The 50+ Club

Worried about the effect of the credit crunch on your pension? If you’re 50+ you should be. That’s not to say you should be panicking just taking a good, hard look at your retirement provision. Now, we are not going to pretend that we are experts on financial matters but, looking at our own retirement plans, we’ve got some concerns.

How can you get good, reliable information about savings and investments (or indeed any financial matters)? I suggest you take a look at The Fool’s website, there’s loads of information but you can also mail if you can’t find the answer to your question. I found them very responsive and helpful.

While I would never suggest that Independent Financial Advisers are a waste of time the best person to look after your interests really is you. You don’t need to be a guru to figure out a reasonable investment that suits you. At 50+ you should be looking for something that is low-risk as you may not have sufficient time to recover from market dips. Low-risk also means low return but at least your money is secure. Most people now know that there is a limit to how much you can hold in any one bank but, with the recent mergers and acquisitions, banks which had previously been separate entities may now be one.

This means that if you have more than £50,000 in two banks you may still only be protected to the maximum of £50,000 as both banks are part of the same group. You can find out which banks are in the same group here.

An increasing number of people are finding they are having to defer their retirement, some have lost a great deal of money in events such as the Iceland bank crash, to avoid this kind of disaster remember, these days if it looks too good to be true it is!

I’m 54 today. Funny, but I don’t feel any different as I clock another year.

I know something is changing though because every time I look at an attractive young woman out shopping with her mum it’s the mum that interests me!

And, all the mirrors in the house went funny years ago - every time I look in one this old git stares back

Wright now (sic) I am watching this on the box and I am blown away…

I am so lucky that none of my children are even slightly overweight. If they don’t wise up these kids are likely to die early and miss out on so much.

I sincerely hope that they take advantage of the time that a celebrity, who does not need to do this, is giving them.

One of the things we have to come to terms with as we get older is the loss of much-loved friends. November 29th 2007 is a date that will stick in our minds for a long time as the day we lost Nova. Personally, I prefer animals to most people. This is Nova’s story.

Not the greatest start to a dog’s life, Nova was rescued by Lee, my eldest son, when she was brought into the kennels he was working in during the summer holidays. Bedraggled, under-nourished and obviously mistreated she had just 7 days to find a new owner. Given that she trusted no-one except Lee, there was little hope of that so she came to us.

Hiding on the stairs, or in some other quiet spot in the house, it was literally years before we all gained her trust although she soon came to relax with the children.

It wasn’t long before we noticed she was a willing worker and easily trained. Kate trained her to compete in agility classes and her party piece was ‘adding and taking-away’. The answers were supplied by the correct number of barks. She won many prizes and won the judges over with her affectionate nature. Initially, we had been concerned that she wouldn’t get along with Lucky, our existing dog, who was most definitely in charge of the house! However, this was unfounded and Lucky even condescended to attend the odd show to help out

Nova had all the style of a natural champion and was soon winning almost everything she entered. Take a look in her scrapbook.

Lucky was getting a bit too old for competition by this time and, sadly, we lost her many years ago but Nova was just getting into her stride. With artistic help from Kris (and some of his clothes!) Nova showed she had a comic side too entering caption ‘photo competitions with some outrageous poses. In this one she claimed she had had a rough night out on the town with Snoop Dog…

The highly competitive world of village shows means a dog has to be in the peak of condition to keep up So, Nova decided to move into training and we were on the search for a suitable student. We finally settled on Indi.

In this shot Indi is learning to eat flowers. Unfortunately, this appears to be the extent of his abilities as training seems to be completely lost on him. Still, Nova did the best she could and Indi turned out every bit as affectionate as his devoted mentor. I will always have a suspicion Nova would have made a good mother.

Nova had many years of happy retirement just like this one:

Her whole family were with her at the end.