[Womble]

Well if you put it like that....!  Pensions is another thing we ought to start a wee thread on. I had a letter the other day: If I continue to contribute at the rate I have been doing, AND the stockmarket grows at 4% a year, AND I retire at 67, then I'll have the equivalent of £5,000 a year to live on in retirement. This is going to be such a huge issue in the future. Apparently we all need to wake up and start saving vastly more.... but how exactly? 

[Fleecewife]

You certainly keep us thinking Womble 


I don't think that we, Mr F and I, ever think about valuing our time in monetary terms.  We do the things we love and avoid others, mostly by not keeping certain livestock, not growing certain foods, or not doing the housework, a pointless task if ever there was one.


I did once contemplate selling craft work, but went through Sally's scenario and came up with well over £1k for a handspun, hand dyed, handknit jumper and I knew I had no desire to spend my time that way.
We don't even go on holiday (well, we did go to Shetland in 2000 for a sheep conference) because we prefer to be here.  My worst nightmare is winning a cruise  .


The other thing we thought about but decided not to bother, is to sell stuff online - all that wrapping, 8 mile post office round trip, reviews, oh it's quicker to take stuff to the charity shop.


What we do do, is everything else, including making our own hay (second hand kit and a handy mechanicky husband to keep it running), shearing, hedging, gardening, cooking from scratch and all the stuff we love.  He draws the line at working on the car - impossible anyway now it's all chips and units.  We make sure we have time to do our hobbies and sit back sometimes to admire our handiwork.


How can we do this?  We're retired 

[Bionic]

You certainly keep us thinking Womble 


I don't think that we, Mr F and I, ever think about valuing our time in monetary terms.  We do the things we love and avoid others, mostly by not keeping certain livestock, not growing certain foods, or not doing the housework, a pointless task if ever there was one.


I did once contemplate selling craft work, but went through Sally's scenario and came up with well over £1k for a handspun, hand dyed, handknit jumper and I knew I had no desire to spend my time that way.
We don't even go on holiday (well, we did go to Shetland in 2000 for a sheep conference) because we prefer to be here.  My worst nightmare is winning a cruise  .


The other thing we thought about but decided not to bother, is to sell stuff online - all that wrapping, 8 mile post office round trip, reviews, oh it's quicker to take stuff to the charity shop.


What we do do, is everything else, including making our own hay (second hand kit and a handy mechanicky husband to keep it running), shearing, hedging, gardening, cooking from scratch and all the stuff we love.  He draws the line at working on the car - impossible anyway now it's all chips and units.  We make sure we have time to do our hobbies and sit back sometimes to admire our handiwork.


How can we do this?  We're retired 

I'm with you on the craft work Fleecewife. I do it because I enjoy it. I don't think I ever produce enough of anything to sell it and if I did?, then it probably becomes a job rather than a hobby and would take away the enjoyment. I prefer people to just admire the things that I do.


By the way, if you win the cruise could I go instead?

[Womble]

You certainly keep us thinking Womble 

Sorry!  But I've kinda run out of newbie animal questions now, and you lot are the closest I get to going down the pub these days! 

I know what you mean about selling stuff online, but it really depends what it is. When we were snowed in for a week during 'the beast from the East', I occupied my time by photographing things from our pre-smallholding life that we no longer use, and listing them on Ebay. After fees and postage, we made about £2,500, believe it or not!! 

How can we do this?  We're retired 

Well make sure you enjoy that! I'm going to do the best I can to save for a retirement, but even if I can, I'm coming to the realisation now that any retirement above the bread-line is going to be a rare thing in future.

[Fleecewife]

By the way, if you win the cruise could I go instead?

I'll pay you to take my place Sally 

[Fleecewife]

GULP - £2,500 - that's a good haul for a rainy day.  We have mainly books which seem to sell for nothing, plus a load of 'things' left to us by various rellies who've gone - their taste not ours.  Maybe we'll have a rethink 


Pensions are scary things to think about.  We rely on each other heavily, so as long as we are both here we should get by and live from the land.  I had my health until 4 days after I retired, now it's going so really I daren't even think about the future.  But right now, life's great 

[Maysie]

For work you can't or don't want to do, why not employ someone who is retired?

