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lovepigeon

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  1. I started with Physics but switched to Maths degree, had tuition fees so graduated with around 25k debt. Found time at University hard as I worked 2 part time jobs throughout never had much time for going out. Did a MSc in Medical Statistics , did well in BSc so got MSc fully funded fees and stipend. Work for a mix of Pharma, Biotech, Universities, and research institutes. Job interesting and well paid but owe nearly 30k on my debt because of maternity leave and part time work not been paying much off. Graduated during the recession and had friends 1st class degree in Physics Imperial who could not get decent jobs. Year I was doing MSc all the big pharmas shut down their graduate recruitment. Husband did MPhys and also graduated with ~25k debt. Doing well contracting now. Has been an uphill struggle to afford normal things, no car till we were 30.
  2. I worked 2007-2010 as a maths tutor in London. Mostly very wealthy families with children at private school. The agency must have been making a huge profit as they charged parents approximately £30 per hour paying the tutors £23 ph. They only linked tutors up to parents they provided no training or materials to the tutors.
  3. Current rate for MRC with London weighting is approx 16.5k; others like esprc offer similar. My problem is the 3 years spent doing the PhD my student debt will be accruing interest. Also really hard to pay back for women if you have maternity leave or any part time work. Ive been paying mine off since graduation and still owe more than the amount borrowed. I'm in a supposed STEM shortage subject but have noticed wages trending down in the last year with increasing number of jobs in my field advertised in Poland and Czech Republic.
  4. I'm not a new member but wanted to let you know I feel the same. Also in the SE and fed up with the lack of empathy from those a few years older who are fine and therefore don't care. They can't see that this will be a massive problem for their children if nothing changes. The move up North solution doesn't work when you consider that teachers and nurses are needed in the SE too - where are they meant to live? The greed, incompetence, and recklessness of the banks and government make me incredibly angry and sad and with FPTP few ways of demonstrating this. Only hope is Brexit and S24 may shake things up and a growing angry young population. Keeping an eye on what we could afford in our area and it really brings home how devalued our labour is against the HPI; a lifetime of 2 people working highly skilled jobs is nothing vs prices jumping from 200k to 450k in less than a decade.
  5. It is an important research area and the MRC are funding projects looking into real world drug effectiveness and safety for example with concomitant meds. Currently only have clinical trial results in highly idealised setting/patient populations for doctors to use when deciding whether to prescribe. . we are hoping to harness the NHS data to see how drugs perform in the real world.
  6. Thanks for posting this - I can't believe those prices compared with what is on offer in the SE. We are going to rent in the UK for another 2 or 3 years and then if nothing changes possibly head to mainland Europe. Ideal would be a nice city that is not car dominated so Amsterdam would meet a lot of our criteria.
  7. Which side does bitcoin come under interestrateripoff? I have no trust in the banks/authorities and am nervous at the possibility of them stealing my savings with a bail in. Bitcoin appears to be safer than bank deposit in that respect or do you think they would find a way to steal an individual's bitcoin ?
  8. LL is now trying to keep most of our deposit (I know I was stupid to leave without the cash but we had a letter from LL saying she would ignore few things we did not have time to fix and I was very stressed from moving house. Of course LL's letter phrased carefully so she can still do what she wants). I have not got letter from her yet but after pestering the old EAs I managed to find out the following: She wants to keep £350 for the garden and £150 for damp on a wall. Has anyone been through a tenancy deposit dispute and know how likely we are to be able to keep our deposit or at least more of it? I have only just found this out (and not even properly as nothing in writing and had to convince EA to tell me) nearly 2 months after we moved out and have been ringing them for the last few weeks to ask what had happened with our deposit. Will this count in our favor given that I though deposit scheme meant they should have let us know much sooner? The garden was basically just weeds when we moved in - not even any proper grass area and there was bindweed up the drains and around the edges of the garden. Until we were given notice we were spending large parts of every weekend gardening and managed to get at least some of it looking nice. The last month or so because of moving house did not have time to do much gardening and the bindweed grew like crazy. The garden did look worse when we moved out then we we moved in but there was obviously a pre existing bindweed problem and the garden was never in a state where it could just be maintained. Thank you for any advice.
