Well, this seems like an ideal space... Thanks Flecc.

 

No expectation of comments, just a personal rant.

 

I'm getting increasingly p1ssed off with all the useless offers and rewards various organisations want to offer me.

 

Like most I have a supermarket "Rewards card" and am constantly bombarded with ways to earn points for money etc. Latest from mine seems to think I'll be tempted by bumper packs of infant nappies, formula milk etc. I'm a closer to 70 than 60 year old bloke, what makes them think I'm going to think "Ah Nappies, Yes I need some of those" and modify my shopping habits to buy this stuff. They know what I buy each week. Points or money off purchases of Malt Scotch or a nice steak and I might be tempted.

 

Car/Motorcycle insurance is the same, my motorcycle insurer seems to think I might be interested in 5% off a £900 helmet or clothing etc. Possibly once every 10 years I might, but in the grand scheme of things it's just not going to happen. Car insurance is the same.

 

My Mobile network provider inundates me with stuff that won't even run on my aging S7. (Along with all the usual theater tickets etc)

 

Even my bank has various money back offers on useless Spa days, crates of wine, Body Shop stuff, Theater tickets, Hotel stays etc. Give me better interest rates / lower charges, it's not rocket science

 

Why can't these people just leave me alone concentrate on what I pay them for and knock a few quid off the extortionate prices they already charge.

 

OK, Rant off, thanks for reading.

 

TTFN

John.

https://www.genengnews.com/topics/artificial-intelligence/ai-finds-women-and-men-differ-with-respect-to-brain-organization-and-function/

"Single dose of LSD provides immediate and lasting relief from anxiety, study says"

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/07/health/lsd-anxiety-fda-breakthrough-therapy-wellness/index.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45260-9

"How One Man Convinced 200 Ku Klux Klan Members To Give Up Their Robes"

https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinced-200-ku-klux-klan-members-to-give-up-their-robes

https://androidcalculator.com/how-do-calculators-compute-sine/

https://morethanmoore.substack.com/p/the-race-to-2nm-risc-v-chips-in-japan

"70 million-year-old giant dinosaur skeleton found connected from skull to tail "

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/07/europe/dinosaur-connected-fossil-discovery-france-titanosaur-scn/index.html

 

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-unveils-design-for-message-heading-to-jupiters-moon-europa

 

"NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is talking nonsense. Its friends on Earth are worried"

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/06/1236033493/nasas-voyager-1-spacecraft-is-talking-nonsense-its-friends-on-earth-are-worried

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/03/these-scientists-built-their-own-stone-age-tools-to-figure-out-how-they-were-used/

https://www.psypost.org/creatine-supplementation-increases-memory-performance-study-finds/

"FDA warns consumers to stop using six brands of ground cinnamon found to have high levels of lead"

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/06/health/ground-cinnamon-lead-fda/index.html

https://www.sciencealert.com/plastic-found-inside-more-than-50-of-plaques-from-clogged-arteries

I'm back for another moan,

I've never really paid much attention to my credit score but despite this it's always been pretty good. Recently I noticed it's dropped a few points. Why??? So I decided to use my banks tool "How to improve your Credit Score" just out of curiosity.

 

It seems my problem is I don't have an overdraft and I always pay off anything bought on credit within a few months. (Usually before the 1st payment is due).

Apparently I need to be a debt ridden individual with a healthy overdraft and ongoing credit card bill in order to be a good credit risk to money lenders etc..

 

It's little wonder all the tabloids are full of examples of people struggling with debt if this is the way normal people live.

 

TTFN

John.

I'm back for another moan,

I've never really paid much attention to my credit score but despite this it's always been pretty good. Recently I noticed it's dropped a few points. Why??? So I decided to use my banks tool "How to improve your Credit Score" just out of curiosity.

 

It seems my problem is I don't have an overdraft and I always pay off anything bought on credit within a few months. (Usually before the 1st payment is due).

