Beaumont Home Medical Account: Fill & Download for Free

No issues.As one from a family within which a number of us in the south have moved north, and a number of us north have moved south - in both permanent and temporary circumstances - and I’ve done it myself - it’s no big deal.As you probably know there is the CTA (“common travel area”) between the two, as has been the case since Ireland was first divided into two political entities just under a century ago. Thus, no legal impediments or permissions are involved.So, you do the same as you do moving to the next town up the road within the jurisdiction you are currently in - start by getting a job and a home - rented or bought.You will have a few detail changes. Within six months you need to re-register your car with a local numberplate. You’ll need to register with a local dentist and doctor if you're on some sort of medication. You don’t HAVE to register with these - though if and when you need treatment you will. Your National Insurance Number will be replaced by your PPS number. If you are only temporarily in the south, and you have ongoing dentist / doc in the north, you can still go up and attend them if you want, as I did for a couple of years for no reason other than that I couldn’t be bothered going to register in the local one.Bank accounts - same - if you are with Bank of Ireland or Allied Irish (First Trust) you can put northern and southern accounts on the same online banking app. and transfer funds between them as you wish.Healthcare, taxation and other realities of life are much the same, albeit with different names - the test your car does is the National Car Test (NCT) instead of the “MOT”; some thing, different name. The health service is the HSE (Health Service Executive) rather than the NHS. The letter boxes are green instead of read. Road signs have a slightly different font used for lettering, and direction signs are in both Irish and English. Motorway signs blue, dual carriageways green - same.Tax rates and bands are broadly similar in most cases, and are calculated in much the same way. The court system operates in much the same way; both being legacies of pre-1922 British rule.If you think of anything else, ask.Oh yes, and despite the insistence by people from Cork that “everything up the north is half the price”, or that of the people of Ballymoney that “everything down south is twice the price”; both are nonsense. Thing OVERALL are slightly dearer down here, but wages are correspondingly considerably higher. It’s like this: If I earn €3, and a packet of biscuits costs me €2, I’ve €1 left to go into my savings. If you earn €2, and a packet of your biscuits is €1, you’ve STILL €1 to save.

This is one of the most interesting stories of WWII I've ever come across about the channel Islands .How the World’s Only Feudal Lord Outclassed the Nazis to Save Her PeopleWhen Germany invaded the Isle of Sark—the last foothold of feudalism in the western world—Dame Sibyl Hathaway protected her people with the unlikeliest of weapons: Feudal etiquette, old-world manners, and a dollop of classic snobbery.Dame Sibyl Hathaway had 275 Nazi prisoners on her hands and knew exactly what she wanted to do with them.It was May 1945. Five years earlier, Germany had invaded Hathaway’s home in the British Channel Islands, a tiny isle of 400 called Sark. Despite having no modern defense network or fancy gun emplacements—it didn’t even have electricity—Sark had proven itself to be uniquely prepared for its unwelcome visitors. The island had an advantage that the rest of Europe had discarded centuries earlier: feudalism.The Isle of Sark was the western world’s last fief. For 400 years, it had faithfully followed 16th century Norman law, and 61-year-old Dame Sibyl (as her subjects called her) served as their feudal overlord. She once defended the institution of feudalism by saying, “What is good enough for William the Conqueror is good enough for us."Now, just one week after Hitler had killed himself, Dame Sibyl walked down a steep, dusty path toward Sark’s main harbor to meet the British “liberation.” Around her, the island’s meadows appeared to bloom in celebration.The Dame greeted a group of British soldiers and led them to the Nazi’s island headquarters to discuss the terms of surrender. As Lieutenant Colonel K. Allen questioned the German Kommandant, Dame Sibyl translated everything into German. When Allen finished his interrogation, he turned to the Dame.“I can’t leave any troops here because so far only a token force has been landed in Guernsey,” Allen explained, referring to the island seven miles west of Sark. He was hesitant to continue. “Would you mind being left for a few days, or would you prefer to go to Guernsey with me?”Dame Sybil fought the urge to roll her eyes. She had been fending off the Nazis without any help from England since the war started. Why would she need help now? “As I have been left for nearly five years,” she said, “I can stand a few more days.”With that, the liberation team departed and Dame Sybil regained control over not just her island, but a new legion of German vassals.You could argue that she had been controlling them the whole time.Dame Sibyl once wrote that Sark is “an oasis of quiet and rest, unique in the present-day world.”Perched 350 feet above the English Channel, the island is a precipitous tableland blanketed by rolling pastures and a kaleidoscope of wildflowers. Narrow dirt lanes, walled in by tall hedgerows, sit shaded under the tunneled canopies of trees. On a clear day, you can peer across the island, past teams of grazing sheep and Guernsey cattle, and look onto a watery horizon that melts into the sky.The place is a time capsule. Cars are banned. Residents get around by bicycle, and the local ambulance and fire trucks are pulled by tractors. With little noise pollution, the island’s soundscape is a symphony of coastal winds, crashing waves, the clip-clop of horse-drawn carriages, and the rustle of waving fields bursting with whimsically named flowers: foxgloves, toadflax, dog violets, and oxeye daisies. Since there are no streetlights on Sark, the Milky Way gleams on moonless nights.ISTOCK/ALLARD1Along Sark’s coast, farmland cedes to golden slopes of gorse, which flirt with balding cliffs that tumble hundreds of feet into churning turquoise seas. Along the shoals, clouds of gulls scream, purple jellyfish bob, and the occasional puffin waddles. The island is tiny—only three miles long and 1.5 miles wide—but has so many nooks and crannies that it boasts 42 miles of coastline. When the strong tidal stream recedes, a wonderland of anemone-filled coves and caves is revealed.Victor Hugo, who visited Sark when he took exile in the Channel Islands in 1872, wrote that, “The island is a meadow and I work like an ox there. I do not graze there, however, though