Things that have made you happy today 2025

Another glorious morning. I feel very lucky to live where I do. Total silence apart from the birds. A special morning today. There is a burn ( stream for my English friends!) that runs along the front of my garden and also have automatic drinking troughs in the field. Today I was met with, while putting out the rubbish, a young hare. It was drinking out of the burn. Not sure who got the biggest shock! As I was walking back to the house I noticed movement up near my little wood. It was 2 red squirrels drinking out of the water trough.Very welcome visitors. If this very dry weather continues I may well get visits from deer……Not so welcome as they will not only have a drink, that’s fine, scoffing half my garden is not!

 

Was on calfing duty's this morning, mum wanted to have the calf in a bad spot!!!!
Calf half in half out and mum up on her front legs and sat down at the back and up against the fence so calf wouldn't come out and half in half out is not good for the calf as they can die quickly but me to the rescure, had to pull the little rascal !!! but mum wasn't happy about it, any way all ok mum up and licking calf

 

Midwife to the rescue. Well done Jiffy.

 

Gosh, @Jiffy, that's an energetic start to the week for you. A good result!

 

Thank you all
Went back out to check, all ok

Nowt new here, there is allways something going on if you know where to look, some good some bad


Now to wash the afterbirth off my jeans, small price to pay!

 

Mum looks proud and what a little cutie.

 

Not so cutie in about a years time and he/she stands on your foot

 

You need thicker socks, @Jiffy. Oh, hold on, we've had this conversation.

 

Did Wordle in three! Amazed!

 

We play it daily ... plus I do it in Portuguese too. Mine comes in at 11am. Great fun and challenging.

 

DWP just sent me notification of my impending state pension .

When I was working I had company-paid private healthcare cover for myself and my wife. The rules of my company pension stipulated that this continued until 65 if the company made me redundant with immediate pension before that time (which they did). When I asked the insurers for a private quote to continue mine and my wife's cover the figure was ridiculously high. Anyway I've decided that my state pension will go into a high interest earning account and accumulate there to pay towards any medical bills. Obviously I acknowledge that I'm very lucky to have enough latitude to be able do that.

 

Congratulations on crossing the state pension age line (almost), @LunarSea ... before they whisk it further into the future.

I must say the novelty of the money arriving in my bank account every 28 days has not worn off yet. Maybe it never will and I will always regard it as a bonus.

 

Perhaps you could let us have the details of the high interest account @LunarSea? Most savings accounts seem very low interest at the moment.
And congratulations.

 

Compared to several years ago there is significant interest to be made. Obviously the best bet is to use your ISA allowance (if you've got any left) eg:

Shawbrook 1 year ISA bond at 4.3%
Aldermore 1 year ISA bond at 4.2%

- but both of these tie your money up for a year (in exchange for a guaranteed interest rate) and you'd lose a lot of interest if you really needed to get at any of it before maturity.

Alternatively, sticking with ISAs, there are the Instant Access ones, such as:

Aldermore at 4.4%
Charter at 4.4%

- but obviously these are variable rate and will almost definitely be dropping soon.

If ISAs are not an option these variable rate (Instant Access) accounts are worth considering:

West Bromwich (which allows 4 withdrawals in a year) currently at 4.55%
Kent Reliance at 4.41%

But all of the above are on-line accounts so you'd need to feel comfortable managing your money on the computer. Even higher rates are available for app-based accounts where you'd need to manage your money via your mobile (which we would never do!).


Unfortunately I won't get my pension money until December so I'm guessing rates will be lower by then.