Apparently I need to be a debt ridden individual with a healthy overdraft and ongoing credit card bill in order to be a good credit risk to money lenders etc.

 

It's little wonder all the tabloids are full of examples of people struggling with debt if this is the way normal people live.

 

TTFN

John.

 

Even worse for me John, since I always pay my credit card total every month, using it like a charge card, so credit scorers often wouldn't even list me as existing.

 

Not true of ClearScore though, since they regularly advise my good score despite my never having anything owing, so you could try registering with them.

.

I'll have a look at Clearscore. It doesn't really affect me in the grand scheme of things as I was brought up to live within my means and save for anything I wanted. I did have a mortgage and have had a loan for a car in the distant past, but generally I've lived appropriate to my income and unless something completely out of the ordinary strikes me down I don't see the need for any form of credit arrangement in my future.

 

But I did find it enlightening how "Team World" seem to think we should behave. Perhaps personal finance should be part of the school curriculum because I'm sure there are many out there who would feel like they had had a substantial pay rise if they weren't paying all their money in interest. (Not being convinced they always need the latest tech and regular holidays in the sun would probably help as well).

 

TTFN

John.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money

 

its called bog roll and debt in the usa is now like a cc with 35 trillion on it ,it will crash and burn and it is as i type.

 

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

 

there is no can left to kick down the road as there is no road left either

So, hang on a minute. You can only get a credit score, of any kind, if you are in debt AND paying interest?! So my daughter (late 30's and trying to save for a mortgage), who is fiscally very competant and lives within her means, stands no chance of getting said mortgage because she's TOO BLOODY SENSIBLE:mad:

This world really has gone off the deep end.

 

I find myself in the strange position of agreeing with SW. Fiat currency is being destroyed - hence inflation. If you have any long term savings the buying power of those currency units is being eroded by the day. The only way to maintain that spending power is to swop the increasingly worthless fiat paper for real money. The only real money is gold. Sovereigns and Brittania's are UK capital gains tax exempt. Buy 'em but keep them outside of the banking system. I f you have a safety deposit box if the bank goes down, which is looking ever more possible, you will not be able to get access to your money at the very time you need it.

 

Whilst we're on banks. You may think, ' I'll be alright, I've got my money in a bank'. You should know that once you put your currnecy in a bank it is no longer yours. It's the banks. If the bank gets in to trouble you will be treated just like any other investor, share holder or bond holder.

I'm sure there are many out there who would feel like they had had a substantial pay rise if they weren't paying all their money in interest.

 

Not just many people but many countries too, like Britain, paying vast interest every month on our immense national debt.

 

For Britain I'd change the words in your brackets too:

 

(Not being convinced they always need the latest "defensive" tech and regularly fighting proxy US wars doesn't help too).

.

The only real money is gold

Most of those who trade on gold don't hold physical stock, even when they deal in physical gold.

Money is just a means of exchange. Just look at bitcoin. As long as you can exchange bitcoins for physical gold, then the two are equivalent. The rest is just trade. If war broke out for instance, you won't be able to collect your physical gold.

Edited March 23, 20242 yr by Woosh

The difference is, I'm not talking about trading or even investing. I'm talking about wealth preservation. In this respect bitcoin is far too volatile.

I obtained my first ounce of gold in 2007. It cost me £385, that same ounce (which I still have) would currently cost around £1700. This demonstrates, not the increase in the price of gold, but the decrease in the purchasing power of sterling. If I had kept that £385 in an account, even a high interest account, it would currently amount to some £540, and that's appying a rather generous compound interest rate of 2%. Way below the inflation rate - of course - it's designed to be. Good luck to anyone who's been able to get that for most of the last 17 years.

As to not getting access to your gold. As I said, keep it outside of the banking system and accessible at will.

We all have experience of the drip drip of inflation. As a youth I can remember borrowing 6bob from a mate for a gallon of petrol to get me home. 6 shillings, 30p - for a gallon. I've just paid £1.47/ litre for diesel.