I gorge myself on flowers and dew … this beauty is absurd.” Four years later, the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne agreed, calling it, “On the whole the loveliest and wonderfullest thing I ever saw.”People have lived on this tranquil island as far back as 2000 BCE. Legend has it that, in the 6th century, Saint Magloire brought religion to Sark while riding the back of a sea monster. In the 13th century, the island became the property of the English Crown but remained mostly deserted (with the exception of a few "pirates, thieves, brigands, murderers, and assassins," François Rabelais wrote in the 1530s). In 1565, Helier de Carteret cleaned up the place after he earned Queen Elizabeth I’s permission to establish a fief there, bringing 40 families—most of them from the nearby island of Jersey. Each family received a parcel of land, called a tenement, and to this day Sark's plots bear old names in Norman French: La Varouque, La Sablonnerie, La Moinerie.Culturally and politically, Sark has changed very little since then. It, along with the three other major British Channel Islands—Guernsey, Jersey, and Alderney—are possessions of the British Crown, yet each island remains politically independent of the United Kingdom. (On Sark, there is no income tax, no welfare, and no help from the National Health Service.) During Dame Sibyl’s lifetime, homes were lit with oil lamps and water had to be pumped from a well or catchment. Anybody who wanted a warm bath had to light a fire by their tub. And most residents spoke a unique patois called Serquais, a remnant of the Norman French brought there by the island’s original settlers.When Germany invaded in 1940, many of the descendants of those original 40 settlers still lived on Sark. Heirs to more than four centuries of feudal rule, they had no intention of abandoning their island or their way of life. This was especially true of Dame Sibyl, who had been groomed to become the island’s leader since she was a little girl.As it turned out, the strict feudal etiquette she had spent her life practicing would become a potent weapon, a tool for bending the occupiers to her will.On the morning of June 9, 1940, Dame Sibyl Hathaway looked across her island and saw the horizon obscured by billows of black smoke.Twenty-five miles east, on the coast of France, oil storage tanks spewed flames. Weeks earlier, the Wehrmacht had penetrated the Maginot line, the bulwark of trenches and fortifications separating France from Germany. Now, as the occupation of France looked inevitable, the people of Normandy were sabotaging their own oil reserves.For Dame Sibyl, it was a private smoke signal. If Normandy fell, Sark would follow. (She knew the Germans would be hungry to occupy the Channel Islands; it was a chance to sow propaganda about controlling “British” territory.) As rumours swirled about evacuations, Dame Sibyl took the ferry to Guernsey to see how the second biggest Channel Island was preparing.The air was thick with panic. There were lines everywhere: Lines at stores as people frantically bought suitcases, lines at the bank as people attempted to withdraw money, lines at the dock as people pushed onto boats bound for England. Possessed by the chaos, islanders buried heirlooms in their gardens. Hundreds of expectant evacuees swarmed the veterinary clinic in an attempt to put their beloved pets to sleep.The Channel Islands, the Dame soon learned, would be demilitarised—they weren’t even going to put up a fight. In just one week, approximately 17,000 people would evacuate Guernsey alone. The commotion appalled Dame Sibyl so deeply that, on the trip back to Sark, she “made up my mind how best I could protect my own people.”According to old Norman Law, Sark’s tenants were sworn to protect the island from foreign invaders—in fact, custom required each landowner to own a musket—but that old precept felt laughably anachronistic in the face of a Nazi invasion. (In 1887, a journalist had described Sark’s so-called militia as little more than “seven dozen pairs of boots.”)LUCAS REILLYBut Dame Sibyl worried that Sark could crumble if too many people evacuated the island. The gist of feudalism, after all, is that it's self-sufficient: If everybody on Sark stuck together, the Dame reasoned, life could go on.Shortly after returning from Guernsey, she called a meeting and told the inhabitants that she had decided to stay—and asked the islanders to remain as well.“I am not promising you that it will be easy,” she told them. “We may be hungry but we will always have our cattle and crops, our gardens, a few pigs, our sheep and rabbits.”The Dame understood that not everybody might sign on and promised to arrange for anybody's departure, if they so wished.Of those born on Sark, not one person left.Just one week after the Channel Islands were officially demilitarised, three German military planes barrelled over Sark, hurtled toward Guernsey, and bombed that island's capital of St. Peter Port. Thirty-eight civilians died. Dame Sibyl watched as the planes arced over the Channel and aimed for her home. Bullets pelted Sark's harbours, but nobody was hurt.The following day, the telephone line connecting Sark and Guernsey fell silent. Three days after that, on July 3, 1940, a lifeboat arrived at Sark’s main harbor. The Germans had arrived—and the Dame made her first move in a subtle game of political one-upmanship.Sark’s coastline is foreboding. In the Middle Ages, pirates and privateers would circle the island's bluffs looking for a place to dock, only to declare it unreachable. Today, visitors can be carried up a steep lane by a tractor-pulled wagon affectionately named the “Toast Rack.” In Dame Sibyl’s day, horses lugged the passengers up. But not on the day the Nazis arrived. Dame Sibyl resolved that she would not go to meet the Germans; they would come to her—and they would walk.As the Nazi officers hiked, Dame Sibyl waited in her royal residence, a stone mansion known as La Seigneurie, and talked strategy with her husband, Bob. “Let’s take a leaf out of Mussolini's book,” she told him. They placed two chairs behind a desk at the far end of the drawing room, which would force the officers to walk the whole length of the room. It was a small power move, but they needed every trick they could muster. The Dame advised her maid to announce the Germans as if they were any other villager.CHRIS JACKSON, GETTY IMAGESDame Sibyl later wrote in her autobiography, The Dame of Sark, that she was “determined that this island, at least, should show a front of firmness and dignity and give the impression that we were taking everything in our stride in the firm conviction that we would make the best of a bad time which we were convinced would not endure long.”When the Germans arrived, the officers wiped their boots on the doormat