Retirement Planning

Given all the publicity that Tony and HMG have been giving to making sure that we plan better for your retirement, due to the ageing population, Tracy and I have been thinking seriously about how to make sure our standard of living is maintained, into our retirement.

Taking a look at what’s available in the market, neither of us are convinced with what’s available. The current crop of retirement savings products, from all Providers are suffering from poor performance. Given the long term economic outlook, this does not look like improving much in the foreseeable future.

So, we’ve decided the best option is to spend all our money as we earn it, then become dependent upon our children when re retire. Both of us felt that Hannah’s long term earnings potential (although the outlook appears good) was a significant risk for our chosen retirement planning strategy. Therefore, we’ve had to take action to reduce this risk.

So, here’s the results of a damp afternoon in Oban…

As of today, Tracy is now 17 weeks, due date is sometime early December.

Mother and Baby doing well, although we’ve had a bit of a scare.

This pic is from the 14 weeks scan, that was done on earlier this month. On it, one of the measurements taken (of the back of the neck) was significantly thicker than expected, by a factor of 25%. This indicated a greater chance of such things as Turners, Edwards or Down syndrome, a bit of a worry for us. So, we opted for an amnio, just so we’d know and could plan accordingly.

The initial results were back yesterday, indicating that the baby’s clear of the 4 most common problems that this measurement predicts – A BIG relief for us. We still have higher risks of heart, stomach or other problems, but we’ll just have to see how it goes and hope for the best.

I’m now convinced that the thicker neck is a genetic trait that this little one has inherited from it’s Dad!