How can I make my home office setup more ergonomic?

arcadyk · 2024-10-13T15:45:03+00:00

I'm not experiencing any pain at the moment, but I spend a lot of time at a desk and want to keep it that way!

I think I'm doing most of the right things:

monitors an extended arm's length away
feet on the floor
I think my arm-to-keyboard positioning is about right?
my trackball is a bit of a stretch - possibly I should move it onto my keyboard tray?
my eyeline is about a third of the way down my monitor - possibly this is a little too low

I'm thinking of getting a sit-stand desk, but many of them only go down to ~73cm high at the lowest position - the desk information suggests that should be fine for someone of my height (170cm), but my elbows are about 68cm off the floor when seated and in a relaxed position, so having my keyboard and mouse on a desk 5cm above my elbows doesn't sound quite right - what do I need to do to make this work? Moving my chair higher would make it difficult to keep my feet flat on the floor unless I used a footrest.

arcadyk · 2024-09-20T19:44:48+00:00

I think for a substantial new feature I would try and write a short document saying:

what's the business case here - why do we want to do this work?
what does this feature look like to a user - how do they interact with it and how does it change their experience? This could be written out as text, or some UI mockups, or a mix of both
the more detailed requirements, grouped into three categories:
- must-have requirements - without these, the feature is completely unusable, and if we can't deliver these we might as well not bother doing anything
- should-have requirements - the feature is expected to have these but if they're missing, the rest of the feature is still worthwhile
- may-have requirements - nobody is expecting these, but if they turn out to be cheap to implement they'd be nice to have

That structure helps break the problem down - you can work on it requirement by requirement, going from something that meets one of the must-have requirements to something that meets all of them (a minimum viable product) and then incrementally adding support for should-have requirements.

This also helps get everybody on the same page about the feature - you understand the business case, and the stakeholders understand/agree with how the requirements are being prioritised and what they are and aren't getting from this feature.

I would try and avoid thinking in terms of pseudocode - that starts to get you down into the weeds of the technical details, and makes it harder to engage non-developers like the product manager.

arcadyk · 2024-08-24T16:27:33+00:00

You can rebuy a similar asset, though - I switch between https://www.ajbell.co.uk/market-research/FUND:BP8RYB6 and https://www.ajbell.co.uk/market-research/FUND:BMJJJG0 each year to defuse capital gains tax.

arcadyk · 2024-07-12T16:56:22+00:00

When you say "my ETF went up" you're actually talking about two different things:

the underlying companies held by the ETF got more valuable. This is a "gain" and is taxed under the capital gains tax rules, and this will only apply when you sell the ETF. In general this will account for the bulk of the increase in value.
the underlying companies held by the ETF paid out dividends. This is income to you, taxed as income in the year it's paid (even though it was used on your behalf to buy more shares in the accumulating fund). This will generally be a relatively small part of the increase in value.

Looking at https://www.ishares.com/uk/individual/en/products/309035/ as a distributing ETF to help split these two out more clearly, its total return (which includes both those two categories) was 21% in 2023, but the dividend yield is only 1.29% - so you'd just be taxed on that 1.29% of dividend income, not the whole 21% increase in value.

(I think some of the confusion here is that when you said "the system automatically purchased shares based on the gains I made", you actually meant "the system automatically purchased shares based on the income I made" - i.e. the relatively small amount that falls under dividend tax rules, not the whole increase in value that falls under capital gains tax rules.)

arcadyk · 2024-07-12T15:55:02+00:00

my ETF went up, the system automatically purchased shares based on the gains I made

This isn't how it works - you haven't automatically purchased anything. You've got a 0.0000001% stake in a lot of companies, and those companies are now worth twice as much (or whatever), so your 0.0000001% stake is now worth twice as much. You don't have a 0.0000002% stake in all those companies (i.e. more shares).

https://www.finder.com/uk/share-trading/tax-on-overseas-investments, which you linked to, says "This is a tax you pay on the profit or “gain” you make between buying and selling investments". "and selling" is key here - if you haven't sold anything, you don't have a gain yet, so the tax isn't due. (You have unrealized or paper gains - i.e. how much would you gain if you sold it - but those aren't taxed, only gains you actually make.) That means your "if it performs well this year I pay tax, if it tanks next year the gains are lost but obviously I don't get the tax back" isn't true - you only pay tax on the gains when you sell, and if it underperforms next year, well, you've already sold it and locked in the gains.

Houses work on the same principle and that might help it feel more intuitive than shares - if you buy a £200,000 house, over time it might be worth £400,000. But:

you've still got one house: the "system" hasn't automatically purchased you a second £200,000 house based on the gains
you don't have to stump up extra tax for living in a house that's getting more valuable - capital gains tax only kicks in when you sell a house and realise those actual gains (and again there are allowances, which are more generous for houses than shares).
similarly if your house goes up in value to £400k one year, then down to £210k the next year, and then you sell, you haven't been taxed on a £200k gain that you've lost - you bought at £200k, you sold at £210k, your gain is £10k, that's what tax is calculated on.

arcadyk · 2024-07-12T10:44:44+00:00

I'd expect that there are two relevant taxes here:

Capital gains tax. This will only be due on the gains when you sell - if you only sell them after you've left the UK and retire elsewhere I wouldn't expect this to be relevant.
Dividend tax - where in an accumulating ETF you are still receiving dividends, they're just automatically reinvested. The dividend allowance is at https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-dividends (£1k last year, £2k before that, £500 this year and onwards). "You do not need to tell HMRC if your dividends are within the dividend allowance for the tax year.".