outside. Dame Sibyl glanced at her husband with relief. Just from the sound of their feet, she could tell that the men about to enter her house were aristocrats—the way they wiped their boots was a sign of respect.As luck would have it, the Channel Islands attracted a disproportionate number of Germany’s uniformed aristocrats. The islands were a relatively safe spot for Germany’s most privileged soldiers, who were naturally attracted to staying in a bygone place where inheritance still equaled influence. “That the German nobles would have felt a particular affinity with a place where pre-modern feudal rule was still partially intact is an inescapable conclusion,” Paul Sanders wrote in The British Channel IslandsUnder German Occupation.This arrangement, however, would play into Dame Sibyl’s hands.The maid announced the men’s arrival. Two officers, draped in dark green, introduced themselves and told Dame Sibyl that they had come to establish some rules. There would be a curfew at 11 p.m.; no groups larger than five were allowed in the streets; all pubs were to be closed; all arms were to be confiscated; and no boats were allowed to leave the harbour.Hearing this, Dame Sibyl nodded: Bitte hinsetzen, she said, asking them to sit. She continued speaking in German: "I will see that these orders are obeyed."There was a moment of stunned silence. The German officers, dumbfounded by the Dame’s command of their language, were immediately flustered.“You do not appear to be in the least afraid,” one officer said.Without hesitation, Dame Sibyl replied tartly, “Is there any reason why I should be afraid of German officers?”This, after all, was her island.For the past 400 years, the Isle of Sark had been ruled by a "Lord of the Manor" called a Seigneur or Dame, who pledges allegiance to, and rents the island from, the King or Queen of England. The Seigneur or Dame holds the island in perpetual fief, and rents out 40 parcels, or tenements, to 40 different residents called tenants, who can rent pieces of each parcel to lower-ranked islanders. For centuries, these 40 landowners made up the island’s parliament, called Chief Pleas, with the Seigneur or Dame presiding as a quasi-dictator."It may seem undemocratic that most members hold their seats by right of property," Deputy John La Trobe Bateman told National Geographic in 1971, "but we are perhaps the world's best-represented community. With our population of 575, we have one legislator for every 11 people."HULTON ARCHIVE, GETTY IMAGESAs the island's leader, Dame Sibyl’s job came with privileges that would have made Hitler drool. According to the original Letters Patent, she controlled:"All of its rights, members, liberties and appurtenances, and all and singular castles, fortresses, houses, buildings, structures ruined with their fragments, lands, meadows, pastures, commons, wastes, woods, waters watercourses, ponds, fees, rents reversions, services ... vicarages, chapels or churches, and also all manner of tithes, oblations, fruits, inventions, mines, quarries, ports, shores, rocks, wrecks of the sea, shipwrecks, farms, fee farms, knight’s fees, wards, marriages ... fugitives or pirates, or felons de se, out-laws, of persons put exigent, and the forfeited or confiscated goods of persons condemned or convinced any other way whatsoever; also all forfeitures, paunages, free warrens, courts leet, views of frankpledge, assize and assay of bread, wine and beer; all fairs, markets, customs, rights of tolls, jurisdictions, liberties, immunities, exemptions, franchises, privileges, commodities, profits, emoluments, and all of the Queen’s heredits..."And so on.And none of that counted the specific privileges afforded to Dame Sibyl by ancient Norman common law. When a property was sold, she was entitled to one-thirteenth of the purchase price, called a la troisieme. For every chimney, she was entitled to a tax paid in chickens. For every harvest, she was owed a tenth sheaf of corn, apples, flax, hemp, or beans. She claimed ownership of every bit of flotsam and jetsam that washed ashore. Only she could keep pigeons or an unspayed dog. (Dame Sibyl’s was named Maxine.) She also had to pay the Queen for the privilege of running the island. But since the figure was never adjusted for inflation after being set in the 16th century, the cost to rule Sark was just £1.79.The islanders were also subjected to a buffet of centuries-old common laws. There was, of course, the rule on muskets. Divorce was illegal. Government officials were required to juggle multiple jobs (with the constable running double-duty as the island's chief beetle inspector). Tenants were required to spend two unpaid days a year repairing the island's roads. Most amusingly, if an islander ever felt that he or she was wronged by a neighbour, they could drop to their knees and recite the Clameur de Haro, an ancient injunction that involves yelling, “Haro! Haro! Haro! À l'aide, mon Prince, on me fait tort!” followed by the Lord’s Prayer in French. Legally, the offender had to report to the constable.To say the least, Sark’s residents have never been keen about outsiders barging in and trying to change their way of life. One time during Dame Sibyl’s reign, the island hired a new doctor who brought a car, insisting it was vital for medical emergencies. Islanders and the Chief Pleas treated the offense with the kind of hellfire one might expect of a murder trial. They determined that the car could stay—but only if it were drawn by a horse.“That’s just the way Sark has always been,” Margaret Langlois, a resident for the past 27 years, explains. “The attitude here is: If you don’t like it, you know where the boat is.”The Dame’s complete control over the happenings in Sark wasn’t her only power over the Germans. Her name was in the Almanach de Gotha, a German directory that listed all of Europe’s most important royals and nobility—a who’s who of the continent’s aristocrats.