u/BigFaithlessness618

I am doing a full house renovation. Well I am hiring people to do most of it but I have committed to doing the painting.

We had all our old mismatched skirting boards replaced with "primed" skirting boards. We are having the new radiators fitted next week and I hadn't got the the skirting so today went around and glossed below where the radiators are but I hate it compared to the just primed.

I have wiped it all off and am going to consult my wife tonight but wondered if you all think it would look weird and terrible?

Anyone stuck with just primed?

Thinking of taking my daughter but it's a bit different drive and don't want to waste my time.

Website says yes but it was last updated 2022.

So posting on behalf of a family member.

They are 64 and have a small mortgage left (£13,000) their fixed rate ended and they are currently on a Standard Variable rate of 7.24%. (crazy)

She is on a really low income, she has a pension of £620 a month, gets £300 per month gifted to her from a charity and me and my wife give her £40 a week. The charity money is up for review. She just needs to last till she gets her state pension then she has enough to survive.

She has anxiety and health issues and can't go back to work, she has a applied for PIP and failed twice. She did do 6 months applying for jobs a couple years but got 0 offers and for a woman in her 60s she has no confidence left to apply and has now been out the workforce for 5 years. It seems very unlikely she would get a job if she tried.

She has 3 years left on her mortgage but her payments have just jumped by £50 a month. We knew it was going up as she had been on a great 10 year fixed and had guessed she would go up by maybe £10-15 a month but because she can't fix back in she left at this crazy high rate.

She can't fix in with her current provider because her balance is below there threshold and we can't make any amendments to the term as the mortgage is currently "unaffordable"

We have only found one provider who will take her with her low balance and finances but they want to charge £999 product fee which feels counter productive.

We are stuck in ideas.

- we could probably get a personal loan and pay off the mortgage, take it over a longer period but there rate is still high and feels like a silly decision.

- maybe sell one of our cars to pay off the mortgage, then take a car out on PCP/HP and get her to pay it monthly.

- give her more money but things are really tight we have a 1 year, maternity leave has eaten all our savings and my only go back to work part time.

Anyone got any ideas /Advice?

I am a line Manager,

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I had a women on my team call in sick with a "Lung infection". When she returned to work after 4 days I had a "Return to work meeting " which is company policy.

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In this meeting she disclosed that she had an elective Abortion in hospital and wasn't sick. She explained that she wasn't ready, she wasn't with the potential father ect. I just kind of just Nodded.

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In the meeting I explained it must have been a difficult choice, I checked if she needed our employee assistance line. I said I wish she hadn't lied and had felt comfortable enough to let me know but I wasn't planning on taking any action that she had lied about the reason she was off.

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I mentioned as it was a planned procedure that I would have a chat with HR to understand if it would go down as sickness or holidays. (I have people previously who had time off for nose jobs, dentist ect and they all have taken holiday not sickness and i wasn't sure.)

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I said I would get back to her and closed the meeting, I felt like I was supportive of her and tried to focus on how hard a decision it was, it was a 20 minute meeting.

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I raised an HR ticket immediately getting back to my desk. I typed up the returned to work, with an email saying.

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Hi xxx

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I have typed up the notes to our return to work, apologies that It might sound a bit blunt but wanted to keep it factual.

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Meeting notes

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Had a meeting with xxxx on xxxx after returning to work from a period off. XXxx had originally said on the phone she had a lung infection but upon discussion she disclosed she had an abortion and then has taken a few days off afterwards to get herself in "the right head place" for work. . Xxxx says she is healthy enough to return to work and I have given her the colleague assistant line as I understand decisions like this can be hard to process.

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I have advised xxxx that we not take any action regarding her not disclosing the true reason she was off over the phone but asked her to be honest in the future.

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I have agreed to contact HR to understand if this time off would be classed as sickness or if I would approve of a retrospective holiday.

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A couple days later she asked to speak to me and we went to a meeting room and she brought in her friend. She said she had been really upset about how unsupportive I had been and that she felt like i was punishing her when suggesting she should take a holiday, she wished she had not told me.

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I explained I sympathised with her but now I know the truth I need to ensure I am following the right procedures I'm not trying to punish anyone.

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In the meeting she pushed me on whether I felt like she did something wrong. I just said "it's not my place to comment on something like that, this isn't about what I think right or wrong".

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After the meeting I spoke to my line manager, who very quickly told me to leave it as sickness and told me he felt I was being a bit harsh. They said they would speak to the colleague. I closed the HR ticket before getting a formal response.

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I have now been invited to an "Fact finding" meeting tomorrow. The reason is undisclosed but I can't think of anything else I have done which would involve this.

So I've run a small Etsy business for the last 5 years, just under the VAT threshold.

I had an accountant support me for the first year's self assessment but I have completed it myself since. I have a financial services background and feel pretty confident I've reported everything correctly.

I use QuickBooks on a dedicated business account which tracks my spending and it's liked to Etsy for my income but I have to be honest I haven't organised my receipts. I buy 99% of my stock online so I have invoices/receipts but it would take me forever to reconcile them. Use my personal email for invoices so is mixed in with span, things I buy and general crap.

Over the past few weeks I have been having this reoccurring thought that I am going to get Audited. Last year my daughter was born so sales reduced and my margin went down I have heard this can trigger an audit.

Part of me wants to spend the hours and hours needed to reconcile all my receipts on QuickBooks but also my rationale head says it's very unlikely to be audited and if you just spend the time then.

I wondered if anyone with a business as small as mine had any focus from HMRC? If so what did it look like?

Me and my wife would like some advice or examples where we could lock our money away to get a decent return and importantly how do I actually do it?

We also currently have £111k "Saved"

- £45k in s&s ISA invested in EFTs

- £26k in Cash ISAs

- £30k in a cash savings account.

-£10k in a HSBC cash bond @4%.

We also have £8-12k in our joint current depending where we are in the month which is our "emergency fund".

My wife wants to use our cash take a big chunk off the mortgage, I think we could get better returns on the stock market but my wife is hesitant as worries we could end up with less.

The compromise is that we would invest our savings in some sort of instrument that had fixed returns that beats our mortgage rate (3.25%). We are both 40% tax payers so when you work out the hsbc Bond at 4% we only realise 2.4% so would be better off paying it off the mortgage..