It's not as simple as it looks.........

We are going to be entering another phase in our lives at the end of the year.  Hubby will be "retiring," at the end of September, but will be paid by the company until the end of the year.  So in theory we won't be living on pensions, investments, savings etc., until 2025.

Normally filling out these government forms should be easy, but when you have to have forms notarized, signed by a professional, photo copied etc., etc.  These things take a bit longer than normal.  We have to show copies of immigration, marriage, birth certificates.  We have to supply dates of where hubby worked in the UK, and for how long.  Where we lived in the UK and dates; my info even though I am not applying for anything.  If we got child allowance in both countries, and on, and on it goes.  Good news though, they don't need to know how many times a day you go to the toilet 😜, yes I am being sarcastic!

Both the Canadian and UK governments have different requirements which is normal.  One down side is that hubby will have to go to Service Canada to get items stamped.  That involves lining up for an extended period of time as we only have one location in the city we live and believe me when I say it's busy.  We could go to other cities but it's the same everywhere.

There is an office in the same building as our doctor and the line is generally around the block of people waiting to be seen.

Luckily getting paid by the Canadian Government is pretty easy, as we are all set up with our tax returns.  The saga we went through to get the small pension from hubby work place in the UK took three months to get sorted, but hopefully we can now copy and paste the banking info and it should work for the UK Government.

However, as we all know what works for one official office, is the never the same with another.  So that being said we are going to start the applications by April/May in the hopes everything gets sorted by the end of the year.

Which is quite sad if you think about it, that we just don't trust any government to get anything right?

Now that being said, we are so grateful that we are able to qualify for multiple pensions, as if we had to rely on just the two Canadian government pensions we wouldn't be able to survive on those.  

You have to work 40 years in Canada to qualify for full CPP and the OAS.  As hubby has only 35 1/2 years he gets reduced pensions, which will total less than $2,000 per month, despite the fact he paid his full amount every year he has worked here.

Anyway, all of this is keeping hubby and I busy trying to sort it out.

Then there's the pension and income splitting saga..........but that's enough for one day...LOL  Luckily our son is an accountant, and between me and you he owes us😜

Name five things you are grateful for......

1. That our family is still healthy...…..well other than snotty noses in the little ones......but that's a normal thing!!

2. Not having to choose between paying bills or putting food on the table.  That is a hard choice a lot of people are having to make.

3. Having Dougie and the gang for our government in Ontario.  Didn't like when Dougie and the gang were voted in, but have to say, he has certainly earned his stripes during this pandemic.  He gets my vote now!  Which is more than I can say for the other guy in Ottawa!!!

4. All the family are still working; when so many are laid off.

5. Being able to stay home and stay safe...…...I am so lucky.  Dh has to go out to work everyday and work in a factory environment.  Not an ideal situation, but the factory is making steel pipe that is used to make hospital beds.

Finished my puzzle...…….still waiting for Chapters to ship out the second one?

Your turn now...…..

Cut backs by the Government..............

(image credit)

I don't delve into politics normally but do have to mention I am ticked off about the cut back to the library services.  If our local library branches do not have a book, then we can order it through inter-library loan.  So they search the library system for the copy closest to us and order it in.  Due to the cut backs that service is no longer available.

This will affect book clubs as there are generally 10 + members in each book club and each month you read a book and discuss it.  Now granted you can read a book on an electronic device, but I am one of those people who like to feel paper between my fingers when reading a book.  Normally when ordering for 10 members they have to find books from different libraries.  You can also buy the book from a book store, but I personally don't want to buy books as I read that many.

There are "book club" packs of books where there are multiple copies of books perfect for a book club; BUT one member has to check out the pack for the whole club and no one was willing to do that in the club I had joined....LOL  I really did chuckle to myself when they were discussing this, as it's as though they don't trust one another to bring the books back.

Already the book club members have sent out email messages wondering how this will work out and how we will share books.  I decided that I didn't want to go through all the hassle of doing that and have sent an email to the organizer saying I won't be attending any more meetings.

One of the good things about our library here where we live is that they send out weekly emails for different genre's of book and I am finding those to be useful.  I will just carry on as before with my reading.

