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It will never be this clean again. Old and new

You were very wise Bob, It amazes me how many people don't realise that the state pension is just a fixed rate everyone gets the same if they have worked long enough and paid into the system, it's not like the pension schemes in European countries and to compare them is unrealistic as they are calculated in different ways, I've known for the last 30 years how much state pension i will receive if i stayed employed so it's no surprise to me how much or should i say how little i will be receiving, its not enough for me to carry on the way i live now and i did start a private pension in my early 20's to compensate for that but i was lied to by the pension company and stopped paying into it or any other as i didn't trust any of the fuckers. Then i fell into that "I've got no money trap" where i told everyone i had no cash to save as i was just about keeping my head above water but looking back i always had cash for beer bikes and weekends away so i got no real excuse and hold my hand up and say i haven't really prepared for it the best way i could but i can say I've enjoyed the way I've lived my life and hopefully will keep on enjoying it up until i retire and then i will have to see what has to change. I think todays working generation will be much better prepared than ours as everything seems more out in the open and you can't be ripped off as easily as it was when i started a pension, We have been advising our kids to start preparing for their future for a few years now i can never remember anyone telling me that when i was younger i just done it off my own back.

Ain't that the truth! I'm currently posting this while sipping Moet & Chandon in a deckchair on my luxury yacht in Marbella! @Clive is in Monte Carlo breaking the bank at the casinos with a Ferrari and a hot chick waiting outside! And @Renegade is in the tropical paradise of Cardiff getting measured for the dental implants of his dreams!

And so has Pedro and Lyn! The thing is with this lot Phil......they talk a lot but just can't back it up! We've seen it all before! Pity you can't make it over here cos we could give them an experience they'd never forget! I know Dell hasn't!

Classy response, Clive.

If he does you can guarantee it'll be some 1970's lycra

You'll be wearing lycra before the year is out! God help us!

The wife has said that once I've recovered from my Hernia op we've got to get bicycles. In her case it's to build up more strength that was lost due to her osteoarthritis......in my case it's to lower blood pressure and cholesterol. But I'll be making sure that people know that I'm doing it under sufferance, not for some perverse enjoyment like the rest of you weirdos do. Bicycle be fucked!

I've been pretty lucky, in that, I've always worked for companies that had pretty good pensions, with the exception of 1, but I only worked for them for a couple of years and I took out my own pension investment plan whilst I worked for them. I never gave it any serious thought until working for my last company, who's pension scheme was 2% employee contribution and the company paid double that, so they put 4% in. But they also had a scheme where the employee could up their contribution to 3% or 4% and the company would put in double that amount. So I opted for 4% and the company put in 8%, so I had 12% of my salary going into their pension. My first 2 companies had final salary pensions and, although I left those companies many years ago, the pensions from them are reasonably useful. One of them I opted to take a higher amount until I get my state pension, then that pension drops back, but even then it should be £4k a year on top of my state pension. The other pensions were defined contribution pensions. The stock market dropping over the past couple of years has hit them pretty hard, but there's still a useful amount in them at the moment. I'm taking a small amount out of them at the moment just to supplement the others a bit.

I do t see it as work , I enjoy doing it , if I don’t want to go in I don’t , if I want to go on a holiday … I just do it … now that is the style

I had a great job as a Medical Rep for Beecham which had an excellent occupational pension scheme. Then I got made redundant in the 80's and was never able to get the chance to get back into that sort of system. After all, I lived in the Graveyard of Ambition! So from then on it was just making ends meet......maintenance for first family and supporting second family.

Well @XTreme certainly isn't , he's still working every day and he reminds us of that fact every day

The cost of living here is a lot lower than the UK, but we could never survive on €900 a month. Keeping horses isn't cheap.......but that's the wife's interest (like bikes is mine), and as she was never able to have them in the UK I don't begrudge a penny going on them. I'm lucky that my work isn't physically demanding, so as long as I can tap a keyboard and click a mouse I can keep doing it. Having said that, I couldn't do nothing like most of these Brits here.......I have to have something to keep me busy. That was really brought home to me during the Covid lockdown......I was so desperate to actually do something I end up launching this fucking place! Now that's desperation.

Why you out on your bike …

Maybe not that wise, my company pension is paid by a tobacco company and we all know that lots of peeps want to see tobacco wiped out. Luckily the pension trustees are pretty savvy and most of the pot is invested in exclusive property in London. All investments, pensions, savings etc are a bit of a gamble if you want a decent return but most of it is better than doing nothing. As you say , god knows what kids today are going to do about their future .

Better get a chinese one. Pushing is good exercise!

62........which, coincidentally, was also the age that I retired at!

I don't know what's wrong with some of the Triumph dealers, I guess that they shift a good number of bikes without really having to try. I think that the Hornet 750 is a solid choice for you.