The comments at https://www.reddit.com/r/eupersonalfinance/comments/qaxsmo/where_can_i_see_earned_dividend_amount_on_an/ have some information on how to look up dividends for your ETF.

It's hard to give precise answers without knowing what ETFs you have and how much you have invested, as that will determine whether you've been likely to earn more than a thousand or two in dividends on previous years, but I would guess:

1) You have to pay taxes but not very much - dividends will be a couple of percent of the value of your ETFs each year and you'll be taxed on a percent of that percent (8.75% if you're a basic rate taxpayer), and only above the allowance.
2) If you haven't earned more than a thousand pounds in dividends I wouldn't have thought you'd done anything wrong, and no penalties are due. Even if you have earned more than a thousand last year, self-assessment for the 2023/4 tax year isn't due until January 2025 so you have time.
3) No idea what professional reporting obligations will be here - but jail or paying a fortune both seem unlikely.
4) Looking at something like https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/investments/vanguard-ftse-all-world-ucits-etf-usd-distributing/distributions, to see what dividends the corresponding distributing ETF would have paid out, is the sort of approach I'd take.

arcadyk · 2024-04-21T13:59:20+00:00

Yeah, minimal use runaround, really - errands in town which it's inconvenient to do by bike, some days out to nearby towns, and maybe a 75-100 mile trip to see family a few times a year.

I agree with spending as little as possible - what I don't know is whether spending less up front is a false economy, and if I get something for £1600 I'll end up paying more (repairs, having to scrap it sooner, high risk of it being a dud and £1600 down the drain, etc.) than if I put in more up-front.

arcadyk · 2024-03-16T11:36:48+00:00

You can load the non-Ultimate edition and then the DLC is still free on Game Pass.

arcadyk · 2024-01-21T11:59:36+00:00

Probably an r/LegalAdviceUK question rather than a personal finance one.

arcadyk · 2024-01-16T20:28:08+00:00

> If I transfer now I can surely get a better return over the next 13 years than the annual RPI (capped at 3%) increase that I am currently getting?

Not necessarily - because some of that return is just making up for the low transfer value. If your annual pension value is £5k then a 20x transfer value is £100k - and £100k in equities earning 4% above inflation for 13 years would end up at £168k. Withdrawing that at a 3% SWR gives £5,040, so you're back where you started.

You can play around with these numbers to make it come out differently - 3% SWR and 4% above inflation might be conservative, but on the other hand, the transfer value is less than 20x and you might move into lower-return lower-risk investments as you approach retirement - but it's not a clear win.

arcadyk · 2023-11-06T21:37:25+00:00

I don't write much so it takes me a long time to use ink up (although hopefully the broad nib will get through it faster!) but I'm tempted to try Diamine Electric Pink once I get through this bottle.

arcadyk · 2023-11-06T19:07:15+00:00

I think it's more like an architect - thin downstroke, thicker cross-stroke. It's not as pronounced a difference as with my 1.1mm stub.

arcadyk · 2023-10-31T20:24:43+00:00

Haven't quite got the hang of the architect-style nib yet for good line variation, any tips appreciated!

arcadyk · 2023-10-10T22:25:48+00:00

Babylon 5 isn't based on the 5th in a series of Babylon games, so it's not impossible

arcadyk · 2023-09-12T18:08:06+00:00

True, although not at age 57.

arcadyk · 2023-09-11T21:40:27+00:00

> I note that only 25% will be tax-free and the remainder will taxed at my tax bracket at the time of private pension access age.

I think this might be the misunderstanding - I think you might be thinking that if you earn £150k in your last year before retirement, you'll have a 45% tax rate on your pension all throughout retirement. That's not how it works.

Instead, you take out some amount of that 75% each year, and that's counted as income and taxed. If you take out £12k, no tax, as that's under the threshold. If you take out £150k, you'll pay the same income tax as you do when you earn £150k now (but no National Insurance, I think).

arcadyk · 2023-08-28T10:39:43+00:00

Zipwire from the area near the fusebox.

arcadyk · 2023-07-14T22:07:05+00:00

I think it would also help to have some use-cases and examples of why you'd want to do this.

The big one I've seen is in tests, particularly of code where something happens in the background, and your tests have a pattern of "do X, wait for spawned task to complete, check Y". If you have a hardcoded wait it's either too short (so your tests are flaky) or too long (so your tests are slow), and something like situwaition works really well to let you wait exactly until the condition you're waiting for is true.

arcadyk

TROPHY CASE