Budget

Originally Posted by Skip

Me too!


LOL - I dont think things are that bad - my neighbours live in the same size house as us and have a 5 year old girl and a 13 month old boy - I assume they will have to move soon - is there a law/regulation regarding different sex children sleeping in the same bedroom?

/Sorry for the derail

When my housing benefit is assessed they look at the ages and sexes of the kids to determine the size of house i should have. IIRC they consider 10 as being the age that boys and girls should have separate rooms but same sex can share at any age. Therefore, as i have a daughter 10, and boys 7 and 4, i am entitled to a three bed house. However, they will only pay £600 pcm for that in this area, whereas a half decent 3-bed in my village would cost at least £700!
I only pay slightly more than that for my house which has separate lounge and diner, kitchen, utility, playroom AND conservatory, 3 bathrooms and 4 beds, but as i said i get a good rate (the owners could get another £200+pcm if they rented thru the local american bases, but would only get short term tenants).

I understand why you guys are unhappy not being able to afford a bigger place but I still think you should consider yourself lucky to have a place you actually own (are are in a process of repaying).. I have been trying to save up for a deposit that would allow us to get a smallest of places on our own for some time now and am nowhere even close at the moment. The cheapest flats in our area (tiny 1 bedrooms) don't get cheaper than £180-200K which means a minimum £20K deposit. No matter how hard we try we would need at least another 7-8 years to save that amount, despite both of us being in white collar full time employment

I cant believe London prices when i see housing programs on tv. This may sound naive but would it not be better to move out of London and commute, or is that not much better?

We've already moved out of London, we live in Kingston now. Thanks to that we could finally afford a tiny one bedroom maisonette which costs us £850 a month + council tax & bills. On average that goes to about £1150 pcm.
When we used to live in London same money got us a very small studio..

Thankfully we have no kids yet...

[Skip]

Ouch - but then my mortgage is £850 a month for a tiny 2 bedroom house in middle of Norfolk!

10% increase in tax on cider.. jog on darling
gutted for my brother, he bought a house about a month ago...

at least these f*ckwits wont be around much longer.. we'll have a new set of f*ckwits in the driving seat before the years out.

[Biker Biggles]

Very little difference between the two sets of f*ckwits these days.The current lot will start cutting spending later because they think public spending is bolstering the economy and preventing a deeper slump and a double dip.The other lot want to cut spending now if not sooner because the debt burden will sink the economy anyway.
Probably both parties are right.The answer perhaps is to try and do both,cutting wastful unproductive public spending but maintaining that which bolsters the economy.Sadly we dont have the kind of leaders capable of doing this.Neither party has the talent or impetus to produce the people required.

Originally Posted by Skip

Ouch - but then my mortgage is £850 a month for a tiny 2 bedroom house in middle of Norfolk!

Fark..

I'm paying £623 for a two up, two down and that still makes me wince.

[Skip]

Originally Posted by Scoobs

Fark..

I'm paying £623 for a two up, two down and that still makes me wince.

Well to be fair it dropped to £697 when the fixed rate ended so we are overpaying £150 a month to try and bring it down - but we were paying £850 before

Originally Posted by Scoobs

Fark..

I'm paying £623 for a two up, two down and that still makes me wince.

there's no justice in this world...