I've been out for several rides on both my ebike and non-ebike recently, but not bothered to post it up. Anyway, I went out on the ebike this morning. I was Billy no mates, as all the other lazy f*ckers came out with lame excuses! I decided to go down to the beach to check out the waves, as there was a warning on the weather channel about it being dangerous to go swimming. The waves weren't actually very bad at all, but I think that it's going to get pretty windy overnight, so it may be a bit rougher tomorrow. There was a local lifeboat moored at the marina in the estuary, so maybe there is some rougher seas due. Anyway, not a bad ride there and back. I even worked up a sweat!

I congratulate you and all the people who were able to do as you did.

When I was 30 I worked two jobs, the second job (on an evening ) paid for my investments (I didn’t trust property) . That enabled me to pay off my mortgage early and then use the mortgage money for retirement. The point of all this is that there is no way a state pension will give you enough to be comfortable in retirement.

On my first day at work

Twat

That's a pleasure. Take a few days do a different route. But you have a point, why would I want to do that when I could ride round my home in small circles visiting dilapidated buildings and festering animal carcasses?

My work colleague, very annoyed that my phone keeps disturbing his morning nap: Back at it

Did you slip a disc fitting the handguards, thus stopping your riding?

You're filming now too?

Living the (retirement) Dream! This is not the retirement dream i envisaged, not a nightmare, but definitely not a dream. What with Covid lockdown, and now the huge rise in the cost of living it does give me some sleepless nights. Fair enough, we did get a decent rise in our pension this year (hope for another next year ☺) but council tax and energy costs wiped that out straight away, and food prices still rising we are now back to having to be very careful what we buy.....Asda & Tesco (other supermarkets are available) use to raise prices of things by 20p..30p or even 50p, now? somethings we buy have gone up a by £1 or more! So living the dream?..we sit in this bungalow almost 6 days per week, which I find hard has when I was at work I was on the road every week day, driving down to the south of London, or up into Northumberland, that was living the dream. With cost so high for everything, we have to live (more like existing) very carefully, holidays are 3 nights in a caravan in Mablethorpe, we do not go out socialising, yeh it's a fun filled life in retirement. But like you @busabeast I have to make some decisions, I keep saying it, but I think the scoot will have to go next spring, it is fine fettle at the moment, but when it comes to wanting new tyres and other consumables, I can't really afford them on my £40 monthly fuel allowance, if anything happens to the car the money will come out of our burial fund, they can bury me in the back garden OAP rant over...... have a nice day everyone. ☺

I have a Gerbing heater under jacket thing which actually works pretty well. Keeps body and arms nice and warm although as with any heated kit plugging it in and remembering it’s connected when you get off is a pain in the arse. The only drawback is the size/ volume of the controller and all the cabling and crap that goes with it and having to try to cram it all in a pocket.

Or an Italian or Austrian one?

Bus twat

The Amazon Girls just delivered my macho phone case......it has Military Grade Drop Protection!

The irony here is that 60 years ago as a kid I really wanted a bicycle cos all my friends had them. So I used to scrounge a ride whenever I could. But I didn't have the money and my old girl wouldn't buy me one (God forbid she would ever spend any money on me)......so I had to go without. The first time I ever had any money was when I left school and got a job! So with my first monthly pay of £39 I paid £22 for a Lambretta TV175 and basically bypassed the bicycle stage. After that there was no way I ever wanted one......and I still don't want one now! Maybe a CRF300L would help lower my blood pressure and cholesterol?

She retires to the bar about midday every day.

So were you under the illusion that you could live quite well on a state pension ? What about Investments, saving bonds , private pension , investing in property ?

Having to bale your kids out doesn't help does it? I know I've done my fair share of that too, but at least I had the income coming in to cover it. The bloody third quarter taxes come out tomorrow.....that's nearly €2K what with tax and IVA/VAT. And people criticise me for being glad to see the back of the Brit freeloaders from this country. Especially those running businesses illegally.

I think we all thought we'd end up getting a better Pension than we do. And nobody could have foreseen prices rising like they have.

As I said.....I need a challenge, I need something to focus on! So I'm fine with it, but the flipside is I don't always get the time to do as much riding as I'd like to do. But without the working there'd be no riding!

Very little I can do to keep busy, a bit of gardening, cut the grass, clean the car, to try and pass some time I do the housework, wife has forgot how to vac up or wash a pot.

You see everyone.... retirement is the life, pete has just written it in black and white.... Oh and he's never invited us to his fucking gin Palace the tight fisted bastard! BRUCE...... WHERE ARE YOU BRUCE

I had Len’s fogging on the GoPro due to the temperature so will need to invest in a case so I can use silica gel packs during the winter, probably a good idea for extra weather protection as well. Otherwise camera worked well powered from the usb port in the fairing.

Bit early to be on the sauce, @Slowlycatchymonkey must be rubbing off on you.

No not at the moment.... but if I need the money it would sell for then I'll have to

morning , could i order some of your saddlebags please

Two weeks.. and bog off, no-one can follow your ride report, it's like being next on stage after a killer act to find you get booed off