“She was aristocratic and came to understand that the Germans in command were also aristocratic,” Sark’s current Seigneur, Christopher Beaumont, tells Mental Floss. “They connected on that level. And it would allow conversations to go on that probably couldn’t have happened had their statuses been different.”From her opening interaction, Dame Sibyl immediately realised that any fantasies about armed insurrection would be useless. Rather, her greatest weapon would be decorum. For the rest of the war, she put on an air of exceedingly stuffy social graces. She would never approach a German, but expect him to approach her. Before allowing a Nazi to take a seat in her home, she reportedly demanded that he bow and kiss her hand.As she’d later write in The Dame of Sark, “The stiff German formality worked in my favour because it showed the Germans that I expected to be treated in my home with the rigid etiquette to which they were accustomed in their own country.” These social conventions successfully eroded her new visitors’ confidence and gave her the upper hand when they began mulling policies that threatened her people’s lives.At first, Dame Sibyl found small ways to get under the occupiers' skin. In her sitting room, she deliberately placed anti-fascist books at eye-level. Sometimes she’d innocently ask the soldiers why they were taking so long to conquer Russia. She regularly fired shots at the Nazi sense of ethnic superiority with backhanded compliments. (When she learned that the Germans had bought all the tweed in Guernsey and were planning to ship it to Britain for tailoring, she told them: “No one can deny that English and Scotch tweeds are the best in the world ... or that London tailors are vastly superior to those in any other country.”)Dame Sibyl knew that, in aristocratic circles, the artifice of polite conversation meant everything—and her words could work like a psychological water torture experiment. Each little statement was harmless alone, but over the course of weeks and months, these constant drops of rhetorical acid helped her assert dominance and compelled many German officers to drop their guard. As she'd write, “In the course of polite conversation I was often able to acquire useful information which would not otherwise have been available."Sark's residents followed the Dame's lead. When the Germans tried to implement a bureaucracy that threatened the island's feudal self-sufficiency—demanding that fishermen only go out to sea from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., accompanied by an armed guard—they responded with their own subtle shows of disrespect. Sometimes fishermen "forgot" to appear at the docks during the approved fishing times, leaving their German chaperones waiting alone at the harbour. Other times, fishermen deliberately steered into giant swells, soaking the landlubbing Nazis and making them seasick. Even the children played tricks, stringing invisible wires across the road to trip Germans riding bicycles.LUCAS REILLYBut war, of course, is more than a game of pranks. All of Sark’s radios would eventually be confiscated, leaving most residents clueless as to what was happening off the island. Dame Sibyl, for instance, had a hazy idea that the Luftwaffe were bombing London, but she didn’t know about the bombings in Bristol, Birmingham, or Belfast.She also didn’t know that her eldest son, Buster, was long dead—killed during the blitz of Liverpool.By summer 1941, as more enemy troops moved onto the Channel Islands, the Germans started hoarding a disproportionate amount of the island’s produce. Sark's islanders began to suffer. The Sarkese began making “tobacco” from dried clover and fruit leaves; “tea” with dried peapods steeped in hot water; “coffee” with grated barley, dried sugar beet, and parsnips. Every meal included lobster. “When lobster is the main dish day after day, month in month out, let me assure you that you become heartily sick of the sight of it,” Dame Sibyl wrote.The Dame fought these restrictions with a healthy dose of do-you-know-who-I-am? To get what she wanted, she schmoozed with the aristocratic officers: Colonel Graf von Schmettow, Commander-in-Chief of the Channel Islands, who was friends with Germany’s exiled Kaiser; Freiherr von Aufsess, the Chief of Civil Administration, who was indirectly connected to the Dame through a marriage of cousins; Prince Oettingen, the Kommandant of Civil Administration, who shared mutual friends with the Dame back in Germany. Whenever troops on Sark gave Dame Sibyl gruff, she simply went over their heads to these “friends.”“If the lower classes made any attempt to bully me or my people I knew full well that neither they nor I would show any sign of cringing,” she wrote. She was able to end a handful of disputes by simply asking: Who is your superior?“Because the social conventions were so strong, she was treated with much more deference than we would get treated with now,” Seigneur Beaumont says.Weaponizing etiquette truly had its charms. When von Schmettow’s son died on the Russian front, Dame Sibyl sent him a sympathy card, a gesture Von Schmettow never forgot. So later, when Sark risked being slapped with steeper rations, von Schmettow fought the cuts on the Dame’s behalf. And when Sark’s German doctor was murdered by a fellow German soldier, the Dame’s relationship with Prince Oettingen ensured that the island received a replacement immediately. “She essentially used social protocol to broker deals,” Beaumont says.Some policies, however, were beyond Dame Sibyl’s control. "Natural factors limit the number of people who can live on Sark," Beaumont says. "If we've got close to 1000 people here, we could start running out of water." In October 1941, 300 German soldiers were sent to the island, putting a significant strain on the island's resources.Things got worse as the war heated up. The following year, British commandos raided Sark, killing two German officers and taking one prisoner. The Germans retaliated, placing barbed wire around Sark’s perimeter and laying more than 13,000 landmines, which made it impossible for the islanders to launch their fishing boats, collect the gorse they needed for fuel, or gather seaweed they used for fertilising fields. Soon, rabbits discovered that the minefields were a great place to breed—and the island's crops were decimated by the ensuing bunny boom.Then Germany decided to deport all of Sark’s British citizens.According to some accounts, Dame Sibyl convinced the Germans that most of Sark’s people were, in fact, not British, but Channel Islanders. This little game of semantics appears to have worked: Of the 400 islanders, the list of deportees was reduced to just 11 people.In February 1943, a more indiscriminate round of deportations was ordered by the Nazi brass in Berlin. Two additional roundups targeted 50 people, including Dame Sibyl’s husband Bob, an American citizen, who was sent to Laufen prison camp in France. (Bob maintained his resistance in prison: He smoked a pipe during the daily parade; stood at ease when he was called to attention; and snuck secret doses of liquor.)It's difficult to quantify how well Dame Sibyl's networking had helped in reducing the number of deportations. We do know, however, that Prince Oettingen, who considered the Dame a friend, was so outspoken in his opposition to the deportations that he was eventually removed from his post.Now alone, Dame Sibyl doubled down on her attempts to make the occupiers feel like incompetent fools. One of the most amusing stories occurred during the spring of 1943. At the time, Sark’s Guernsey cattle were still producing half a pint of milk per head, which the island’s farmers secretly skimmed before handing over to the Germans. When the