Not geriatric, but fit and well and retired.  They are being paid by the government (pension) or a works pension provider, so they can afford to work for a lower rate.  (and if they are honest they will do)

As a Lead accountant with an oil company for a number of years my rate of pay was £30 an hour, but I work for £10 an hour from home now.  I'm doing what I love to do, plus I can do it when I want to, and I can do the physical jobs I'm able for and employ 'a man who can' for the jobs I can't do (or prefer not to - like my lovely cleaning lady 

The problem with this is that it effectively devalues the wider service you provide and makes others who work in the same market look expensive by comparison. 
My own rates are often compared to consultants who have retired and are now just 'hobbying' to keep their eye in, so I cannot compete with their low level charges, as it is far too low to be sustainable as I have professional insurances, a mortgage and bills to pay, forcing a race to the bottom. 

[doganjo]

For work you can't or don't want to do, why not employ someone who is retired?

Not geriatric, but fit and well and retired.  They are being paid by the government (pension) or a works pension provider, so they can afford to work for a lower rate.  (and if they are honest they will do)

As a Lead accountant with an oil company for a number of years my rate of pay was £30 an hour, but I work for £10 an hour from home now.  I'm doing what I love to do, plus I can do it when I want to, and I can do the physical jobs I'm able for and employ 'a man who can' for the jobs I can't do (or prefer not to - like my lovely cleaning lady 

The problem with this is that it effectively devalues the wider service you provide and makes others who work in the same market look expensive by comparison. 
My own rates are often compared to consultants who have retired and are now just 'hobbying' to keep their eye in, so I cannot compete with their low level charges, as it is far too low to be sustainable as I have professional insurances, a mortgage and bills to pay, forcing a race to the bottom.

That's the free market for you lol

[Maysie]

That's the free market for you lol

Agreed, and it brings us neatly back to the original question of how to value your time.... 

So to throw another point into the mix: When is work actually work? 

If you are retired and don't need to earn a living from what you do, you can therefore charge less and earn a few pounds from keeping your eye in (as Doganjo posts above), so is that 'working'? 

If you absolutely love what you do and get paid for doing it, is that really 'working'? 

If you enjoy the task you are doing, it then becomes even harder to value your time, if you would do it for free anyway as you just like doing it! 

My job used to involve attending lots of black tie evening events, formal dinners, evening seminars etc, which I hated having to attend.  For me that was definitely 'working'.  Others at the same table/event, who loved their jobs, seemed to think it was a real treat to be fed and watered in beautiful surroundings at the companies expense while spending their evening talking shop with others who work in the same industry. 
I would much rather have been at home with my wife and dogs. 

A friend of mine who has always loved photography as a hobby decided to change career and take up photography as a career instead.  From as far back as I can remember, she used to take a camera with her everywhere she went.  Having packed in her job, retrained as a professional photographer, she then found that she hated the pressure of taking photographs as she had to perform to a professional standard, rather than doing what she loved, which was taking pictures as/when she wanted to. 

We are strange beasts....
 

[SallyintNorth]

That's the free market for you lol

A friend of mine who has always loved photography as a hobby decided to change career and take up photography as a career instead.  From as far back as I can remember, she used to take a camera with her everywhere she went.  Having packed in her job, retrained as a professional photographer, she then found that she hated the pressure of taking photographs as she had to perform to a professional standard, rather than doing what she loved, which was taking pictures as/when she wanted to. 

And a friend of mine who was passionate about flying light aircraft - raced and did aerobatics, the works - trained as a commercial pilot, got a job flying a twin engined commercial aircraft out of Heathrow.  Didn't enjoy it, too structured and the flying was too 'safe'!, came back to his old job. 

I always say I was very lucky in my mainstream career that I was gifted at and thoroughly enjoyed the things that I did - mostly software and latterly cross-functional project management.  And that they happened to be things that paid very well (in those days) too, although I would have done the same things whatever the pay.  (Having said which, I did move on from one job that I absolutely loved, as I could literally not afford to live on what they paid me.).

Now I am very lucky that I've got money saved up that allows me to pursue my other passions - livestock, fibre crafts etc - in reasonable comfort and without the pressure of having to make much of a living from them.  I would hate to have to make a proper living from livestock, it would take all the fun out of it for me.  And I'm nowhere near gifted enough to be able to make much in the way of crafty stuff that anyone could buy; I'd have to teach or write to make money from that.

But when I am in the position of having to charge for work, be it my time or something I've produced, I do take into account that I don't want to charge so little that it undermines the folk who do need to make a living doing this.  Equally, if they are professionals, they have additional costs, so can and should charge more than me, so it's a bit of a balancing act.