Proud Father Moment

Louise, my eldest daughter, has finished her product design course at Bournemouth University.  The final requirement is that she, along with all the other final year students, exhibit their final year projects at the university's Festival of Design & Engineering.  An excuse for a weekend away by the sea, if ever I had one.

The Design & Engineering department had commandeered two halls on the university campus and each student had a small area to display their project.  Whilst it was interesting to see so many innovative ideas, for me the core purpose was to see Louise and her stand and I accept I'm biased, however I do think hers was one of the best.

 Her product is best described in her own words, as written on the display board pictured above:

"No one will protect what they don't care about and no one will care about what they have never experienced" - Sir David Attenborough The RSPB believes that the lack of connection between children and nature due to an uprising of technology is leading to apathy among younger generations and is considered a huge threat to wildlife in Britain. Existing products such as bird houses and bug hotels rarely include long term user involvement or high levels of interactions and are placed in gardens only to be observed. HABIHEX is a 'build-your-own' product, enabling children to design and create their own bug house and fill it with natural debris they forage from the outdoors.  In doing so, a deeper child-nature connection is made as they witness their individual creations, alongside their classmate's creations, being used and inhabited by wildlife.

Louise has always been fascinated by bugs and little creatures.  I can remember her, pre-school, spending many hours in the garden moving bricks and logs so she could examine the uncovered wild life.  It's great to see how that early interest has come to fruition.  Louise has also been selected by the department to represent Bournemouth University at the New Designers exhibition, hosted at London’s Business Design Centre, so another day out coming shortly!  I really am so very proud of what she has achieved.

HABIHEX close-up examples.

Of course, a weekend in Bournemouth wouldn't be complete without some beach action and since the UK weather was obliging, to the beach we went:

Gloomhaven - first impressions.

Released two years ago, Gloomhaven made an instant impact on the boardgaming community and within a few months rose to the top of the boardgames chart on Board Game Geek.  It was rapidly placed on my Amazon wish list and eventually Linda bought it for me this May as a birthday gift.

It's awesome.

Huge heavy box shouting out "Open Me!"

This week has been my first opportunity to have a first attempt at playing.  Opening the box reveals a tightly packed space with a wealth of components.

One of three sticker sheets to modify map as game progresses

The next hour or so was spent unpacking the box, popping out the counters from the printed boards and sorting them into little bags.

Just a few of the bits in the box.

At this point, let me give a high level overview of the game itself.  It is designed to be played in a campaign mode, whereby one session continues on to the next.  You play alongside your fellow players to achieve a common objective - although you may have specific unique personal goals along the way.  Decisions made in one session will change how the game plays and options available in future sessions.  Each player selects a character type, which has it's own figure, deck of ability cards and other components.  As the game progresses over several sessions, you will be able to enhance your skills and abilities.

As the unpacking of the box continues, little sealed envelopes and boxes are revealed - clearly not designed to be opened now, but to be saved until some game condition is met in the future.  Gaming excitement and eager anticipation is mounting.

The rules are not simple and there's a lot to take in.  Fortunately, Mark and I had both watched an online "Intro to Gloomhaven" video as well as reading a "Getting started with Gloomhaven" guide.  Even with this leg up, it was still halfway through the evening before we were set up and ready to play.  Having selected our starting characters, dealt with a city encounter and then a road encounter, we were finally at a point to start play on the first scenario.

Paul, Cordelia, Mark and David are ready to go...

Three hours later, we probably had a better idea of the game mechanics and were starting to get into the swing of how the game worked.  However, we had not yet completed the first scenario.

Where we finished.

The rules suggest that a scenario should take about two hours, but we were way off that overly optimistic suggestion.  At about 1:00am we called it a night and resolved to finish at the next session, although my character may not make it to the end due to card mismanagement on my part.

So What Did I Think?

