Search results for:

Sorry, I totally see where I misunderstood what you meant. My mistake.

Well the IFA wants to invest 100% in their own firm's fund, which is regularly changed and updated to make sure it meets the risk profile. As such, I don't imagine they're going to be changing the investments regularly, if at all.

Their advice is certainly not adding up the more I learn on the subject. Hopefully they can clarify when we meet. If not, I will not be moving forward with their recommendation!

Yes indeed, I do want to add contributions regularly, rather than just leave it.

Could you expand a little on why abrdn might be good in that situation? Apologies, I'm a real SIPP rookie, but looking to learn.

Until now I'd just done a workplace pension, but after seeing an IFA for a couple of reasons, they come back with a recommendation to move my current pot to a SIPP, add a one-time contribution, and then assess again next financial year.

I believe the plan is then to regularly move between my workplace pension and the SIPP. This way I keep the employer contributions, but move over to a place where the IFA believes they can get a better return on my money than a workplace pension scheme.

@Matt101 @Arvy. @cjr thank you so much for the advice. I have set up a meeting with the IFA in a couple of weeks and will be curious to see what they say about why they've recommended that. I suspect they get a kickback from it, but if so that makes me wonder how independent they really are.

@cjr I will find out more and if I decide to go that way I will definitely get in touch with you beforehand.

FWIW in their written consultation the IFA said they recommended abrdn for the following reasons:

1. They are financially strong and experienced in this marketplace.
   
2. They have a proven track record of providing excellent customer service.
   
3. They have a clear and transparent charging structure.
   
4. The plan charges are competitive.
   
   

That all sounds great, until some light research on the internet as a non expert proves 2 and 4 to be apparently incorrect. I'm starting to lose some trust ...

Edit: I realise I forgot to add amount and what the fees are on abrdn. Amount will be £104k, and yep, platform fees are 0.30%. Advisor fees are 1%.

Who are people using as SIPP providers?

I recently met with an IFA who has now come back with their recommendation to move my current pension pot into a SIPP with abrdn wrap. Luckily I decided to give them a Google, and the trustpilot reviews are horrendous. There's people complaining that the app is slow and difficult to use.

Obviously I'll go back and politely ask if we could go with a different provider. I'm just wondering if there's a consensus on who the "best" provider is, or if there's a good few who are similar and it's about personal preference.

Yes, these are really good. You can set them either to come on when the light does, or when the humidity level raises.

In my old place I had it set to come on when the humidity level raises, and it transformed what was previously a not very nice downstairs shower room.

If you're buying the full set from merlin (levers and callipers), you shouldn't need to buy any extra parts like that.

There's now an "easy install system" whereby if you don't need to cut the hose you literally take a cap off, shove it in the hole, and then do up the flare nut on the lever. The nut in the set you linked to is a flare nut for where the hose goes into the lever. The olive is pre-installed in the lever and the flare nut.

Even if you do need to cut the hose, the brake set I bought around February had extra barbs in it.

Check out the installation manual for brake set you are buying, it will describe the process.

No, it's a different product called "WETNFIX". I've used them in a similar situation after buying them on sale out of curiosity and they've worked fine. In the described scenario I'd probably use a couple of them, as it sounds like the hole in the plaster is big.

If that doesn't work or you really want to go belt and braces, what I'd do here is take it all off, clean out the hole with a dry brush and then a wet one to really get rid of the dust. Then fill it up with a very thick mix of a good powdered filler like toupret. Make sure you really overfill it and pack it in. Then let it go off, if it shrinks at all do a second pass.

Then sand, redecorate, and then drill a hole into the lintel deep enough that the full plug you plan to use will sit completely in the lintel. Drill the plaster marginally bigger than the first hole using a non hammer drill. Use a long screw to hammer a plug back and make sure it is in the lintel completely. Then use a long screw to fix.

That should be really solid with no chance of movement or future crumbling.

Yeah it's really good news. I've never owned anything by stages, but more brands making power meter surely has to be a good thing.

With the experience and financial power of giant behind them they should be safe now. I'm no business guru and I don't know why the company failed, but it's encouraging that giant saw enough good in the company to buy it.

I'm pretty sure that Giant bicycles bought Stages fairly recently. With that behind them, personally I wouldn't worry too much about buying a Stages NDS unit.

You definitely want something other than just plasterboard to mount to.

Get a strong magnet into action to see if you can find existing studs behind the plasterboard to mount to. If you can then that's easiest.

If not, you could cut a hole, put some sort of wood behind the plasterboard, fix it in place, and then fix the curtains into the wood you've added. Then patch up your hole.

If you don't want to make and patch holes then yes indeed you could just fix some wood on the outside of the plasterboard using several plasterboard fixings. Then fix curtains into the wood.

I wouldn't have thought the wood would even need to be particularly beefy. If you were building this from scratch today, you'd probably just put OSB behind the plasterboard.

Oh wow. There is some really lovely and really niche stuff listed on their website. What a place!

Iso Grifo, it says it on the back.

Kidding, I spotted one in Monaco years back and only remember because I had to look it up then. Pretty rare, I think. I wouldn't have thought there are many in the UK. Was it just parked up in London? I definitely wouldn't leave it in the rain if it was mine!

I watched the Amazon Maitlis documentary and wouldn't really recommend it if you know what happened in the interview.

There was a small bit of interesting detail from Maitlis about the run up to the interview.

