aries

I was given credit for 5 years of work experience in the UK, including a couple of times I returned and worked. My pension was 18 pence a week until I returned, then increased to 23 pence, and is now 24 pence a week. I have no other UK benefits, but fortunately I have my Australian state pension which is a lot more than the one I could get here. The downside is that to qualify properly I was compelled to buy somewhere to live within 12 months. It would have been better for me to rent for ongoing choice, but wasn't possible. I had even thought that if I had rented, the interest on my savings would have made up the big shortfall, but I was shocked to find that interest rates in Britain are abysmally low. I was earning 5.4% interest in Australia, and still have an account there earning 3%.

curleytops

My Mam always held her needles that way as did all of her knitting friends if I recall correctly. Not sure if perhaps it improved the continuity of the stitches? I've seen old jumpers my Mam made years ago and you would swear they'd been machine knit, the stitches are so perfect. I only wish I were half as good!

mikelincs

With a Bank of England rate set at 0.5%, what can you expect.

dunroving

The BOE rate seems to be largely disconnected from bank interest rates, though. Banks have inflated their margins (so many mortgage IR's are not that different from when the BOE rate was at 3%, for example), and mortgage arrangement fees have gone through the roof, effectively meaning that the "interest" (charges) on most mortgages is still relatively high (or similar to what they were before BOE plummeted to 0.5%).

Savings rates, on the other hand do seem to be tied more closely to the BOE rate.

It's like the utilities companies - electricity rates are increased when the wholesale cost of electricity goes up, but mysteriously do not go down by an equivalent amount when wholesale costs go down (or they go down, but after a long time, whereas rises are almost instant). Same with petrol prices.

jasper123

My heart goes out to everyone living along the east coast, in particular New York City with the hurricane sandy approaching, NYC seems to be right in its path, sandy looks like a real bad one, everyone please be careful in the next few days

cheers

We are watching on TV, Midwifes. I think it was the first one. Prefabs, bicycles and after the war!
Cheers

Celticspirit

Yes with Jenny Agutter from The Railway Children :-) loved it.....50's drama.

Celticspirit

Thanks Rodney. Both my children live there - my daughter is in Queens and and seems very calm. My son lives in Manhattan and will stay at the hospital where he works in case they need to evacuate patients. I think I am more nervous than they are.

Englishmum

Hi Rodney

I'm in Switzerland right now as I recently got my US citizenship and have just joined my spouse whom is on an expat posting here and I'll now stay here in Europe for the forseeable future.

Our son (he's 24 today!) is going to have a memorable birthday; he is in our house in New Jersey, approx 18 miles due west of lower Manhatten. I just hope that our house will escape the worst of the storm - we have about a dozen large trees in the garden and I fear that they won't fare well in the strong hurricane force winds. Obviously my main concern is that life and limb will escape unscathed from this dreadful storm...I remember how awful it was in New Orleans after Hurricane Rita and how inept the then President Bush and the authorities dealt with it at that time....however with the Presidential election taking place next week I'm not surprised that Obama is staying in Washington DC to monitor the situation rather than going out on a rally today.

My best friend is self-employed in the fashion industry in Manhatten and we were chatting on Skype last night. She said she won't earn any money today and maybe tomorrow as she can't get into the city.

Actually 1 year ago to the day - 29th October - it snowed in NJ - that was a huge mess to deal with in all the municipalities as the leaves were still on the trees and the weight of the snow caused lots of branches to break off and many towns had power cuts. We went out for dinner to celebrate my son's birthday and when we arrived home there was a huge branch which had crashed onto the drive, exactly where his car had been a couple of hours earlier!

Last year, a couple of days after Hurricane Irene had struck, I'd just flown from London into Newark airport and got a taxi home (my son was at the NJ Devils ice hockey game). The whole street was in darkness - the power had been out for about 36 hours. My next door neighbours saw the taxi pull up and came to ask me about the state of our basement; theirs had been flooded up to 2 feet and they'd had to spend a fortune hiring a generator and dehumidifiers and their insurance company wouldn't cover a sizeable amount of their claim. We were very fortunate that our basement hadn't been flooded as our house is on a slightly higher elavation than theirs.....but I do fear that this time we may not be so lucky with the amount of rain being predicted.

lf1

Englishmum, thanks for posting an update. I was thinking about you when I heard about Sandy. I hope everything will be OK for your son and everybody else affected.

sallysimmons

Yes, that storm caused huge flooding in Bronxville where we lived, with power outages and trees down everywhere. It wasn't much snow but the leaves meant the trees came down so much easier than normal.

I am really worrying about my friends back in the US and also about the people who bought our old house. It's surrounded by trees so I was always afraid of one coming down on our roof. Now I'm worried about it happening to them.

jasper123

Sally my best friend who is a new yorker living in Vegas has his whole family living in new york, I have met his parents, they are both in there 90,s and as sweet as can be, Im worried about them, but my friend replied to my email and said that his sister has moved them out of there house into her house which is on higher ground, until after the storm, and I hope Sally that your friends will be alright and safe,

Englishmum
how is Switzerland, only been there once when I was 14 on a school trip 10 days near Lucern in a youth hostel chalet, it was great, always remember the beautiful site of the mountains, what a lovely country it is,

Englishmum, thanks for your update and I so hope your Son will be OK and safe throughout the storm,
Rodney.

charleygirl

Good Morning everyone, sorry no time for reading or catch up... same old story, but I wanted to say Hello and let my friends here know I am still with you all!
I went to USA for 5 weeks, it was wonderful to spend time with my children and my friends.. so very sad to say goodbye to the kids again though.. I love the UK but I think the pull of my children is just too great. Scared at the thought of health and dental issues in the future if I return to live in the US.. but thinking long and hard right now. How can I possibly live in the UK with my family there.. i know i wont be able to afford flights over there as I get older and we looked at flights for my children to come here for Christmas, it is over $900 each. They have no desire to move here either

I hope everyone is well and happy and I will read up on some of this thread later ( has the other 50s 60s one gone now?)

jasper and barb, how about that trip to London for a day out?

Fish n Chips 56

Hello Charley, I'm sorry things are still tough for you, not sure what else to say...

Yes the 50s-60s thread was terminated a few weeks ago, sad to see it go but admin had good reasons, it had lost its way it seems...

aries

More!!

The truth is I didn't research interest rates in the UK, naïvely I expected them to be at much the same rate as Australia. Wth all the stress of selling my house and giving everything away, my mind was on gaining a good exchange rate to make the move.