Germans complained to Dame Sibyl that they couldn't make butter with the milk, she showed up to their headquarters dressed in traditional butter-churning overalls and proceeded to give such a confusing and patronizing lecture on the art of butter-making that they were too embarrassed to ever complain again.For the rest of the war, the Germans were left scratching their heads in bewilderment as they tried making butter from skim milk.In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, Dame Sibyl groggily woke to the rumble of bombers flying overhead and the thundering of heavy guns off the French coast. Later that morning, as she drank a cup of what could euphemistically be called coffee, the island’s German doctor visited and, in hushed tones, told her that the Allies had invaded Normandy.All the ships and planes had bypassed the Channel Islands.KEYSTONE, GETTY IMAGESAs Allied troops pressed into France, island life turned bleak. Winston Churchill refused to send any food to the Channel Islands, insisting that Germany was responsible for providing sustenance to lands it occupied. But the Germans didn’t provide for the people of Sark—the people of Sark provided for the Germans. Feudalism, the Dame learned, didn't work smoothly when hundreds of moochers were hoarding all the provisions.Indeed, by winter, even the Germans were feeling pinched. Chickens, pigs, cats, and dogs started disappearing. The Germans demanded that all of Sark’s stored grain, plus 90 percent of all potatoes, be funneled into their coffers.For the Dame, this crossed a line. Instead of complying, she helped launch a clandestine operation to steal back what was, according to feudal law, rightfully hers. One evening, as the Germans were preoccupied with their dinner, the Dame and a crew of conspirators stole a half-ton of wheat from the village hall, which they hid in her barn. Meanwhile, they secretly hoarded potatoes under a trap door in her drawing room. The loot was secretly distributed in to residents in rations.The months crawled until Hitler finally died. On May 8, 1945, the commanding Germans demanded that Dame Sibyl hand over Sark’s cattle and 200 tons of timber for fuel. Instead, she flew the British and American flags from her tower and joined the islanders as they lit a bonfire in celebration.By this point, there were 275 German soldiers stationed on Sark, but after the arrival—and departure—of the British liberation team, Dame Sibyl had become their commander. As she began giving orders, a British officer observed that she acted, "more forceful than any army officer and more than equal to any German Kommandant."First, the Dame demanded they establish a telephone line connecting her house to Guernsey. Then she ordered the Germans to return all the confiscated wireless radios and to remove all 13,500 landmines. She insisted that each prisoner repeat her commands and relished hearing the soldiers say: “Zu Befehl, Gnädige Frau”—"At your command, madam."Over the coming months, German POWs completed a series of construction projects, building a protected concrete path over a narrow isthmus connecting the southern half of the island; repairing and redecorating the homes they had occupied; and resurfacing the island’s roads. They also removed rusty roll-bombs dangling from wires over Sark’s harbors.One day, Dame Sibyl received a call from Sark’s ex-Kommandant informing her that one of those bombs had exploded. Two German prisoners were killed.In that moment, the courtly facade of manners the Dame had maintained so firmly for five years finally crumbled. She said what was exactly on her mind.“Ach, So?”For much of the war, Sark’s people resented Dame Sibyl for asking them to stay. That changed when they learned about the neighboring island of Alderney.Similar to Sark in size and culture, Alderney was completely evacuated days after the bombing of Guernsey—and the Nazis went on to destroy it. They dismantled Alderney’s homes for firewood. They constructed ugly concrete fortifications, bunkers, air raid shelters, and gun emplacements and built two work camps and two concentration camps. They killed the last Alderney cow, rendering the unique breed—which only lived on the island—extinct. The occupation had a similar effect on the island’s unique dialect, Auregnais: The displacement of Alderney’s people killed the language.After the war, Alderney was rebuilt from scratch, and most returning residents abandoned any relics of old Norman politics. Today, Alderney has recovered—but it is relatively dense with cars and homes. (Despite being the same size as Sark, it’s home to five times as many people.) The island is still beautiful, but the old-world culture and atmosphere that made it unique has disappeared.Had Sark’s people left, the island may have suffered a similar fate.BUNDESARCHIV, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS // CC-BY-SA 3.0 GERMANYThat’s not to say Sark hasn't changed. Today, the chimney tax is gone. (Dame Sibyl got annoyed when islanders began paying with their wimpiest chickens.) Few, if any, of the old grain-based tithes are collected, and the island’s agricultural industry has dwindled to favor tourism. The stringent rules on divorce have been modernized and the island’s language, Serquais, is down to its last five speakers. Most drastically, in 2008, Sark’s feudal politics was abolished in favor of democracy, a decision that stripped the landowning class—and all future seigneurs and dames—of their power.The feudal system of land tenure, however, remains intact. There is still no freehold on Sark, which ensures that the 40 tenements retain their quaint, rural charm. The seigneur, who occupies a more ceremonial role, remains the island’s chief tenant, with perpetual fief owed to the Queen. (The method of payment, however, has been modernized; today, Seigneur Christopher Beaumont—Dame Sibyl’s great grandson—pays Queen Elizabeth II £1.79 through an online bank transfer.) And some of the old Norman laws are still enforced: The Seigneur still owns all of the island’s pigeons.Whatever charm Sark has retained, much of it is owed to Dame Sibyl. Every deported islander would survive the war, and nearly all of them would return to Sark, where the Dame's steadfast leadership brought the island back to its old routines. The return of normalcy could be seen most clearly through the prism of local politics, where, once again, the quaintest moves to modernize were treated with unbridled hysteria.Take when an aging Dame Sibyl, battling arthritis and a bum hip, decided to bring an electric mobility scooter onto Sark. It might as well have been Watergate.But Dame Sybil won that battle, too. What had been true during the German occupation remained true later. As she put it: “I usually got my way.”All credit goes to LUCAS REILLYHow the World’s Only Feudal Lord Outclassed the Nazis to Save Her People