Are you a member of a book club?  Do you like it?  I have a stack of books to get through in May; five to review and a couple of my own choices.

To keep up with what I have read pop by my other blog That British Woman's Book Review Blog.

A rather expensive way to end the week...........

We moved into this house in June of 2014.  Since September of 2014 I have been asking our local Township when will we be getting a property tax bill.

What is property tax?

Property tax is a levy based on the assessed value of property.

(photo credit)

If you own a property you have to pay it.  In other countries it is called different things.  To cut a long and boring/annoying story short, we finally got the bill (s) this week, and so they now have to be paid, by January 29th.  The bills are only up to the end of 2015, not sure what is happening yet for 2016, when I go into the Township office this morning I will no doubt find out what's going on.  There is a lot more to this story about why it has taken so long to get the bill and why it has to be paid by the end of the month, but various government departments at Federal, Provincial and local levels will all come out looking bad if I go into detail.  Suffice to say, there are a number of people who are incompetent and should not be in the jobs that they are in!  But trying to get anyone to take ownership of their mistakes is like trying to get blood out of stone.

Our bill is well over $5,000 which is actually less than I thought, as we were not assessed as high as I thought we would have been.  It's still a lot of money, but I was prepared for this.  The day we moved in I put away money each week specifically for the property taxes, as I knew sooner or later we would get a bill.  Mind you even I didn't imagine it would take this long.  Some people had been in their homes 2 + years without a bill, so their tax bill would have been a lot higher.  I only hope everyone had enough common sense to put money away like I did?

However not everyone does that do they; think ahead?  I am one of the strange people out there that do not like owing money.  It has been really bothering me that the taxes were due, but it was out of my control as I had no bill.

I have mentioned this time and time again on my blog, but as part of planning ahead I put money away each week for various things in my "boxes."

I put $20 in my birthday box.

I put $20 in my Christmas box.

I put $50 in my other box.  My other box has been covering wedding's recently, and yes we have another coming up in March.

These boxes are a life saver to me, as Christmas is taken care of more or less with that box.  I always have money in the birthday box, for birthdays, and when you are forking out $300 + for a money envelope for every wedding that too is a life saver.

If that amount of money is too much for you to save each week, how about coming up with even $2 or $5 a week in a box to cover Christmas.  Even then you will have over $100 saved by the end of the year, which will cover all the cost's of extra food and drink at Christmas?

I am going to talk more about Christmas over the next few days as it's never too early to start!

For the British folk and all of us who are fed up with our Governments......

Got this in an email:

Dear Mr. Cameron,

Please find below our suggestion for fixing the UK 's economy.

Instead of giving billions of pounds to banks that will squander the
money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan.

You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan:

There are about 10 million people over 50 in the work force.

Pay them £1 million each severance for early retirement with the
following stipulations:

1) They MUST retire.
Ten million job openings - unemployment fixed

2) They MUST buy a new British car.
Ten million cars ordered - Car Industry fixed

3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage -
Housing Crisis fixed

4) They MUST send their kids to school/college/university -
Crime rate fixed

5) They MUST buy £100 WORTH of alcohol/tobacco a week .....
And there's your money back in duty/tax etc

It can't get any easier than that!

P.S. If more money is needed, have all members of parliament pay back
their falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances

If you think this would work, please forward to everyone you know.

Also………..
Let's put the pensioners in jail and the criminals in a nursing home.

This way the pensioners would have access to showers, hobbies and
walks.

They'd receive unlimited free prescriptions, dental and medical
treatment, wheel chairs etc and they'd receive money instead of paying
it out.

They would have constant video monitoring, so they could be helped
instantly, if they fell, or needed assistance.

Bedding would be washed twice a week, and all clothing would be ironed
and returned to them.

A guard would check on them every 20 minutes and bring their meals and
snacks to their cell.

They would have family visits in a suite built for that purpose.

They would have access to a library, weight room, spiritual
counselling, pool and education.

Simple clothing, shoes, slippers, PJ's and legal aid would be free, on
request.

Private, secure rooms for all, with an exercise outdoor yard, with
gardens.

Each senior could have a PC a TV radio and daily phone calls.