  9. Update: We found somewhere to move to - not ideal location but new landlord seems much nicer and more trustworthy and after being messed around this is important to us. We organised to move out at the end of the two months as required legally. Last week I have had the EA from the place we are moving out from ringing to ask when we will be moving out, I reply we are moving out at the end of the two months. She says the landlord wants us to move out earlier than this (preferably a week or two earlier) as she is starting a new job contract. EA has since rung me back about 4 or 5 times saying that she has had the mother of the landlord screaming down the phone to her that we must be out earlier etc. and basically putting pressure on us to move out earlier. Now me and my husband don't see why we should be doing the LL any favours after the way they have treated us - for example if they had given us an extra month or two notice we would have been more likely to find a suitable property in the area we wanted. I am shocked that the mother of the landlord is being so aggressive on the issue as we are not doing anything wrong. EA rings again and says LL's mother has been threatening to ring me or come over to the property but EA has been trying to discourage her for my sake since she has been so aggressive towards the EA. I must say the EA has been nice to me throughout this and it is clear that she is being harassed by this woman. Since she is so insistent that we must be out earlier I propose a solution - we could move out a week earlier provided they guarantee to give us our full deposit back since I won't have time to do the few touch ups I was planning (paint over a few areas and a bit of weeding, nothing major). You would think LL's mother would jump at this opportunity and be happy that we have found a solution but no. She then starts threatening even more that she will come over to see what state the property is in. I then have a lady from the company who did the inventory and who will be checking the property when we move out ringing me to warn me about the woman turning up saying I should not open the door to her as she has no right to enter. So far I have heard nothing more but I am demanding we get a signed agreement of full deposit back if we are to move out early as I do not trust these people. I managed to find out a bit more about the LL from the EA. She is a junior doctor who was at medical school here and was not expecting to return but now has a contract starting here. I'm guessing the parents bought the house for their daughter so she would not have to pay rent whilst she was a student and they seem to have a very entitled attitude. I'm also shocked that the LL is letting or asking her mother to do this - I would be ashamed if I were here! Why couldn't she have asked us directly in a nice way and maybe offered some incentive to us to move earlier rather than straight away resorting to mother shouting at EA?
  10. Thank you to everyone who has replied - it helps to know there is a community of us out there since general public / media doesn't seem to care about renters. I think my husband and I are part of a generation unlikely to ever be able to buy in England (aged 25 with massive student debts and endless short term job contracts). To montesquieu and manchester50 it must be so much harder when you have added stress of schools so I feel thankful that at least the baby is very portable at the moment and won't mind us moving. Have started looking for somewhere nearby to move to but I do feel resentful at all the extra costs we will incur from this forced move and more importantly the time wasted.
  11. I've lurked on HPC for a while now and need to vent on what has just happened. I feel we have really been screwed over by our landlord/the estate agents. We moved in in September. We were surprised to see contract was only 6 months so before signing I checked with the agents as to why this was and stressed we were after a much longer term contract and wanted to stay fixed somewhere for at least a couple of years. They said it was standard procedure for initial 6 months before signing a longer term contract to make sure we are good tenants - pay rent on time etc and that it would be no problem extending contract after this first 6 month contract. So we move in and settle in, preparing for arrival of our baby and making our house feel like home. We have been faultless tenants - paid rent on time, kept house clean and tidy, done up the garden that was left in a state etc. On the other hand we have never been able to get hold of the landlord (she provided no contact details) and it took 3 months for the lights in our bedroom to get fixed (estate agent had to send out their own electrician after months of trying to get landlord to do this despite landlord having chosen to manage the property herself). As we approached the end of the 6 months we receive letter informing us that landlord wants to move us onto rolling contract. Again I ring the agents to first ask if we can have a fixed term contract for 12 months or preferably longer since we want to stay in this house and would like the security. Agent replies that landlord wants rolling contract but that this is not because she wants us out and that we should not worry as rolling contract is standard etc. Now 3 months later (9 months since we moved in) we have just been served 2 months notice to move out. We have a 3 month old baby and have invested time into making this house our home (such as getting curtains to fit windows as unfurnished and none provided, getting a cheap lawnmower and doing up the garden as was left as overgrown jungle of weeds). I had been getting to know the neighbours and feel settled and happy to have a nice home for my daughter. I feel incredibly stressed at the thought of having now to find a new place to live, pack everything into boxes again, pay all the money for the applications and so on especially when we have not even been here a year. EA says landlord has job back in this area now so wants to move back. What really pisses me off is I feel they have deliberately misled us on the intentions of the landlord (don't know if it is ll or EA who is to blame for this). We made it clear from the start that we wanted somewhere long term and we could have easily moved into a different property back in September. If they had been honest about the situation of the landlord and that this was their home (ie not a professional landlord) and there was chance they would move back at any time then we would never have chosen this house. The landlord has simply used us to pay her mortgage for a couple of months. I am so fed up with the way you are treated as a tenant in the UK. It is very one sided in terms of the power of information - LL can request all sorts of financial referees and guarantors from you but there is little information on the background of the LL and their intentions that you as a tenant can get or they can outright mislead you on the intentions of the landlord as in our case. Any sympathy would be welcome as I feel really upset right now about leaving what I thought was my home (logical part of my brain is using this experience to strengthen my resolve to move to Germany/Netherlands as soon as I have a few more years experience in my job) .
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