Individual retirement accountAn individual retirement account (IRA) is a form of "individual retirement plan", provided by many financial institutions, that provides tax advantages for retirement savings in the United States. An individual retirement account is a type of "individual retirement arrangement" as described in IRS Publication 590, individual retirement arrangements (IRAs). The term IRA, used to describe both individual retirement accounts and the broader category of individual retirement arrangements, encompasses an individual retirement account; a trust or custodial account set up for the exclusive benefit of taxpayers or their beneficiaries; and an individual retirement annuity, by which the taxpayers purchase an annuity contract or an endowment contract from a life insurance company.To answer this question, there should be more information: are you at fault? do you have insurance? how old are you? are you retired?, and would this be a withdrawal from a ROTH IRA?. So let’s start with the accident:If you cause the accidentIn most states, if you cause an accident, your insurance company pays for the damage and injury costs of victims. If you have no insurance, the victims might sue you. The process is different in the 12 “no-fault” insurance states. Drivers make claims through their own insurance for minor injuries, no matter who caused the crash. This means other people may not be able to sue you for medical costs unless the injuries are severe or the tab reaches a significant amount. Each state sets its own rules for the situations in which legal action is allowed.If someone else causes the accidentThose with no insurance may be limited in what they can sue the at-fault driver for, depending on the state.If you live in a state with “no pay, no play” laws, uninsured drivers are prevented from suing for damages that can’t be quantified with a dollar amount. These include physical pain, emotional distress, and mental suffering.Uninsured motorists in “no pay, no play” states also may have to pay a massive deductible toward repairs before they can sue for property damage costs — that is $25,000 in Louisiana, for example.States with “no pay, no play” laws are:AlaskaCaliforniaIndianaIowaKansasLouisianaMichiganMissouriNorth DakotaNew JerseyOklahomaOregonCar insurance is usually requiredAlmost every state requires drivers to prove they can take financial responsibility if they cause a crash. That often means buying car insurance, although some states allow a bond or cash deposit.Alaska and New Hampshire are special cases. Alaska doesn’t require insurance in places where registering your car is optional; people in other parts of the state do need coverage. New Hampshire doesn’t mandate auto insurance for residents with clean driving records and only requires proof of financial responsibility after a crash.» MORE: States where you might not have to get car insurancePenalties for getting caught without insuranceWhether you cause a car accident or not, if you’re caught driving without insurance or other proof of financial responsibility, you could face a wide range of consequences.For example, first-time offenders in Texas face a fine of at least $175. But in Minnesota, the same offense could carry a fine of up to $1,000, up to 90 days in jail and loss of your license and registration.Check out this list of penalties for driving without insurance compiled by the Consumer Federation of America for a state-by-state breakdown.If you have insurance, but no proofYou should keep proof of insurance, such as the policy ID card, in your vehicle. Some states allow you to show proof of insurance on your smartphone.If you cause an accident but have no proof of insurance, it’s less serious than being uninsured. You may get a citation but could potentially get it dismissed by showing proof of insurance in court.An accident with no insurance hurts future ratesWe analyzed rates for drivers in California, Illinois, and Texas who had caused an accident and were uninsured. We compared those rates with prices for drivers with clean records.Car insurance prices if you cause an accident without insuranceStateThe average rate for good driversAverage rate with one at-fault crashAverage rate with one at-fault crash and no proof of insuranceCalifornia$1,293 per year$2,016 per year$2,084 per yearIllinois$1,029 per year$1,389 per year$1,409 per yearTexas$1,429 per year$2,010 per year$2,092 per yearRates for drivers who crashed without proof of insurance were significantly higher than rates for good drivers. To a lesser degree, they were also higher than the rates for insured drivers who had caused an accident.An IRA is a type of investment vehicle that allows you to earn money tax-free until you withdraw the funds. ... If you simply deposit money into your IRA, you won't make much of anything. Once you deposit the money, go in and invest with the help of a financial professional if needed.In addition, with a Traditional IRA, you may get a tax deduction when you contribute to it, and with a Roth IRA, can withdraw money from it tax-free once you reach retirement age. Still, despite the benefits that IRAs offer, there are a number of good reasons you might be better of not putting money into your IRA. The tax advantages of an IRA can have a dramatic impact on savings over the course of several decades. While anyone can contribute up to $5,500 (or $6,500 for individuals age 50 and older) to a traditional IRA, and $6,000 in 2019, not everyone can deduct that full amount on their tax return.Can I contribute to an IRA if I am not working?Under current laws, if you're married filing jointly, you can contribute the maximum into an IRA for each spouse—even if one of you has no earned income—as long as the working spouse has income equal to both contributions. ... That's because once opened, a spousal IRA is an Individual Retirement Account like any other. Yes, you can contribute to both a Roth IRA and an employer-sponsored retirement plan such as a 401(k), SEP or SIMPLE IRA, subject to income limits. However, each type of retirement account has annual contribution limits.Can I contribute more than 5500 to my IRA?Any year in which you contribute to a Roth even though you make too much to qualify—or if you contribute more than permitted—you've made an ineligible (excess) contribution. ... The $6,000 (or $7,000) figure above is the maximum you can contribute in 2019 to either or both a Traditional and a Roth IRA.Technically, you can't borrow against your IRA or take a loan directly from it. ... Essentially, money taken out of an IRA can be put back into it or another qualified tax-advantaged account within 60 days, without taxes and penaltiesShould I withdraw from IRA to pay off debt?A: Yes, you can withdraw money from your Roth IRA to pay off