Thursday, September 22, 2005

When I'm sixty-four

I got the details about the job at Nord Anglia in the post today. Slightly annoyingly, you have to be in the company pension scheme to be included in the company life assurance scheme. This is an inconvenience for someone like me who approves of life insurance and disapproves of pensions.

I've never had a pension, for the main reason that I firmly believe that if I'm not independently wealthy by the time I want to retire, it's my own stupid fault. There's really no excuse for not being a millionaire of some kind before I'm 65. Also, whatever kind of pension you put your money into now, there's a sporting chance that it'll be totally worthless or unnecessary by the time you want to spend it. I've got another 36 years before I reach retirement age. Anything could happen in that space of time. Aliens will have invaded two or three times, there'll probably be robots, worms will hold most of the important cabinet posts and money might have been abolished altogether. I'll spend my cash now while I'm young, thank you very much.

The life assurance would be good, though. I'd hate the idea of my family inheriting my debts if I drop dead at some point over the next three years (after which time I'll have paid them all off, so my grieving family can spend the money on a solid gold tombstone).

Casual dress day at work tomorrow. Tony the MD hates the idea, but he's been bullied into it, and not even banned jeans like he did last time. This raises the question of what I should wear. I don't like wearing casual clothes at work - if I'm not dressed like an accountant, I find it even harder than usual to act like one. And I still haven't got round to buying a needle and thread and fixing my Zoom-Zoom T-shirt, so I'd probably better not wear that. Maybe I'll wear my "The knowledge that you exist is a burden on my soul" shirt and scare everyone.

Maybe I'll wear nothing at all and see what happens.

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