, so may be if they see a figure like 100 they know it must be 90 (º) from that.
Your sph could easily be anywhere between + several to - several, so how they can get the numbers that different meaning the same, I don't know.

They don't do "free" eye tests I believe, they're paid for by the NHS. They've always asked who my GP is, and they check.
 
Mottie said:
I‘ve got to move a bit of cash around at the end of this month too. I did stick my premium bond money in a one year fixed bond but interest rates have gone up quite a bit since then and I’ll end up paying tax on that so I might move the max amount into my ISA as that one year fixed is up around the same time. There’s only a 0.1% difference in the best one year fixed ISA and a one year fixed bond so it’s a no brainer - at the moment!
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Are you sure? - it can be quite hard to work out what tax you'll pay on saving interest! I'm querying because you got it a bit wrong a while ago.

If I'm right, if say you have an income putting you in the 20% band (over 12570 + 5000 =17570, for savings interest ) but are below the 40% band, you get £1000 of tax free savings. Yes it's easy to blow that limit if you're getting say 4% on 25k.
It has always (just about) been worth using ISAs as much as you can, which is up to 20kpa each additional per year.
Add 25% to the isa rate to work out the equivalent non isa rate, assuming the interest will all fall in the 20% band.
So , given that at the moment the highest one-year fix is (approx) 5%, if you can get an isa over 4%, go for it.
If you go for a 2 year fix you defer the interest an extra year because it isn't "available". By that time the lower earning threshold (the 12570 one) will probably have gone up unlike this year, ( if that's relevant to you - maybe not,). Somehow I doubt the interest tax thresholds will move. Rishi would keep them low(er).

If interest rates have fallen by then, your other saving interest may be less, leaving you more headroom before the top of the (£1000) allowance.
You can get 3-year fixes,, which are a tiny bit higher % at the mo. Of course the interest lump from longer fixes is bigger. But you can shift more (other)money onto isas as the years go by, so you may be best to split it.
Those isa rates are 4.5 - 4.6 ish, the 2 year Virgin one has a shorter period penalty if you with draw early. (90 days rather than 120 or 150 days).

If you have property-sales level of cash in the bank, have a look at the Flagstone saving platform site. It does calculations for you, choosing the best-rate banks, some rather obscure. It'll give you an average % they can achieve, depending on whether you want FSCS cover or not, and easy access or fixed. After not all that much savings, you have to forego the FSCS cover, or it's just too many banks, but remember joint accounts get double
Raisin and Hargreaves Lansdowne may be more appropriate platforms, if you want one of those.

All - If any of that appears wrong or unclear let me know.
....
 
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Justin Passing said:
That would imply you'd get something completely wrong from an online supplier. I was told astigmatism ( cyl) is always nearly east-west, so may be if they see a figure like 100 they know it must be 90 (º) from that.
Your sph could easily be anywhere between + several to - several, so how they can get the numbers that different meaning the same, I don't know.
Click to expand...

The online suppliers systems I have used, have been configured to accept both notations. Under the CYLINDER drop down tab there are both +ve and -ve values. You just enter exactly what is on the prescription and somehow it works! These are international standard notations.

I don't understand it properly. But here is a handy converter, with a quick explanation. If you type in my newer prescription above, it converts it to the older one. The -ve CYL notation is much easier to understand, I think, because it gives straightforward figures for how short-sighted I am (1.75) and how astigmatic I am (also 1.75). The +ve CYL notation makes it look, on the face of it, that my shortsight is much worse because it shows a figure of 3.50.

www.aclens.com

AC Lens is Now Discount Contacts

www.aclens.com www.aclens.com

I've just checked and I don't qualify for free NHS sight tests (yet!).
 
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I went up to Pitlochry and bought a wee dug.
She's been kept in an outhouse on a farm, is just away from her siblings and has decided to pitch up in the cupboard at the back door.
I'll leave her on her own until she's ready to make her entrance.
 
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