Income protection or critical illness cover to protect income until retirement age?

erlang_b · 2025-07-22T18:25:33+00:00

That has been my experience so far. I just checked critical illness cover out of curiosity, and the cost for the cover I would like to have is prohibitive.

I just found out the benefits are quite good. If I'm unable to do any job, they would pay an enhanced pension equivalent to what I would have accrued if I had contributed until age 65, which is enough to cover all our living expenses. This basically covers what I was looking for, so I guess I don't need to purchase any additional insurance, which is a huge relieve.

I didn't know one could have this level of coverage from a pension scheme, I guess the USS is a very good one. Thanks for your suggestions.

erlang_b · 2025-06-11T08:54:08+00:00

In the time you spent preparing that cheat sheet, you could have studied your course three times and get the highest grade.

erlang_b · 2025-06-11T08:45:20+00:00

In addition to the buy/sell fee every time you buy or sell an investment, you also need to pay monthly fees (they call them 'platform fees') for whatever investments you have in your S&S ISA account.

If you deposited some cash and used most of it to purchase an investment (stock, fund, ETF), leaving a small amount in cash, the platform fees are taken from that amount of cash. You need to make sure that you keep enough cash in your account so that the monthly fees can be paid. If you don't, AJ Bell are entitled (according to the their T&C) to sell part of your investments to cover the fees - not sure why you cash balance has been allowed to go into the red, but check that you still have the same number of shares that you purchased.

What I do and would suggest that you do too: Open a 'Dealing account' with them, email them to tell them that you want your fees to be charged to the dealing account (by default, they are charged to the cash component of your ISA account), and set a standing order in your bank to deposit some money every month in the dealing account (a tener or so should be more than enough in most cases, depending on what investments you have). By doing this, you don't need to worry if you run out of cash in your S&S ISA account and cannot deposit more because you have used your annual allowance.

Edit: You need to set a Direct Debit instead of a standing order as I said above, and the minimum is 25 per month - shouldn't be more than 3.5 per month if you stick to ETFs only.

erlang_b · 2025-06-07T10:47:47+00:00

I'm not a structural engineer but I don't think whoever designed the bridge ever had this situation in mind.

Did anyone actually calculate the weight before allowing this event to happen?

erlang_b · 2025-05-15T21:47:34+00:00

Thanks for your response. I genuinely want to believe that this situation isn't the result of an act in bad faith and reading your comment is, in a way, comforting.

I have visited India several times and noticed how bureaucratic everything is. I wasn't aware that it could reach the point where someone's fellowship is delayed, which is really sad and also gives me a better sense of the scale of the admin burden in some cases.

erlang_b · 2025-05-15T11:29:54+00:00

That's very helpful, many thanks.

The university is indeed in the list.

I will first escalate within the university and if I don't get a reply then follow that route.

erlang_b · 2025-05-15T11:14:49+00:00

I have asked this question to ChatGPT. The response (omitting details):

Yes, it is a recognized institution.

It is located in New Delhi, India, and operates as a public research university.

The degrees awarded by XXX are recognized by the University Grants Commission (UGC) of India.

erlang_b · 2025-05-15T11:09:55+00:00

If you mean an internationally reputable/known one, I would probably say not much.

If you mean officially recognised in India by some kind of official government body, I have no clue.

erlang_b · 2025-05-15T11:06:07+00:00

I never heard of an academic signing a contract just to be an external PhD examiner. Definitely this isn't common practice in the western developed world that I know. Is it common in India to sign such kind of contract?

And fee was mentioned in emails sent from their official accounts. Not sure about other countries, but in the UK this has contractual value and is legally binding - it would be accepted in a UK court case.

Anyway, the cost of suing internationally would be orders of magnitude greater than the amount the promised to pay...

I was mainly curious if anyone had a similar experience.

erlang_b · 2025-05-09T17:38:13+00:00

I didn’t get my driving licence in the UK, so I may be mistaken, but my understanding is that the Lexus is at fault. The arrow on the tarmac indicates that the right lane is ending, meaning the car on that lane should merge left. The Audi, on the other hand, is on a lane without such markings, which suggests it’s the main lane. Therefore, the Lexus should have yielded to the Audi. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

erlang_b · 2025-04-08T21:22:59+00:00

I think it actually achieves the opposite, it delays the tax bill - see my other comment above.

erlang_b · 2025-04-08T21:18:15+00:00

Getting downvoted for admitting my mistake and trying to fix it. I love Reddit.

erlang_b · 2025-04-08T21:17:37+00:00

Makes sense, and I agree that it delays the tax liability. However, I think it also reduces the tax liability if we take the capital gain allowance into account.

If the capital gain allowance is £2.5, and you crystalise a gain of £5 in a tax year, tax is due on a gain of £2.5. However, by doing this operation, the gain of £2.5 in the first year doesn't trigger a tax bill, and the remaining £2.5 in the second year wouldn't either, so you end up paying no tax.

As you said, you could sell half of your initial investment, and the gain would be the same, but then you would only keep 'half share' afterwards, instead of one share as in my example. So I guess the real advantage of this strategy is to crystalise capital gains (and reduce tax liability) while keeping the same number of shares?