The rest of the interesting detail is what happens within the royal family. However you then realise that no one from the royal family was involved and so clearly all of that is the made up bits that have caused them to have a huge disclaimer about being dramatised at the beginning.

Absolutely brilliant!

We have one we picked up from the Aldi middle aisle a few years ago for £30 as I recall. Strongly recommended. It works well, and is really good for sticking in your suitcase when travelling with stuff you would otherwise iron.

It is clearly not the same thing as a full iron on something like a formal shirt. You won't get sharp creases, but you will get wrinkles out. I'm sure you already knew that, but wanted to make sure I set expectations.

Genuine question, I promise, but why is she expected to meet world leaders and attend state banquets?

That all seems really old school to me. Might she not be happier just doing her own thing in the clothes she already owned rather than being forced to go along to events because of her job?

I fairly regularly have work events and business travel that I'm expected to do. My wife is invited to relatively few of these things. If she was invited and felt she really wanted to buy new clothes for the event, she'd buy something out of our own money. I'd never even think about asking to expense that, which feels to me like the equivalent.

I accept that it's quite different because I'm clearly not PM or in any way important. My point is why should his wife have all these obligations placed on her? I think that's where we should be pushing as a root cause, rather than worrying about what she should wear and who should pay.

This reply wins at forum.

Amex really are the best for rewards. Next best credit card at the moment is the Amazon Barclaycard one if you do a decent bit of shopping at Amazon. Otherwise it's the Santander edge credit card.

If you're open to a debit card, the Chase one is really good for rewards. Nearly as good as an Amex. Otherwise I have a Santander Edge current account and get some okay rewards on that. 3 quid a month account fee but you earn 1% back for all spending on groceries, household bills, and travel costs.

Honestly I think it's down to personal preference. I use 2 monitors that are the exact same, but 1 landscape, and 1 portrait. I have tried bottom alignment, top alignment, and center alignment, and I marginally prefer center. I think I'd be fine with any of them if I had to, though.

Best practice, of course is to make sure that your main screen is centred at eye level so you're not straining your neck needing to look up or down for long times.

Yes, but then you've got the cost of installation that's gonna take a huge time to pay if the running cost is just similar to gas.

I'd posted a HeatGeek quote I recently got in the heat pump thread. It was 20k once the grant is taken off, and would save me an approximate 8 quid a month. The main reason for this is it being an old house with solid brick walls, being relatively large, and some of the existing pipework being microbore.

In situations like this, heat pumps still don't make sense IMO. In a newer place with cavity walls and insulation, absolutely it'll make sense.

I am with Hugo on this. Rotating child seat makes it sooo much easier to get them in and out, no matter the age. Also definitely helps with the strain of lifting them in for me.

Yeah, and this is why I always do my own servicing within reason. Too many experiences over the years of being unhappy afterwards at how much I've ended up paying for things.

Another pet peeve of mine on invoice like that is how they charge the labour. There should be an hourly rate and then they charge you for how many hours were taken. Instead on your invoice there's 75 quid for the oil service, and 113 quid for the other bits. I always hate getting an invoice like that.

Are they genuinely good in the winter? I've only recently bought a set for summer wheel duties. On the occasion that I've gone over some water on the road during climbs, I've then got a load of wheelspin. This has happened probably 5 times now. This has made me worry about their wet weather grip.

By contrast my wheels with Continental 4 seasons tyres is always so sure footed. Last week I pulled onto a mossy stone pavement, came to a stop, and almost fell right over as it was so slippy. Those tyres have really impressed me with their grip.

Apology needed. My memory was defective on this. I've checked with her and you and @MTB-Idle are right, the proceeds are not ringfenced as I incorrectly said.

What I was confusing this with is that in 2012 they made a commitment to replace all homes sold via right to buy 1:1. In theory great, but she says in reality there are 2 problems. 1. They didn't meet the commitment, and 2. It isn't a like for like replacement. As such, you could replace a 5 bed house with a studio flat and you've adhered to the rules.

I'll wind my neck back in on right to buy. In theory good, but I'll agree that in practice it is deeply flawed.

My wife works in housing in the civil service. Apparently there are plenty of bedrooms for the population (e.g. old people still living in the family home and not downsized, or relatively wealthy people with more bedrooms than they strictly need), so there's a train of thought on adding incentives to encourage downsizing.

However, according to her there is still a big shortage in housing, both private and state owned.

According to her, right to buy is counter intuitively a good policy. First it helps break the cycle of poverty within a family who now have an asset. Second, it relieved the local authority of a usually ageing property needing a decent amount of maintenance. The money the local authority gains from the sale is then ringfenced and can only be used to build new social housing.

I think supply and demand is only part of the problem. Again, I'm not the expert myself, but many experts feel like successive governments have followed economic policies that jack up house prices in order to gain popularity. However, for anyone other than an investor or someone downsizing or moving to a cheaper location, house prices growth isn't actually a good thing. If you sell a 4 bed home in my part of Derbyshire for 500k and want to move to a similar property in a similar location, you still need 500k. It doesn't matter what you bought it for and how long ago.

Finally, movement of people is emotionally difficult for many. I have moved away from where I grew up because it's unaffordable to own the type of house I would like, I happen to love riding bikes up hills, and I can work remotely. As such the edge of the Peak District makes sense for me. However I see many of my family and friends fairly understandably not wanting to move away from where they grew up, or working in an industry based in a specific geographic location. Rightly or wrongly, these people don't want to move somewhere else, and so you end up with the issues we see in SE England.