pathfinder

Well the next so called step up is £100k ie garden, detached. The terrace's in the area have the same floor space so are not really worth looking at. So you could :- Have an interest only mortgage still not paid any capital off (stuck) Go up the ladder 100k + whatever is left on of the mortgage reset the clock and start paying it back for the next 25 years ... nightmare. Forget keeping up with friends, build a mega pension which as it stands will net you £5300 per month per £100k fuuuuuuuu. As above but go on jobseekers or cut your hours down to 2-3 days a week (even work for yourself doing something you enjoy knowing the debt is paid) and enjoy what time you have left mortgage free, screw the pension buy assets or productive items to start a business.

I wonder how many in their 30's are giving up on full-time work because the carrot pension along with inflation is looking like a bad joke. Our currency value for buying the small pleasures in life has reached pathetic proportions, so why work so hard?

£4500 for a 40 mile commute + underground. Gave up on London 8 years ago. Since 2006 jobs fulltime were paying 22-25k previously 28k in Civil Eng, Contracting rates went from £25hr to £12. For 3/4 of my career I was a contractor. Gave up on that industry, it took 4 years to find someone willing to take the risk. Now I work for a local firm £22k potential for a big payrise, being allowed to do some design, sending me off to abroad a few days a year. Travel cost is bike maintenance ( not for the abroad bit ). Post 2007 companies thought they could leverage people to the lower rates of pay in Central London, below even £22k, I just walked away, if this CAD job winds up that will be it for me.

We mortgaged a good sized 2 bed flat in 2004/5, 8 years on 60k left to pay, houses simply do not look good value. Borrow another £80k for a terrace, or £100k bungalow for the same floor space. Were staying put, pay the rest off in 3-4 years, fully prepared for part time or low paid work watching this mess play out.

Why would they disagree with me if it doesn't apply to Virgin . Ill have what your drinking!

Trains are rubbish anyway, the fiasco is still the cost to travel. £50 a month [Ed] for 4 miles, bus is the same cost .... So I cycle it. £7 ticket each way for 2 people = £28 (no next day return available) to visit family then a bus ride. Stick wife on the back of the tandem for a 3 hour cycle instead. Want to go out for a day trip to the coast £45 each. Forget going on day trips. £4000 for a train ticket to get into London a year for a £25k job. Dont bother applying for work in London, got a job local same money. I only use trains if I am too ill to travel by other means.

I used to be an AutoCAD Contractor, used to get paid a good wedge. With a good rep I was rarely out of work. Few years ago I had to take a £6.37hr as a support worker, wife lost her job. Work has returned, instead of contractors helping out on projects that are collapsing you get hired for 3 month to cover illness, with 9 months out of work like some kind of bloody skip hire. Never bothered applying. New job entails drawing up factories in Asia full time. 4 years ill have no mortgage and ill be dropping out. We survived on 11k between 2, benefits/tax credits/ and a small business is the plan. Modern office work is plain BS.

Riiiight. So ive worked across Civil, Mechanical, Energy, Landscape, Interiors/Architecture, as a Technician. After 3 years of working in min wage jobs, I bagged a Mechanical Technician job. This is what has been going down. 2007 Engineering firms start to demand technicians to have design skills, I had no problem with this rates had shot up it was worth my time. However they offered no professional documentation to prove you could do it. The result ... the BS merchants got the jobs. Shortly after almost all work dried up. At the same time Engineering firms worked out they could save staffing costs by slapping Senior on any old graduate with 5 years experience. This turned working in Engineering from a fun interesting job into an on mass fire fight. So what happened higher up, the Engineers went to Australia and New Zealand. Others found the work so stressful due to fkups they simply drifted out of the field. The new design software coming out quite frankly is game changing. Yesterday the Senior guys were talking, effectively what robots have done to workers in factories, the latest software is now doing to Engineers. As far as I can see humans are getting the degree / certification / education veil lifted to show it was all a bit of a sham. As a side note I work for a plant design company, once 200 strong designing factories. Its now 8 strong, the design/manufacture is done in Europe. They haven't sold a new machine in the UK for 15 years. And no sales in Europe for 8. Its all Asia these days.

