After all, I’ve been acting like a banker for the last few days – juggling funds between accounts, based on Excel cash forecasts, to keep earning interest until the last moment whilst putting just enough in the current account to pay the outgoings.
The builders finished the snagging list on our loft conversion on Tuesday and thus technically finished the conversion works. The architect issued the completion statement and the penultimate invoice, and so we have to pay them a chunk of cash. The good news is that the costs will be less than their initial quotation. ‘How can this be?’ you ask. ‘Do not builders always overrun on time and budget?’ In this case, they did not. They finished on time, apart from the snagging list, and they finished under budget because they did not need to use all the 10% contingency included in their original quote. Very professional. I mentioned in a previous blog that we were pleased with what they had done. We still are. Well done, G A Wildish of Bodmin!
The other thing I have to pay, which has been on the radar for ages, is the tax on my redundancy payment. The timing could hardly have been better. I left Shell on 31st March 2010. My redundancy payment came through in April 2010, i.e. in the 2010/11 tax year, the tax for which does not have to be paid until 31st January 2012. So we have had the tax earning interest (taxable) for 21 months until now, when the day of reckoning looms. Our healthy looking savings account suddenly doesn’t look so healthy any more.
That was OK, though, all planned for. The next thing is solar panels. After a competitive tender, the guy from WREN lost out to another company, Cornwall Solar, who can fit the panels next week. So I will be staying in Cornwall for a couple of extra days to enable that, though Diana will have to return home as planned because of meetings. But also, I had to move more funds around to pay them, sooner than I had expected. The savings account is now looking very weedy indeed.
After that comes carpets. We’ve had the new loft room, stairs and landing measured and chosen the carpet we want, from the hard wearing artificial fibre range (cheaper than wool), and they will be fitting it towards the end of February. More cost, more spending. I suspect the mighty credit card will be brought into action.
But, with amazing prescience, two fixed term cash ISAs mature this month and next, providing much needed liquidity at just the right time. What foresight! What expertise! What impeccable planning! What undeniable luck!
Just like a real banker…