Well, this gets a bit tricky.

Are you suddenly going to have a stroke as a result of a previously undiagnosed herditary condition? I did. So budgets change over time. Personally I put aside an amount each week for sickness - but it didn't cover major loss of earnings. I did have a policy for that - but due to a series of changes I'd let it lapse before I needed it. Fortunately the medical costs themselves were largely met by the state - but more and more is not being state funded.

As for holidays - are you going to a bach at the nearest beach - or a flash hotel in London for your holiday? But it is fairly easy to budget for this and set aside an amount each week. You might get caught by things like rising fuel costs, but that can be factored in.

And as for the pension - that is really curly. There are sites that will let you calculate how much you need for retirement. One of the most popular (and independent) sites is www.sorted.org.nz. There are different thoughts on this - and of course a lot of people get by with just national super.

So these are just some thoughts of the top of my head. I do have a program that shows how these things work - but that's a commercial program designed to be used by my business clients for their planning. The sorted site does much the same sort of thing - without costing anything.

I hope these thoughts help. And if you haven't tried sorted, check it out.

This is a bit tricky - not to mention very sad. Forgetting the legal stuff, there are two kinds of company cessation: they pay all bills and distribute the rest to the owners - or they go broke and leave debts behind. So the first thing to do is to see if you can find out which of these categories applies.

I'm no lawyer - but it seems that if a company wound itself up without first settling it's debts, that would be wrong - so I'd imagine you could go the ex-directors.

If the company went bust, creditors should have been sent a notification of this - and a chance to establish their claims. Again if you didn't then something went wrong - like they omitted your name from the list. Of course this may well not help - unsecured creditors often do not get anything once receivers / liquidators and secured creditors (e.g. banks) have their piece of the action.

So it's a bit late now they've been wound up - but you can still have a go - particularly if they were not insolvent. Either way it seems likely you've been hard done by the company having been struck off still owing you a debt.

Good luck.