Archive for May, 2015
Cats and compound interest
I’ve just been offered free broadband for life. Currently I’m paying £7.99 a month for it. So that means it’s worth about £96 a year – not bad.
But then I started thinking about the cats. Soon after we moved into our house in 1999 – and long before I started my Network Marketing business, we acquired a pair of cats called Treacle and Custard. Being responsible pet-owners, we thought we ought to get them insured – but this was going to cost £7.50 a month…each!.
So instead of insuring them we decided to put the £15 a month into the Ipswich Building Society – after all it was unlikely the cats were going to need expensive veterinary attention when they were young – and after a few years, if they did, then there would be enough to pay for it.
Well, after a few years Custard disappeared – possibly in disgust at Treacle producing kittens. We kept one of them and called him Porridge. Then a couple of years ago Porridge disappeared too – and last year Treacle followed him – she was 14 after all. But isn’t it odd how cats don’t die, they just disappear…
Meanwhile, for 14 years, that monthly payment of £15 had been clocking up in the Ipswich Building Society. I really didn’t pay much attention to it. In fact I forgot all about it – until I came home from a weekend away and found that Thumper the giant lop-eared rabbit had been unwell and my daughter had persuaded my wife to take him to the vet… on a Sunday… which meant the emergency vet.
Thumper died anyway and we buried him with a certain amount of ceremony at the bottom of the garden (it was nice to have something to bury, after all – at least rabbits give you that…)
However, he did leave us with a vet’s bill for £250 and Tamsin insisted it should come out of the Cat’s fund.
I went along to the Ipswich Building Society (for what was only the second time) and presented my pass-book. The Cashier looked at it. I don’t think she had ever seen a pass-book before. Now they give you a card. Anyway, before she could tell me how much was in the account, she had to update the pass-book – and then issue another and update that… and another… and another.
Eventually, with a queue of savers stretching behind me almost to the door, she was able to announce the accumulated total at the end of 14 years’ compound interest. The figure was £3,400.
Now, it must be said that saving the £7.99 a month I would otherwise spend on broadband will only reach about half that figure. But it does make you think…