With this going on it's nigh on impossible to significantly save for ones old age (when's that happen then? 70 and still waitin'). The government may trumpet a lowering of the inflation rate, but this does not bring prices down merely temporarily slows their rate of increase. Hence the purchasing power of any reserves become less over time. A bank of England target inflation rate of 2% will rob you of around 50% of the spending power of any savings within 20years.

I obtained my first ounce of gold in 2007. It cost me £385, that same ounce (which I still have) would currently cost around £1700.

physical gold price this day in 2007 is around $664 per ounce.

14 years later, current price of the same ounce is $2153.

It's just an investment. It can go up as well as down. Mortgage crisis 2008-2012, Covid and war in Ukraine boosted gold price. If you bought Tesla shares in or before 2020, you'd be very well off.

A lot of investments are currently boosted by Biden's administration.

The reason that those crisis events boosted the price of gold is that they resulted in the printing of billions of dollars,pounds, euro's, you name it - it got printed. Thus diluting the existing units in circulation and reducing their purchasing power. If you look at the dollar since Nixon 'closed the gold window' in 1971 the overall trend has been a rising in gold price illustrating the ever greater amounts being printed as they no longer had to back each dollar with a stated weight of gold. And so each unit was/is worth less.

It's true there have been falls and rises in the numerical price as there have been in stocks, bit coin etc. There's one huge difference however. Those stocks, digital currencies and even dollars, stirling etc, they can all go to zero. But you'd still have an ounce of gold with it's intrinsic value. In the whole of recorded history not one fiat currency has survived - ever - not a single one. They have all gone the way of the Reichsmark, the Zimbabwian dollar, the Bolivar etc etc. All gone to zero and been used as wall paper or bog roll.

Why does gold have an intrinsic value? I don't know but history ovewhelmingly points to it continuing. It may that there is a finite amount of it in the earths crust, it's getting harder to find and it can't be printed into existence. It is extremly resilient and does not tarnish or oxidize. And, of course, it's very shiny and who doesn't like shiny?

Certain authorities have publicly denounced gold saying it is a throwback or nothing more than a pet rock. If so why is every central bank in the world currently buying it? Why does China ban any export from it's gold mines and buys from the west every time the price is manipulated down? |Even Russia under the thumb of excoriating sanctions, we are told, has increased it's gold reserves, more so since the war.

It will not end well as ever increasing amounts of debt are continually being created. Have a look at the U.S. debt clock, it's truly scary.

Protect what wealth you have. Buy some gold. It's the best insurance you'll ever own.

With this going on it's nigh on impossible to significantly save for ones old age

 

That's actually not true and never has been since there is a simple solution that I hit on very early in life. Whatever one's income, someone else will be earning less and managing ok, so just be that person and save the difference. I've been retired for thirty-three years now and I'm still doing that, so this year alone I'm making some 20% on my capital in interest and added savings. Even in all those retirement years I've never gained less than 10% per annum.

 

Nor is that by being a Scrooge, since I'm on my sixth brand new car bought during retirement, currently an electric one and you know how pricey they are.

 

In addition the big mistake that most make is to buy a property and then leave it to someone else, their largest capital purchase completely lost. I didn't make that mistake, first at 24 years old I bought a quality property in my name for my rent paying parents to live in free of charge instead. As it always does in this country, it's value soon rose, so I used the capital gain to buy a home for myself instead of continuing to rent.

 

After my parents passed away I realised the whole hugely grown value of their home to add to my retiremnt income and capital while still in my fifties. At 71 years I realised 55% of the greatly increased value of my own home while retaining the right to live in it until death, so being being 88 years old now, another big gain over 17 years.

 

So you see there is a way, by going a little bit without early in life for a short while, following with a bit of guile, one can have both a good life and a very comfortable affluent retirement.

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