I really enjoyed the evening.  There's a lot of depth to this game and after going through the first couple of hours you start to get the hang of how things fit together.  But this is not a light game - for many people the complexity will be frustrating and they wont be able to move beyond that.  It would probably be a lot easier if a couple of players knew the game well and were able to guide the new players - but in this case, we were all total newbies.  Having said that, we have barely scratched the surface and I'm eagerly looking forward to Thursday.  There is clearly good reason for this game to have received so many accolades and I see no reason so far to disagree with its high rating by the Board Game Geek community.  Once Assuming we complete this initial scenario, I'm sure I'll do better in the next.  And finally, Linda - thanks for a fantastic prezzie 😁

So how is this pension thing going to work...?

My savings over the past ten years

My last earned income was paid into my bank account on the 6th May 2019.  From this point on I'm relying on the money saved in my pension pot (the red line in the graph above) and my other savings (the gap between the red line and the blue line).

So what is my cunning plan to ensure I don't run out of money over the next few years?  Many people go for the annuity option, buying a guaranteed income for life, but I've decided against that for a couple of reasons.

• One, as a 55 year old, the rates are pretty poor in my opinion.  If I go for a flat annuity until I die, I can get about 4.24%.  If I want it to increase over time, so that I can maybe keep my income in line with inflation, then I'd get 2.48% to start and a small increase each year.  If I want Linda to have some continuing payment after I'm gone, then the payment drops even further - and she'll only get 50% of what I received. 
• Reason two is that with an annuity, OK you get the certainty of income until you die, but once you're gone, that's it, nothing left.

Well I think I can do better than buying annuities.  I think I can get a higher initial income, that will keep pace with inflation and will be available for Linda, should I die before her.

In simple terms, I believe that I will be able to buy a selection of shares that pay dividends and live off those dividends, without having to sell the shares.  In theory, that should provide an income for life, it should have the potential to increase over time and there should be no decrease in income if I should die before Linda.

Of course, there is no guarantee that there wont be a stock market crash, but I believe I can invest in a diverse range of stocks that should significant mitigate any downside risks.

My current position is that 72% of my retirement fund is held within a pension wrapper and 28% is held in other investments (mostly shares in an ISA). I'm happy with what the non-pension investments are doing - but I do need to make up my mind about the pension wrapped savings.  At the point of leaving IBM, about 20% of my pension was in a SIPP, with the rest contained in IBM's money purchase scheme.  Unfortunately, actually getting any money is not a fast process.  Because I want to use "flexible draw down" rather than buy an annuity, I have to transfer my pension out of the IBM scheme into an alternative that will support flexible draw down.  I completed the forms required for this and sent them off to the pension company before I left IBM - however, they wont process any instructions for a transfer out until they get confirmation from IBM that I have actually left IBM.  I could see that things were moving on the 11th June, as the funds in my IBM pension were sold and the money transferred out.  Six day's later, the money arrived on June 17th and was credited to my SIPP account.

I now have to decide how to invest that money and also go through the process of requesting the 25% tax free lump sum that I'm able to claim upon retiring.  So far I've completed the initial "I want my money" form and submitted it on Tuesday 18th.  This resulted in a questionnaire being sent to me on the 20th which needs to be completed before I can proceed any further.  I've completed that and returned it - so now I wait....

At the moment my pension fund is about 80% cash - I've decided to leave it that way until I've got my 25% out.  Once that occurs, I'll post on what I've decided to invest in and what my plan will be to draw down the remaining funds in the pension wrapper.

First Retirement Walk

One of my retirement plans has always been to indulge in my passion for walking.  Over the past week I completed a trail that's been on my to do list for a while - Hadrian's Wall Trail.

Click here for further details of the walk and photos.

Progress: 2 out of 16 National Trials in the bag.  So now to planning my next one, hopefully the South Downs Way.

One Week In

A week of retirement and I’m already at my second ‘non-work’ Monday morning.  Do I feel different? Do I feel retired? No, not really, I just feels like I’ve had a few days off to do some chores.  Achievements so far: Dentist check-up - need some more work done; picked Tazmin up from airport after 5 months away; did stuff in the garden, more here if interested.

I guess one significant difference was the dentist trip.  Normally I’d be booking an appointment as early as possible in the morning, so that I can get to work as soon as possible.  This time I had an 11:15 appointment and with no time pressure I was able to walk there and back, discovering a couple of footpaths I’d never previously been aware of.  A retirement win 😊.