There would be a board of directors to hear complaints, and the guards
would have a code of conduct that would be strictly adhered to.

The criminals would get cold food, be left all alone and unsupervised.
Lights off at 8pm, and showers once a week. Live in a tiny room and
pay £600.00 per week and have no hope of ever getting out.

Think about this (more points of contention):

COWS
Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that during the mad
cow epidemic our government could track a single cow, born in Appleby
almost three years ago, right to the stall where she slept in the
county of Cumbria?

And, they even tracked her calves to their stalls. But they are unable
to locate 125,000 illegal immigrants wandering around our country.
Maybe we should give each of them a cow.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also;
Think about this ... If you don't want to forward this for fear of
offending someone -- YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM! It is time for us
grumpy old folk of Britain to speak up!

A rant about the Government and the "S" word........

We have a programme here in Southern Ontario called the Eco Energy Grant How it works is you have an audit done, which costs just over $300. The company who does the audit submits a report to the Government and you get $150 back from the government. You have 18 months to upgrade your home and to make it more energy efficient, and then you have another audit done and again they submit a report with what improvements you have done and you can receive money back from both the Federal and the Provincial governments. For example for putting in our wood burning insert, we should receive $375 from both governments.

Now the company we chose to do the initial audit was the company who did our home inspection. We had the audit done on May 7th, and it went fine. However by beginning of June I still hadn't received a report, so to cut a long story short, after many nagging phone calls I finally got my report in July. One of the issues, was that the people who we bought the house from, had applied for another grant back in 2007 for home improvement. So when the company filed an audit report for us, the Government saw the address and red flags were raised, as they thought we were trying to "double dip," not realizing it was different owners. The audit company was supposed to sort all this out.

So as far as I knew everything was all sorted out. Back in September I called the 1-888 number to see where our $150 was, and they said it takes six weeks to process and as it was barely six weeks they couldn't see our file number in the system, and to call back.

So I called back last week, and there is still no record of our file, so she said she would contact the cheque department and they would get back to me. I call the people who did the audit and told them to make sure they had filed our report.

Fast forward to Tuesday, and I get a call from this guy from our Provincial government to tell me they still have no record of our file, and to call the Federal Government at this 1-800 number. So I call the audit people and have a heated conversation with her and told her to get this all sorted as this wasn't my problem. I then call the Federal Government number and to cut a long story short, was told by the guy it was a Provincial issue and nothing to do with the Federal Government. I felt like a school girl being told off by the headmaster. So I get back on the phone with the Provincial Government guy and left a message with him telling him in no uncertain terms, that he had to sort it out with the people who did the audit, as I was fed up with the whole situation.

He called me back so I told him what the Federal guy had said. Why we have to have two sets of government has always been puzzling to me. Other countries manage with one Government, but no in Canada we have to have two. And believe me, one doesn't know what the other is doing most of the time. It's no wonder people get so frustrated having to deal with them.

So the gist of this I still don't have my $150 refund, and until we get all this sorted out, we can't do the second audit, so we can claim our grant back, not that we are at this stage, and probably won't be ready to do it until next September or October; but at the rate we are going it may take until then to get the first report sorted out!!! Oh, and in case you are wondering we WILL NOT being using the same audit people to do the final audit, as they are a bunch of idiots!!!!

Then yes we saw snow on Tuesday. Granted it was nothing exciting and didn't lay, but there was snow, so I am guessing it won't be long now before we have to shovel!!

That's about it for one day, I think I have whined enough!!!

***Had a phone call after 9pm on Tuesday night, I was already in bed, I wasn't feeling too good. It was the Home Inspector who did the audit, the Government (I think Federal) want proof of when we took possession of the house..........call the land registry office they'll tell you.........but no I have to photocopy the papers from the lawyers and give them to the Home Inspector. I told the Home Inspector, I was not a happy camper with all of this. Why is nothing straight forward anymore?***

I don't talk about politics or religion, however......

I just wanted to remind the Canadian citizens out there that today is Election Day, so don't forget to vote. We are fortunate that we live in a country where we can vote, so don't waste that privilege, and anyway, if you vote it gives you the right to whine when they break their pre-election promises, now doesn't it, because we all know they will, which ever party gets into power?