debt. But it is rarely a good idea to tap money earmarked for your retirement. First, you should understand the rulesHow can I take money from my IRA without penalty?Delay IRA withdrawals until age 59 1/2. Once you turn age 59 1/2, you can withdraw any amount from your IRA without having to pay the 10 percent penalty. However, regular income tax will still be due on each withdrawalThere are so many rules when it comes to an IRA, that it seems a definitive no, at first to your question, but after much research, I seem to have found a loophole without breaking the rules. I am going to include that copy below, for those who are interested. I warn you from now that it is a lot of information, but it is good information to have at your fingertips. I have given you short simple answer’s above to basic, short, simple questions- I hope that you find it useful. Thanks for the question:How to Use Your Roth IRA as an Emergency FundBY AMY FONTINELLEUpdated Nov 5, 2018Ever feel like you don’t have enough money to save for emergencies and also save for retirement? Keeping the money in your bank account makes it easily accessible if you suddenly need a pile of cash to fix your car, cover unexpected medical bills or deal with unemployment. Putting money in a retirement account, on the other hand, comes with rules that can make it difficult to get your hands on your cash should you suddenly need it. These structures are one reason people can feel understandably reluctant to put too much in a retirement account like an IRA or 401(k), even though we know a comfortable future depends on it.Good news: An often-overlooked feature of the Roth IRA could solve your problem. Because contributions to a Roth are made with money on which you've already paid taxes, IRS rules allow you to withdraw that money at any time without penalty.By contrast, contributions to traditional IRAs are generally made with pre-tax income. You don't pay tax on that money until you withdraw it at 59½ or older, but if you do decide you need to withdraw it before that age, you pay both income tax on your withdrawal and a 10% penalty.With a Roth, only your Roth’s investment earnings must remain in the account until you’re 59½ in order to avoid paying a 10% penalty. There are limitations on how much you can earn to qualify for a Roth, but if you do qualify, your Roth can give you the safety of knowing that, if you really need it, you have penalty-free access to these savings. Your Roth account can double as a second emergency savings account.How much can you save per year? Subject to income limits, in 2019 a Roth IRA allows you to save as much as $6,000 per year (the 2018 limit is $5,500 ) and still have access to these retirement savings in the event of an emergency If you’re married, you and your spouse can each contribute $6,000, for a total of $12,000 (or $11,000 in 2018). Add an additional $1,000 per person to both 2018 and 2019 contributions if either or both of you are age 50 or older.Remember the biggest benefit: Money in your Roth grows tax-free until retirement. And when you do retire, you pay no taxes on withdrawals. You also won't be mandated to take required minimum distributions (RMDs) from that account; the money can continue to grow tax-free until you need it. (With a traditional IRA, you do pay taxes on withdrawals and taking out a certain amount after age 70½ is required.)All this probably sounds way too far in the future to be important. But trust us, it is. See if you qualify and don’t miss out on making this year’s contribution – it’s an opportunity (and future tax break) you’ll never get back.Here are seven tips for using your Roth IRA as an emergency fund:1. Understand Why You’re Doing ItThe advantage of putting emergency savings into a Roth IRA is that you don't miss the limited opportunity to make that year's retirement contribution. You can only contribute a few thousand dollars to a Roth IRA each year, and once a year passes without a contribution, you lose the opportunity to make it forever.The more money set aside for retirement and the earlier saving is begun, the better. In reality, most people won't have to go back and withdraw money from their Roth, which means they'll have more saved for retirement. And in a worst-case scenario in which money does have to be withdrawn, it can be done without penalty.“Roth IRAs remain the most flexible retirement accounts in the country,” says Jeff S. Vollmer, managing director of Hyde Park Wealth Management in Cincinnati.Accessing these funds, however, should be your last resort.Matt Becker, a fee-only certified financial planner and author of Home, points out that you don’t want to be withdrawing Roth IRA contributions for minor emergencies such as car repairs or small medical bills; you should keep enough in savings for these events. Your Roth IRA emergency fund should be for larger emergencies such as unemployment or a serious illness.Withdrawing Roth contributions is a better option than racking up interest on credit card debt, but it shouldn’t be your sole source of emergency funds. Best is to have a separate emergency fund account as well as the money allocated for emergencies in your Roth.2. Only Withdraw ContributionsThe key to using a Roth IRA as an emergency fund is to avoid withdrawing investment earnings. While you can withdraw contributions at any time without penalty, withdrawal of earnings before age 59½ means you'll have to pay a 10% penalty on that money. Following this rule is simple: Don’t withdraw more than you’ve put in.If you do have to withdraw contributions, you can pay yourself back and retain your Roth contribution for that year if you act fast.“If the emergency turns out to be a short-term cash flow issue that gets resolved quickly, [you] can put the money back into the Roth IRA within 60 days to refund this account,” says certified financial planner Scott W. O'Brien, director of wealth management for WorthPointe Wealth Management in Austin, Texas. Do that and the most you'll lose is a little bit of interest.3. Don’t Invest Emergency Fund Money"It is critical not to invest the portion of your Roth dedicated to your emergency fund,” says Garrett M. Prom, founder of Prominent Financial Planning in Austin, Texas. “This money is for emergencies, which in most cases is job loss. If that job loss is part of a downturn in the economy, you will have to sell investments, usually at a loss.”The part of your Roth IRA contribution earmarked as your emergency fund doesn’t belong in stocks, bonds or mutual funds like a typical retirement contribution. It belongs in a liquid account which still earns a bit of interest, but one from which you can withdraw at a moment’s notice without losing principal. Ally Bank, for example, has an IRA savings account that pays 1.85% interest, as of September 2018.Gains to the Roth account