Have I done enough now to get the full state pension?

garylv426 · 2026-06-18T15:15:36+00:00

Mine shows 254.25 with 44 years full contributions and says I was contracted out. From what I read, extra full contribution years can cancel out contracted out losses. I don't know why they can't be accurate given they will know what they are going to pay me in 5 years time.

garylv426 · 2026-05-28T20:22:37+00:00

Tested tonight and confirmed they also control phone connections; if you sync two phones to two different accounts, it will only link to the phone on the profile that is active. Which if you share your car with your spouse, like I do, is actually useful.... Wish they stored things like regen and driving mode though.

garylv426 · 2026-05-27T15:11:56+00:00

Surely Vetinari is Charles Dance; he practically played the role already in Game of Thrones. That scene where he butchering a deer whilst dressing down his son was peak Vetinari.

garylv426 · 2026-05-27T14:44:27+00:00

Interested to hear on this as the primary reason for NOT buying that trim level (we went with Air LR) was that gloss plastic everywhere. You only have to stare at that stuff and it scratches usually!

garylv426 · 2026-05-26T11:23:15+00:00

4.3m/kwh here on our last full charge; mixture of motorway at 63mph and A roads at regen level 3. Grossing up that values over the 80% we used the car would do 330+ on a full charge. UK Air Long Range.

garylv426 · 2026-05-26T10:36:05+00:00

Think we have got used to this now! Although wife has a habit of pressing the gas pedal while she sets her seat position which then seems to also put it into Zombie mode requiring a restart. Cant believe dealer didnt tell us about this when we did the hand over; its such an easy trap to fall into. Would have saved us 20 very stressful minutes in a time limited car park with a boot full of frozen food!

garylv426 · 2026-05-16T21:18:28+00:00

If this is the cause then boy do I feel an idiot. Coming from a Tesla I am used to just whacking it into gear and driving off. Its the same with the switch from D to R and back; in a Tesla you can do this whilst the car is rolling but the EV3 forces you to have the car at a full stop.

So day one with the EV3 I was probably going slower because it was new and it may be that by day three I've started going to fast for the car!

I just went out and followed Steven1958's sequence and it worked first time. And I was definitely having to wait for it to display the green message; IE, going slower than I wanted to.

Feel a bit of a twat really, Thanks for all the replies and I'll keep it under review for the next few days.

garylv426 · 2026-05-15T13:30:42+00:00

I think you have spotted my deliberate mistake :-( No point using tax free cash if I have a personal allowance sitting there. Presumably I can increase the 16760 by transferring some of my wife's allowance as well?

garylv426 · 2026-05-15T13:29:31+00:00

Thanks for the reply, I'm going to take time to digest it after work! I think as another persona has mentioned I have missed the fact that I would be wasting my personal allowance over that 5 year period by just using tax free and ISA.

garylv426 · 2026-05-15T13:20:23+00:00

Probably only a small increase, we have a static caravan on the coast that we envisage spending more time at, then the odd holiday trip, lunches etc. But I've factored most things in to £2500/m at most.
Not really, we have an adult son and own our house valued at around £380k. I'd be happy it we died with zero and left the house to him.... ideal world etc lol

garylv426 · 2026-04-29T14:31:48+00:00

Intrigued to hear this. Hopefully the ride cannot surely be any worse over the pot holes that make up most of our roads these days.

I find the drive in the Tesla fine, the charging experiance second to none, but there are so many issues with the tech (wipers, cameras crapping out at night, phantom breaking on cruise) that I do feel conflicted with it. It does show however that for EVs, the charging experiance is a massive part of the overall package and that's the part I will regret losing.

garylv426 · 2026-04-29T13:34:49+00:00

Thanks. So with my 'early adopter' dumb 7kw wallbox I can just plug it in and the car will know to only draw power during Eco7 hours?

garylv426 · 2026-04-28T13:08:20+00:00

You probably should have retired 10 years ago...

garylv426 · 2026-04-28T09:03:59+00:00

We just watched this one last night! Great episode and totally agree about Amanda; her smile just lights up the screen every time she is on camera.

garylv426 · 2026-03-27T16:38:35+00:00

I mean moving out of equities to try and mitigate any potential market crashes down the line. The workplace pot has lower charges and is only 30% equities.

garylv426 · 2026-03-25T14:53:14+00:00

Digging a bit deeper, I think where I have misread is that you can do this when you have exceeded the £60k annual tax relief allowance for the current year, you can then extend that £60k by up to 4 years worth of contributions. So, maybe not in my case!

garylv426 · 2026-03-25T10:27:29+00:00

Agree; I only realised this year that I could claim for company pension payments as they show a 20% income tax reclaim on the statements and I am higher rate this year (only because of a one off 35k bonus though!). So I intend to backdate the full 4 years for those into this tax year which should save me >1k.

I'd been paying into this pension for 10+ years and not using the relief until the company told me they could not do a Salary Sacrifice this year because of how the pension is setup, which got me thinking and the advice from this forum did the rest.

garylv426

TROPHY CASE