Djini

What are the losses? To me it's all gains. No savings being erroded, just debts losing their value while my salary increases (and that of my wife's)!. All good here! I might buy another new car. Shame about the Petrol prices though, that does hurt but maybe we'll invade Iran soon.

Well I'll be upgrading my gaming PC (laptop) this year.

Eventually, IR will rise of course (They can hardly go lower). But seeing as you have not actually named that month when the baserate will be at 2% or higher to make my SVR match my just-finished fixed rate, I'll take your 'opinion' with the level of attention it deserves.You don't even know which month they'll be at 1%. If fact, you don't know when they'll increase at all do you! Keep rolling your eyes though, it suits you.

The trouble is, the more people do it (i.e switch to SVR) the more difficult it is for the government to increase the rate. No-one wants to be the government that doubles the IR to 1%, impoverishing* millions of homeowners, and bankrupting thousands of households indebted up to their eyeballs no matter how foolish sensible people think they are.Can you imagine the headlines? There are enough people already on SVR + IR only mortgages (anecdotally speaking). Would you really want to be 'those guys in The x Party'' that pushed all those voters out of a home, or into poverty*. Just like those profiting from using their sold house's cash to get interest to cover the rent while the market crashes, you might as well take advantage of all that free money they're lending you while inflation soars! *can't go on holiday this year, buy a 3D TV, and have to give up Latte's & pony riding for mummy and her precious!

I think there will be little change because there is so few houses being bought and sold anyway.

And that's why, when my fixed rate ended this month, I went to SVR (which is currently 2.5% or +2% base)

So 6 million smart people from where I'm standing. Government has a great safety net if you come unstuck and need benefits. Banks interest rate is basically non-existent. Inflation rate is so high it's not worth keeping cash-money for any period of time.

Enfield (North London)

Sounds like they're claiming sales churn is down only because approvals are tight. It's not, its because houses are so expensive no-one can afford them. They're also trying to get people to rush and get a mortgage by claiming it's going to be made harder int eh coming months. Well that's how I read it.

Out of morbid curiosity, I had a look at my area for similar houses to mine on Zoopla. I can't believe that from their peak value, prices have fallen a mere 4%-ish. From the time I bought the house 13 years ago, it has tripled in price. Something's very very screwed up.

Just picking up on this idea that the principal will be worthless and easy to pay off, but the interest is the thing that kills you, don't most people have either a fixed rate, or an index linked rate?It'll have to be the government ramping up their interest that stop people paying off their homes too soon.

I'll be talking to some of my elderly neighbors over Christmas who I *know* will not have used their Sky Player Code and have a full Sky Package about renting the code off them to put on my xbox.

TBH, it's really there for the kids and a good education platform.(Don't worry, it's not just the TV! They have a storio, ipad, HP touchpad, and about 30m of books thanks to the wife being a teacher. They get independent and parent-led education too).

I pay £60 pm (£720 pa) to Virgin for TiVO with basic TV package, phone with all my calls (even a couple of hundred hours of nation rate), and 20MB internet (goes to 40MB in the new year). That included £6 of calls to mobiles. No sports, and 'only' about 60 channels. The TiVO is handy to record something I might find more interesting on the TV than I would through all my various other ways of acquiring entertainment. My TV is limited to ceebeebies for the kids, Eastenders for the wife, and HIGNFY for me. That's about all we regularly watch.

I had to save for 1 year, with my girlfriend (now wife) back in 1996. That was a 10% down on a £73k mortgage. Very hard, but in the long run worth it. Of course shortly after that, the house price was growing faster than anyone could save! Stupid House Price Bubble!

It's usually non-perishable sale items that are swept up by small shop owners who can't buy them retail for less. They stock them in their own shops with a suitable markup.Makes sense because the advantage is two-fold for them 1. They deny shoppers of the product. 2. They therefore force the customer to use their shop.

It's hanging on the living room ceiling?

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/883463-save-the-euro-in-10-days-or-see-the-eu-fall-apart-european-leaders-warned?ITO=socialm

My wife and I were born in '74, and '73. We finished Uni by 22 (Honours Degrees) and bought a house (London Zone 4) with a 10% deposit before our 24th birthdays (lived with parents before that). 13-and-a-bit years into paying it off. It was a 100 year old terraced 2 bed for £73k with a 70' garden. Didn't move house (costs are a pain, plus it's not exactly the right time, AND the house is fine for us) or done that whole 'ladder' crap.

Just ate 2 banana's from Sainburys that cost me 17p Their beef is cheap though! Or so my Brotehr who moved there 3 eyars ago tells me.

I know that many of these 'neets' are playing PC games like WoW, Rift, and the upcoming SWTOR because they have all the time in the world and enough basic money to do this and little else. It's a crap existence that some look jelously at until they realise these kids don't really have much choice in the matter. No jobs available (not many out there, competing with older more experienced people) because they are poorly educated (not always their own fault), just under average intelligence (not their fault), no experience, and no connections because their families are also 'on the dole'. I play MMOs (when I can) and there are a lot of scotish and middlands accents... I assume this is where a lot of the 'neets' are concentrated. Don't be too quick to judge these kids; they've been dealt a really shitty hand of cards.

What I'd do is not pay the landlord on time. Wait until they call you, let them wait a couple of weeks, then pay. It'll give you an idea of how close to the line they are, and how valuable you are as a tennent that pays on time. I'd start negotiating a reduction too. Sounds like a hideous sum of money to pay!

http://www.odditycentral.com/news/chinese-student-builds-sustainable-egg-house.html It's a 'mobile home' as it says, although barely it is on wheels and not tethered to anything that I can see. So if a Londoner built one of these, what could the government actually do to them? Just make them move each night and little else maybe?

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/10/31/regulators-investigating-mf-global/