will increase without having to pay taxes on the earnings every year, as would be the case with a regular savings account. You also won’t have to pay tax on these earnings when you withdraw them as qualified distributions once you reach retirement age.A savings account within a Roth can earn at least as much interest as a regular savings account – if not more, depending on where you bank. If you already have a Roth IRA but your brokerage doesn't have any low-risk places to keep your money while still earning interest, open a second Roth IRA at an institution that does. It’s fine to have multiple Roth IRA accounts, as long as your total contributions to all accounts don’t exceed the annual limit.Once you have a large enough emergency fund, start moving those contributions into higher-earning investments; you don't want all of your Roth contributions in cash forever. This process might take you a few months or a few years, depending on how quickly you can accumulate additional savings.4. Don't Withdraw Unseasoned Rollover FundsIf your Roth IRA contains contributions that you converted or rolled over from another retirement account, such as a 401(k) from a former employer, you’ll need to be careful about any withdrawals, because there are special rules about withdrawing rollover contributions. Unless they've been in your Roth for at least five years, you'll incur a 10% penalty if you withdraw them, and each conversion or rollover has a separate five-year waiting period.Withdrawing rollover contributions penalty-free can be tricky, so it’s a good idea to consult a tax professional if you find yourself in this situation. The good news is that if you have both regular contributions and rollover contributions, the IRS first categorizes your withdrawals as withdrawals of regular contributions before it categorizes them as withdrawals of rollover contributions.5. Know How Much Time It Takes to Get Your Contributions BackWhat good is an emergency fund if you can’t access the money when you need it? Funds availability may differ depending on the institution where you keep your Roth and the type of account you place the money in. You don’t want to learn later when you need money urgently, that it will take days to get a check or bank transfer, so find out before making a contribution to your Roth IRA how long it will take to get it back.Funds can typically be retrieved in less than three business days. If you are taking cash out of a money market or mutual fund and you put in your withdrawal request before 4 p.m. EST, you will have the money by the next business day. If the money is invested in stocks, you will need to wait three business days typically, although if you have a checking account with the same company where you have your Roth IRA, you may be able to get it faster.A wire transfer can also be a fast way to access funds, though you’ll have to pay a wire transfer fee that’s typically $25 to $30.“Most brokerage firms can wire funds directly from a Roth IRA to a checking or savings account in one business day, assuming stocks or bonds don't have to be sold to generate cash,” says Accredited Asset Management Specialist Marcus Dickerson of Beaumont, Texas.These potential delays in Roth IRA fund availability are another reason to keep some emergency cash outside of your Roth IRA, in your checking or savings account, for extremely urgent needs.6. Maximize Your ContributionOnce a particular year's deadline passes for contributing to a Roth IRA, you've lost a chance to contribute for that year forever. Since the Roth has a relatively low annual contribution limit, you don't want to miss out on making the full contribution for any year if you can help it.The maximum you can contribute for the year, as of tax year 2019, is the lesser of $6,000, or your taxable compensation for the year. If you’re 50 or older, you can contribute the lesser of $7,000 or your taxable compensation for the year. (The figures for 2018 are $5,500 and $6,500, respectively.)The IRS lowers the Roth IRA contribution limits if your filing status is married filing jointly or qualifying widow(er) and your modified AGI is $193, 000 to $203,000 in 2019 ($189,000 to $199,000 in 2018); if your modified AGI is $203,000 or more ($199,000 or more for 2018), you can’t contribute to a Roth. In 2019 single filers and heads of household hit the reduced contribution threshold at $122,000 and are disqualified once their modified AGI is $137,000 or more (or $120,000 and $135,000, respectively, in 2018).“Don't forget to fund an account for the low wage or nonworking spouse,” says Amy Rose Herrick, a Chartered Financial Consultant and paid tax preparer in Christiansted, Va. “Too many people assume you have to be earning funds to have your own retirement account. This is not true. You can have what is referred to as a spousal Roth IRA based on the earnings of the working spouse.”7. Fill Out the Correct Paperwork at Tax TimeIf you do need to withdraw contributions from your Roth IRA to use in an emergency, there’s paperwork involved. Even though you're allowed to withdraw contributions without penalty, you still have to report your withdrawals to the IRS on part III of form 8606.If you use tax preparation software, it will ask you if you made any withdrawals from a retirement account during the year and guide you through the paperwork. If you use a professional tax preparer, make sure to tell him or her about your withdrawal so he or she can fill out IRS form 8606 for you.If you only put money in your Roth and don’t take anything out, you have nothing extra to do at tax time. You don’t need to report Roth IRA contributions on your tax return since you’ve already paid tax on that income and contributions don’t reduce your taxable income.Also, if you make your Roth contribution before the income tax filing deadline for the year and need to withdraw that money before the filing deadline, the IRS treats these contributions as if you had never made them. You won’t need to report them at tax time.The Bottom Line“The Roth IRA is the perfect place to stow those ‘just in case’ funds while also taking advantage of the opportunity for tax-free growth, and tax-free income, in retirement,” Dickerson says.While the IRS calls the types of withdrawals described in this article “unqualified,” which makes it sound like you’re breaking a rule, it considers them a “return of your regular contributions” and does not tax or penalize them. “Qualified” distributions are simply those that have been in your Roth for at least five years and that you withdraw after age 59½.You have 15½ months each tax year to accumulate emergency funds to place in a Roth. For the tax year 2018, for example, you can make contributions through April 15, 2019. For the tax year 2019, you can make contributions from Jan. 1, 2019 through April 15, 2020.