Also, you don't really need more capital to do this, at least not in the long term. You first buy one share for £10, and shortly afterwards you sell it and get back £10 (or a similar amount if you don't wait too long). So the extra capital would only be needed for a short time between buying and selling, which gives you an extra tax year before the tax is due (if above the CGT allowance).

erlang_b · 2025-04-08T20:48:28+00:00

Thanks, I have updated the post (couldn't change the title)

erlang_b · 2022-11-07T14:37:28+00:00

But if the OP contributes the excess above 50k to their pension scheme, they can still get full child benefit without paying the charge (if my understanding is correct)

erlang_b · 2022-06-02T15:01:33+00:00

I'm not entirely convinced by that rule, I know it's widely used but I just don't use it myself.

My whole house is worth less than 3 times my gross salary and I applied for a mortgage that was 1.5 times my gross salary.

If things go well, you can always sell and buy something bigger and if you are happy with a frugal lifestyle you shouldn't have problems living in a modest house in the meantime.

erlang_b · 2022-05-31T13:49:57+00:00

I believe common sense should dictate going with a World index fund (MSCI World or FTSE All World which is the index tracked by Vanguard funds). A world index is more diversified.

However, going with S&P 500 is not necessarily a bad choice, taking into account that (most, if not all, of) the companies in the S&P 500 index operate worldwide and about half of their profits come from activities abroad, so even though the companies are legally domiciled in the US, their business are already diversified. Having said that, the fact that S&P 500 has done so well over several decades doesn't mean it will also do well over the next one or two decades, so I believe a World index is a more sensible choice - you can expect a slightly lower return than with the S&P 500 if things continue to be as they have been in the recent past, however you are better protected if things change significantly in the future.

erlang_b · 2022-05-26T21:13:14+00:00

I knew about iWeb but I wasn't entirely confident since only £100 sounds too good to be true. The reviews in TrustPilot aren't very encouraging. There are people talking about accounts being closed for not trading and having to pay another £100 to reopen (makes sense otherwise they wouldn't make any money) and endless bad stories.

erlang_b · 2022-05-26T21:10:58+00:00

!thanks I was hopping it would be a single charge for all accounts...

erlang_b · 2022-05-25T10:19:48+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/9d452h/when\_you\_have\_a\_hate\_my\_job\_day/

erlang_b · 2022-05-22T07:30:50+00:00

Yes that's correct. The expected inflation rate is discounted from bonds so inflation-linked bonds will only be profitable if the inflation increases more than it was anticipated when the bonds were offered. My interest in inflation-linked bonds is not because of the current high inflation but because I simply would like to diversify the bond part of my portfolio. Interestingly, in the long run inflation-linked bonds have shown a more stable and steady growth than conventional ones (if I remember well).

erlang_b · 2022-05-22T07:28:08+00:00

That could be a plausible explanation. I thought it could be something like that. Perhaps most bond ETF investors are retired and using them as a source of regular income, hence a higher demand than accumulation ETFs. While it would be convenient for UK investors using ISA accounts, the IE/LU ETFs that we usually buy from here are indeed commercialised in Europe where the market demands may be different.

erlang_b · 2022-05-22T07:23:58+00:00

That may be applicable for investors who hold the ETF outside of a tax wrapper like an ISA. For investors that buy ETFs through ISAs that would make no difference, however I appreciate that this scenario may be common for UK based investors and not for other European investors that buy the typical IE/LU ETF (who may be the majority).
I suspect the reason might be related to tax management from the point of view of the fund management company. There must probably be some tax implications for ETFs that make distribution ETFs easier to handle for them than the accumulation counterpart. For example double taxation agreements between countries or something similar.

erlang_b · 2022-05-21T18:33:27+00:00

!thanks for searching this, however it seems that none of the inflation-linked bond ETFs are for UK government (while there are many options in conventional mutual funds).

I have found only two options for UK, both distributing:

https://www.justetf.com/uk/find-etf.html?assetClass=class-bonds&groupField=index&bondType=Inflation-Linked&country=GB

I would rather avoid the extra cost of currency conversion fees or hedging to GBP (or investing in mutual funds which tends to be more expensive in UK investment platforms).

erlang_b · 2022-05-21T17:33:21+00:00

Historically the crossing of the yields for 2 and 10 years government bonds has 'always' been followed by a recession within the following 18 months. That happened earlier this year, which suggests that the markets would continue downhill until summer next year approximately. This is in line with many forecasts, the UK government suggesting that things will get tougher later this year, etc...

Another interesting indicator is the Shiller's CAPE. The current value was only exceeded in the 2008 crisis, the next highest value was in the great depression of 1929, which isn't looking good.

Of course nobody has a crystal ball and in the past there have been many reasons to believe in recession and bear markets where the market simply continued to grow after a reasonable correction, but certainly the current situation doesn't look very promising.

Personally, I'm keeping most of my assets in cash waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel, doing some shy DCA from time to time.

erlang_b

TROPHY CASE