saving since 2005

The average London person living in z3 probably does 2 hours each way a day including the walking to and from stations to get central. That would be too much for me so i bike and have a shorted and more enjoyable commute.

They are pretty compelling https://www.facebook.com/SaorAlbaGuBrath?ref=stream

You can only really afford a 1 bed in scruffy zone 2 area for 1.7k a month on mortgage payments!

It all depends where the flat is. You can rent a family house in a soso leafy suburb on 100k and compute in. Who / why would want to raise a family in central London? I'm guessing the flat is south west - clapham area or chiswick.

I'm sure I read a report on the BBC saying 90% of UK cash machine muggings were done by Romanians...

I'm more worried about the skilled Indian professionals that come over for 6 months sponsored by their large multinational employer than all the Spanish salad choppers.

Scratch that, looks like interest rate is based on earnings :confused: Interest is included in the calculation above: Retail Price Index (RPI)3.6%+ interest rate based on your salary

The online calculator uses 4% meaning if you earn an average wage then you just about pay back an average amount in 26 years. http://www.studentfinance.direct.gov.uk/scheme/dgv/pws/repayment-calculator.html

Great news! I think things are actually turning, for the first time this year my friend that works in prime z1 says that lettings have fallen off a cliff and landlords are having to reduce prices.

But it's not defaulting if you never pay back the loan as student loans are not really like other loans. If I buy some massive tv from argos on credit they are not going to give me a loan where I only have to pay it back if I earn 50k a year. Anyway if you do a degree in something that skilled that is in demand then earning 21k + isn't out of the reach of many starting wages.

How can they default if it is automatically taken out of PAYE? They always expect some to never pay back their loans. The last system wrote them off after 30 years.

The excess for most peoples apple phone insurance can buy a decent android phone from a Chinese manufacturer. 70% ish margin on consumer electronics and virtually nothing spent on R&D for the last 3 iterations is why they are the most profitable by far. Emperors new clothes indeed. Sent on my Nokia 3310i

Android is like PC / Mac and iOS is like console development. Sent from my iPhone 6

I'm sure I heard about some companies last year where their revenue on android apps overtook apple. Not surprising when one eco system has 2-3 times the users and is growing still.

Its all quite interesting, maybe I should of done that a few years ago when I was still into working in IT and living in London. I can't stand all day inside doing non rewarding work and lowering my health. I decided i'd rather be poor in money but do something rewarding and not spend all day thinking i'm wasting my time. I don't want my back and belly to be the same state as the vast majority of people that work in an office all day.

Ah interesting I didn't know that, I thought you had to pay tax each year on money hored in a company, if the 20% corp tax is one off then that is very attractive.

They are still making profit, big news will be when they make a loss.

Depends how hard you work, its easy to just plod along as PAYE, as a contractor you have to be more on the ball.

But don't you have to pay a tax on horded money? corporation tax? Else many people would just do a couple of years work then pay themselves 42.5k a year for the next decade or two. I still think you have to earn double the permie wage to make contracting worthwhile. Even more if you have to go live away from home during the week.

One of my friends at school had free school meals. He used to get a bag of chips, crisps and a can of coke (allowance of 1.10 a day) apart from 'healthy' Wednesday where there were no chips so he'd get an extra twp bags of crisps. Late 90s.

Most I know are earning 30%+ less than that usually between 40-60.

I don't think its fair to compare a contractor wage to a permie. I would rather be on 40k a year, with regular holiday, paid bank holidays, training weeks, paid sick, paid charity days, more guarantee of work, a payoff if made redundant, employer pension contributions, employer paying NI bla bla than 100k contractor.

Why don't you move a few miles south on your island and enjoy the 2nd highest wage on earth? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage

Eat local, unprocessed, pick free seasonal wild food and use dried beans/pulses and you can live on half of the 17 and have a diet far healthier than the vast majority.

I worked for the Sun parent company for a brief spell, and way less than 80% of the people running the newspaper websites were not British.