A lovely week so far. I really enjoy the winkle picking, especially when it is dry like this week has been so far. Bitterly cold of course but cold always seems to equal beautiful here – hoar frost making everything all crystally and sparkly, clear skies meaning loads of stars, sunny skies and gorgeous watercolurs smudged across.
We’ve done well with our winkles so far – I reckon we have five bags of approx five stone each so far. Based on last times price that is 25 stone which is over 3 hundredweight at £120 a bag and word is it will be £150 a hundredweight this time. So nearly £500 already in our first three days. We’ll only get another three in as we’re doing the Christmas Party on Sunday. We might get an hour or so on Monday afternoon and then we’ll get them off on Tuesday. It should definitely pay for our short off island break in January which we need to get booked tomorrow. Hurrah 🙂
In other news finances are generally looking healthier for next year. It’s pretty certain I will get the school job so that will bring in cash (and mean I start paying NatIns again which is good, I have no idea whether there will be any sort of pension scheme by the time I retire but I’d like to be paying in something anyway), Ady is now cleaning the loos at the hall for £10 a week which covers the cost of our petrol and diesel more or less and we’re hoping to buy the shed which Ben the fencer is working out of at the moment. He has kitted it out with a double bed on a sort of mezzanine and a wood burner so it will make perfect quirky accommodation for WWOOFers and as a little holiday let. What with that and the tipi we’ll get up and any tents we can start collecting we have the start of our campsite / eco / off grid breaks ready to launch for next year. Small steps but definitely in the right direction :).
What else? Erm another lovely surprise parcel arrived this week, this time from Julie – chocolate, hand cream and a book about smallholding. It came without a note but from the contents I guessed it was from her and when we had our weekly phonecall last night it was confirmed. She said she’d been meaning to send it for ages and got to the post office in the end ‘it’s not for Christmas, it’s a just because parcel’ she said which made me feel all gooey :). Oh that love that’s arrived in parcels this week 🙂 🙂
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We’ve been watching more Christmas films on lovefilm instant which is always heartwarming. The log burner is going well, we collect wood for less than an hour each day from the woods just above the croft and that is keeping it going for many hours a day. The hard frosts are doing a great job of meaning we can walk up and down the croft, I’ve dug out my icewalking shoe things though because the hill next to the culvert is an icerink, I actually skated down it in my wellies tonight! The cold has been freezing our water and also played havoc with our gas the last few days. We have now lagged the valve and covered the bottles so hopefully that is now sorted. No rain is fab and the freezing conditions do make for a very gorgeous Rum but not without it’s own challenges!
I assume you’re still getting child benefit? So you’re ok for your NI credits. It’s probably Ady you need to worry about.
Yeah, I was going to say that. For Ady you can request a NI statement foe pension forecast (I just did it for me the other week) and it tells you how much NI you’ve paid, and how many more years you would need to pay to get state pension. Class 2 (I think!) are the self employed payments, and obviously you would have exemptions just now as you don’t earn enough. But you can elect to pay them, at a very low level, to keep your credits up
Aha thanks folks, will look into that more then.
we have one kid each nominated to us for child benefit. mostly for the NI thing. however, we are going to lose the cb, so dunno what to do about dh NI. could you nominate one kid each late?
HH, even if you stop claiming the CB, galoka will still get credit for it – so I understand from what other people say – doesn’t it explain that in the letter?
I thought it was reasonably straightforward to change the person who claims CB.
the wording to me seemed debateable, so thinking about what to do still. poss still get it and then pay it back thro tax – since i have to do a form each year