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I have possibly left it late to get a pension. I am self-employed and have just always assumed that I am working until I cark it and work has kept coming in (or in recent years, I have managed to generate it up from nothing). But who knows what the future will bring? And it's no longer just me that I have to think about. And it seems that putting some money away for the future (even if I am not in it) might be a good idea. Also I am so old that I am able to immediately access my money anyway. So it's just like putting it in the bank.
A nice man came over to discuss everything with us and answer our incredibly ignorant questions with great patience - Wait, so you're allowed to exchange money for goods and services? - that sort of thing.
He also talked to us about life assurance.
We actually have this already, incredibly. If one of us dies in the next nine years then we'll have enough to pay off the mortgage and keep going for a couple of years. And when I say we, I do mean Catie. He did say we could take out another policy for me (he didn't even really bother to pretend it might be for Catie) where we'd pay something like £250 a month for a decade and if I died in that time it would pay out something like a million pounds. Which seems like quite a good gamble to me. £30,000 for a shot at a million. Less than that really as you don't have to keep paying once I am dead. So potentially £250 down for a million. The chances of that happening are better than the lottery.
I'd be a bit worried about doing that though. It makes my life, or rather my death, quite a valuable property. I don't think Catie would ever actively kill me for the money, but what if we got in a situation where I had slipped over a cliff and she holding my arm. With two policies live and a potential payday of 1.5 million pounds... it might just give her pause for thought. She could haul me back up or... oh dear, she's let go. She did her best. She just couldn't hold me.
If the situation was reversed... I'd definitely haul her up. I couldn't possibly do all the stuff she does and she's the only person in the world mentally unbalanced enough to find me sexually attractive (still - I was a catch when she met me). If I go then she just has to learn which bin is for recycling and work out how to load the dishwasher (or rather she gets to load the dishwasher the way she thinks is best). She no longer has to put up with the snoring, the farting, the terrible repeated jokes.... Jesus if I could get £1.5 million for killing myself then I'd do it. The insurers are too clever for that. You don't get it if you do yourself in.
I'd pay for a big Viking barge and then fill it with the rest of the money in cash and then set fire to it all as I sailed out to sea. Everyone would. That's why they don't pay out.
The point is that I need to keep the reward for my death low enough that it's just about worth Catie continuing to put up with me in the knowledge that I will bring in slightly more than that. And with ticket sales starting to dwindle that's no guarantee. You have it in your power to save me or destroy me. Why am I appealing to you guys? You'd pay money to watch me fall off a cliff. And you'd be right to. I'd do it in a really funny way.
We had lunch after the man who understands money had gone and I almost choked on a lump of food. The policy documents for our existing life assurance were right next to me on the table. Catie had to concede that things wouldn't look too good for her if I died there and then.
So my only option really is to carry the policy documents with me at all times, to keep Catie from killing me, because she'd never dare risk it then. My other plan, if I see her about to murder me, is to kill myself first. That way she ends up with nothing. And has to find out the bins on her own too. The perfect revenge.
