Month: September 2008

Worcester

We had a good day in Worcester yesterday. As it was quite some time since the Gloucester pub Crawl we’d decided that we needed to do another pub crawl because they’re such good fun. We were supposed to be going to Bristol but the train service was a complete mess and so we went to Worcester instead.

Worcester proved to be quite a good choice for a pub crawl. Paul has picked a set of pubs but we threw him off the rails from the start by finding a pub that he didn’t have on his list. But we got back onto his plan after that pub and he’d managed to find a good set. We made a couple of adjustments and found another pub that he didn’t have on his list which did 4 very good beers including a “custom” brew from Mavern Hills.

We decided to head back to Cheltenham and have a curry and when we got to Shrub Hill we found that the train we wanted didn’t actually exist on the printed timetable and it had been cancelled anyway. But they did put us in a minbus which dropped us as the top end of the Gloucester Road back in Cheltenham. We headed off to Maheks for a curry but it was closed so we went to the Everest where we had to wait for a while but the food was good. It says something about the state of the world when the waitress in the Indian Restaurant is Polish!

After that Nick and I headed home and stuck our heads in at The Sudeley Arms where we had problems getting a beer because they were “closed” at 10:50. It seems the Landlord and the Brewery are not seeing eye to eye on something. So it may be that this pub closes again only a few weeks after re-opening which would be a great shame

When Endowments go wrong

Back in 1993 I bought a flat in Cheltenham, a nice flat it was too. OK when I bought it it didn’t actually exist and was just a muddy swamp but I saw it being built. I stood in it when it was an empty shell with no internal walls and over the weeks I saw it grow from mud into a nice first floor one bedroom flat.

It cost £39,377 a tidy little sum in those days. I took out a mortgage with Barclays and the financial advisor “sold” me an Endowment policy to repay the mortgage. The premium was £51.56 a month and I was assured that this would pay my mortage off. All seemed well for the first few years, the first progress report showed that it was doing so well it would actually exceed the £39,377 I needed.

But then, like the wayward child who stops doing well at school and ends up staying out all night drinking, my policy went off the rails. A small excess turned into a small deficit, which turned into a bigger deficit.

By July 25th 2008 with 10 years left to run and having given them £9280.80 my policy had a value of £10,967.91

So I’ve paid them £9280.80 in installments and they have turned this into 10976.61 which means the wonderful people at Legal General, those people who know the stock market have increased my investments by 1687.11 in 15 years.

Over the course of 25 years I would have paid them £15,468 and the last estimate my Endowent could “at worst performance” figures produce a return somewhere between £14-15K.

So I’ve cashed it in today. I’ll take the money and stop pouring money down a hole. I would have been better off just putting £51.56 in a bank account every month for the past 15 years.

Someone, somewhere hates us

Early Friday morning (about 01:55) our car alarm went off.

I went down stairs and found that the windscreen had three holes in it. I deactivated the alarm and went and phoned the police and gave them all the details.

Got up in the morning and got a new windscreen booked for today.

Also booked a hire car because we were supposed to be going to Wigan for my parents Golden Wedding Anniversary.

Found that there is also a hole in the roof. The psychopath who smashed the windscreen also rammed a screwdriver or similar pointed object through the roof.

So I phoned the police and updated and did sort of say that as I’d phoned 999 in the middle of the night (which is what the police had told me to do) I was a bit surprised that no-one had been to see me yet.

Police came round and talked to the neighbours and one of them heard our alarm go off, heard a car door slam and saw a white car leaving the estate at speed.

So the scum who are targetting our car aren’t even locals.

Police want to know if we’ve upset someone. We haven’t as far as we know but as the previous residents of this house are still telling places like Morrisons Supermarkets that they live here when they are stealing petrol from them it wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve told someone they owe money to that they live here and we’re being picked on. So if you’ve got a grudge against a member of the Green Family who run pubs.. THEY DO NOT LIVE IN MY HOUSE AND THEY DO NOT DRIVE A SAAB 93.

Of course my insurance company are being total bastards. Tesco say that the two events although they are obviously linked are totally separate and so that is TWO claims. Each claim has a £300 excess on it and will wipe out 2 years of my no claims.  Taken separately they probably wouldn’t count as enough to write off the vehicle but together they would.

So come February I’m moving away from Tesco car insurance because they’ve frankly taken the piss with my car insurance once too often.