Continue downsizing
The weather is cool enough to think now, so I continue downsizing my possessions to those I truly care about and rifling through more paperwork to see if its still relevant.
Over the weekend I found a pension I had lost track of. It was created back in the early 2000's and my contact details had never been updated. I found the company who now runs the pension and got my details updated. It seems I have enough in there for a few bicycles during my retirement 🚲 🚲 🚲
Its time to start planning my next role and to support my application I want to add more content to the Pracitcalli Engineering Playbook, especially around practices and the roles within software engineering.
It will be beneficial to build up content in the new Practicalli Clojure AI Tools book, so I can shape my thoughts around the effective use of 'AI' related technologies as they continue to evolve. Creating some 'thought leadership' blog posts on the challenges and constraints of the current 'AI' tools and services would also be valuable.
New Smart Phoneλ︎
I have had a Google Pixel 2 XL phone since the start of 2018 and it has served me very well over the last
The Motorola Razr 60 is a very interesting design for a folding phone. The fold turns a palm sized outer screen into a large phone screen.
The Google Pixel Fold is more like a phone that folds out into a small tablet.
A refurbished Google Pixel Fold from Back Market may be a slightly more cost effective approach. The Back Market website doesnt say what generation of the Google phone it is, so harder to compare prices.
I've always assumed that phones made by Google would keep updating the operating systems for longer than other manufacturers. Google Pixel fold website does state 7 years of OS and Security updates.
Financesλ︎
I have collected 11 different pensions over my career, with some pensions started so long ago that they changed companies several times.
In the 1990's I actually had a final salary pension, although it eventually was converted to a personal pension.
I had three different plans with one pension company, each one from a different employer.
In 2018 I amalgamated many of the pensions into one, choosing a sustainable plan to support those companies improving the world we live in.
Now I am down to 4 separate pensions, although I may merge 2 of them into the Nest pension, which has no charges for transferring in another pension. The annual management charge is 0.3% (which is very low for a pension company).
I have worked with several start-up companies, which tend to use Nest as their employee pension because its simple to set up. It therefore makes sense to merge the two smaller pensions into nest (assuming their management fee is higher).
Thank you.
Practical.li Website