I know loads of people that lost 1/3 of their pension through fees, changing the structure of the pension. Pretty much the only carrot for 50 years of servitude. Now you'll be hobbling about most likely with a walking stick before you even get your first payment. No doubt they will inflate everything so that a boy/girl on a paper round will earn more than the weekly payment by that point anyway. Dropping out of work / underemployment as a longer term goal is the way to go, certainly if your salary is 18k or less. To own your own place if your income stream is low is almost miraculous. Life is difficult .

We went through a rough patch, 1 earner on 11k, mortgage £380 a month. No tv,no car, and alot of wooly jumpers. So without a mortgage £6440 should be doable. That said more and more time is taken up keeping costs down, home cooking etc. It became very tiresome going out, every penny watched. if you could setup a passive income stream (still requires effort) split between 2 people I think life would be very enjoyable indeed. sorry for edits, I am sleepy still .

between us £4k in the bank, £2k float (considering non cash alternatives). 5 years ago we over bought tins of tomatoes (40 of them!), i love chilli and spag bog. they actually doubled in value lol. 78k deposit/overpayments, with £67k mortgage debt left. No car, will cycle on the tandem 35 miles to visit family. No tv license, certainly no kids! Will go out dancing and drinking a bit, however when unemployment comes knocking we homebrew and mmorpg our life waway As for "hand to mouth", life was pretty shitty 2 years ago out of work for a year, managed to get a 6.37hr job, then wife lost her job. Think it was about £830 a month, then after 7 months we got with the system and milked £40 tax credits + £60 jobseekers. Shockingly life was good. If this economy keeps going on like this sadly I think we will give up and return to that lifestyle, there is little reward for being skillful these days. Retraining seems to be a swear word these days even in very closely related fields. Never had a gap between jobs greater than a month in 15 years now I have 1 year, a 6 month gap, and unemployed yet again, all in 3 years. Got to love low paid contract work ... well the employer's sure do. Problem is every time you pick yourself up, you get the interview process, health and safety training, the actual training or time learning the job. Then the shutting down for the moment while things pick up. Fine, go into job centre do the 2 interviews, form filling looking for the next low paid short term position. You repeat that every year it slowly kills you. So I can see a situation where we take turns working with tax credits, the other on jobseekers, how fkn sad is that.

Surely that article should be titled 'Why The Populous Should Stop Paying Tax at All Costs'.

The thing is were facing mass job losses, and i am seeing real wage deflation everywhere. Only way I worked out how to remove the savings barrier was to overpay like mad. If you want the money back out it is processed like a loan at the same rate as the mortgage. Tax credits do not consider a mortgage a bill, which is amusing. Basically lending on 2 incomes assuming perpetual wage growth was madness.

You need to earn £7.40 an hour to buy 2 pints (£3.20 x 2) after tax. 1 hour of work for 2 pints, beer is fast approaching a middle class pursuit.

While the money was good I was making overpayments onto the mortgage not a pension. Now the money is abysmal rather than work 4 times harder, I for one am shutting down to the minimum. I wonder how many of the younger generation will derail the plan? - The skilled jobs have gone the only things left are unskilled £6-8.50 hr roles. Suddenly you notice the gerbil on the running wheel. Time to finish overpaying and give up. - Your mindset is no longer earning your maximum potential in the past, that is a lot of blood and sweat for +£1 hr. Let alone going up the ladder, time to dig in (+80k for a garden, lolz). - 5 years time mortgage paid off, 2 part time jobs, maybe cycle low paid full time work while the other does unemployment or a mix of part time, taking reduced council tax. Go out and enjoy pubs and small festivals. - On the days off take part in the grey job market. To far fetched? We survived on a home income of 13k 2 years ago, even overpaid some of the mortgage. Who is going to pay the pension bill now?

I was a first time buyer 2005. Now 52% of the mortgage loan has been paid off. A terraced with the same floor area + a garden will cost us +£150k, there is no incentive to commit financial suicide (go up the ladder). Low council tax, no mortgage, with a chance to go part time in 7 years is far more desirable.

This guy makes me feel sick. Go be a Support Worker look after people with learning difficulties, bam instant £6.37+ hour, get your confidence back. You can take part time if you want, the works hard but the work is there. Find a bit of overtime off a mate to keep going. Basic 101 climb the low pay scale, take a temp job, talk to the IT department in there look for a chance. First thing I learned after 6 months of empty promises from my previous industry was look at a different job where the middle class look down on you, then aim lower. Once a job is secured its the best incentive to find a better job I ever had. The second thing you learn is 98% of job adverts are bull. What he needs to find is a new venture where one agent is assigned the sole provider for the department. He should be able to sniff a place like that over the year from a friend. As for a career that pays over £25k, possibly dream on that was so 90's.

From my perspective, where I sit now in the workforce I see 7-20+ years experience, taking the low paid work. So that person that picked him/herself up and got that job will still be looking at the same salary. So training, career path, possibly getting your own place, are all irrelevant. Now if you believe things are going to get better perhaps there is some hope. If you feel things will continue as they are or will get worst I think its quite possible to understand the young being disenfranchised.

I think xbox, and cans of beer are within the budget of a youth at home with mum and dad. There certainly are a lot of people wanting a nice office job in the warm, it pays £7 suck it up. The kind of people I work with have worked in accounts, worked as a temps all there lives, one had that £20k council job. Maybe you fail to grasp the shear scale of 27+ falling out of the job market hoovering up the scraps. In the south it certainly is the case. Another guy I worked with went from a £30k job to having 2 cleaning jobs and a driver position while juggling all the bills. I've seen a secretary, clueless regarding care work queuing for an interview in the job centre, her redundancy package was running out. Currently I earn £500 more than my first job in the 90's. Perhaps I should take your advice and sign up for that ONC in Religious Studies and start praying .

The market value for a literate, pc skilled worker with a good work ethic (along with problem solving skills that can reduce task costs or time), is around £7 hour. If you take a young person aside and tell them after years of school and a degree you to can get £13k a year for the rest of your life with little chance of a pay rise, guess what? Screw starting a family, pissing half your wage away in rent. Cans of beer at home with the xbox is starting to sound like the intelligent choice.

Hardly, lots of acivity, free home cooked food, and no time to drink.

Its wrong to assume you can't earn a liveable wage on minimum wage. If you take extra shifts which are nearly always on offer you can pull close to 15k after tax, 30k as a couple. While I was a support worker everyone was doing at least 2 extra shifts some pushing 3 or 4 a week. Sure if you have an office job you will assume a 35 hour week, but that is not what happens in the real world. Even the cleaners where I work atm have 3 jobs each!

I'm fairly sure happiness is a state of mind. 2004-2007 working like dogs saving money, takeaways, 2 holidays abroad (mostly because wife had never gone before), usually bored after the first week there. Buy a game every month, a new gadget every year. 2008-2011 Finally learned to partner dance (took 2 years before to get good at it lol), out up to 3 times a week dancing to live bands and quite a bit of beer, 7 mini holidays at cheap festivals/chalet events. Cancelled the tv license. Finances 2004-2007 both on £23 hr 2009 one income £24k 2010 one income £11k 2011 £24k + £12k 2004-2007 was working too hard, lots of holidays abroad, yet totally focused on overpaying. 2009 Was fairly depressing out of work for a year, money perceived to be too tight, kept overpaying regardless. 2010 I got a job, wife lost hers, we thought money was tight before try £11k lol. Dumped overpaying, all food cooked at home, takeaway every 2 weeks. Beer became a huge treat. Strangely I was working in a non office environment .... and was happier. My happiness level was higher than ever, no commute, no stupid megalomaniac boss talking shit all day, out of the rat race look what i got at the weekend crap. Happiness wise I would say 2011 wins, going out loads, mortgage half paid off. Social dancing seems to have a placebo that lasts 2 days. Most the people that seem unhappy are the relentless keeping up with the Jones's, latest gadget, lots of home movies drink at home, preoccupied with the number of bedrooms types. So I would say moving country has no effect, if not a negative effect on happiness (if you actually have a social circle lol). Even with your household income in tatters, 'Armageddon' sirens going off for the last 2 years, while standing at a sweet shop wondering if you should buy that 55p chocolate bar, being happy is possible.

Effectively the 'first time buyer' will now have a once in a life time experience. That surely will play havoc in the housing market.

starting to look pretty painful for pensions. 100k to get a 5k return, then inflation wipes out its spending power within years. Pay your mortgage off, take a citizens wage at 45, give the pension pot the royal salute, top yourself around 80-90. Its the new workers [insert your country] dream doncha know.