Bear Necessities

I think we might be getting to the point where the boomers are starting to die off. (I unfortunately think this due to recent personal circumstances) So some of these 30 something couples could be suddenly in possession of a small (or not so small) fortune. and maybe the young 20s couples have had legacies from boomer grandparents (if my maths isn't way off?) It's either that or the dodgy loan thing. EDIT - or maybe bitcoin?

Sorry to resurrect a VERY old thread. Just an update on what we ended up doing. Thanks to those who gave me advice at the time (2015). Especially the thoughts about borrowing from family and how to look at my attitude to risk and other people's money,etc. It was very useful to think about those things, and it did all turn out ok in the end, no family strife, no interference, all good stuff. Grandparents get to see a lot of the kids and I feel a lot more secure than we did before when renting. We did end up buying a doer-upper for £170K, in March 2016 for about £50K less than the one next door (because it needed a lot of work on it), and borrowed the £100K from my parents to do so. (the remaining £50K ended up this year being converted to a £50K gift, so have paid the other £50K off now then borrowed some back to help with the extension and then paid it off again, so finally own the entire house. We did it up ourselves (mainly decorating plus fitting and tiling the bathroom, and then more recently added a two storey extension (not by ourselves, with proper builders) which was done over lockdown (note - I don't recommend staying in the house whilst builders remodel the entire place over lockdown where nobody can escape and they can't easily get hold of materials, but at least it's finally done. ) Then I fitted the new kitchen, downstairs bathroom, office, utility and refloored the whole of the downstairs. Just the en-suite and patio left to do. No idea if we've lost money on it, I guess nobody loses money until they sell, but who knows maybe we have, haven't had it valued, but even the extension only took it up to a little more than next door sold for, and that's not the point anyway. Bought it to live in, not as an investment - to get away from horrible landlords shouting at us because one of the nasty cheap carpets they fitted had a stain on, and the grout in the bathroom was discoloured and making us feel like they were doing us a favour by letting us pay to live in their mouldy house. Would have paid those scumbags at least £7200x6 (£43K) in that time I know nobody asked for this update, but there we are. Anecdote does not equal data and all that. I disappeared off here in 2016 because I didn't want to keep reminding myself that things could crash down just as we were buying. I came back today because I suddenly thought "I wonder if that forum is still going or if everyone eventually gave up fighting the good fight." Glad to see people are still here, house prices are still ridiculous and ruinous for the country as a whole so I still hope they will go down soon. But I can't say I regret buying when we did, even though at the time it felt like we were somehow betraying the forum in some way! Best wishes. *waits for someone to call me a troll/estate agent shill* (I bloody hate estate/lettings agents) but whatever, I guess reporting back that it worked out well for us in the end is a kind of trolling, but I don't mean it as such.

"(assuming they're all 2-bedders)" I think only three of them are 2-bedders, the rest are one bed boxes. (rather than 2 bed boxes!) Which also means that their title of "19 bedroom block" is incorrect because there are 22 bedrooms! But then again I guess estate agents have never been very good with numbers...

Oops! Yes you are right, I meant Owen Jones! I've been listening to too much Cognitive Dissonance (they are always talking about the latest crap that Alex Jones has been saying!)

I still don't understand what you were getting at there. The report begrudgingly said that Corbyn got off to a decent start at that particular PMQs but was soon bested by Cameron. Two other sentences in there said that Cameron got the upper hand. "the prime minister soon got the upper hand with a strong rhetorical point" "He (Cameron) also apparently solved Linda’s dilemma" "Cameron comfortably bested him on this topic" How can you possibly spin that as being pro Corbyn in any way?

I don't get what you mean about it sounding like Corbynites have taken over? "the prime minister soon got the upper hand with a strong rhetorical point" "He (Cameron) also apparently solved Linda’s dilemma" "Cameron comfortably bested him on this topic" Hardly sounds like they are cheering Corbyn on! Sounds like they are waving blue flags in this article (after begrudgingly saying that Corbyn got off to a good start in this PMQs) Since the leadership race started The Guardian has been embarrassingly anti-Corbyn in virtually everything they have written, most of their regular columnists seem to despise him because he reminds them of how Blue Labour they all are. Occasionally they let Alex Jones write something positive for "balance".

That's the point really. Most people wouldn't need to own a car in these circumstances. Because it's self driving, it could easily be run as a car share or automated taxi scheme. You press a button to call one. The nearest car drives to your door in a minute or two. You tell it to drop you off in town, it does so, and then drives off to pick up someone else, or drives itself to the garage for refueling or repair to keep it in good condition. Then the same car or a different one picks you up when you are finished and drops you at your door. No need to own it or have it sitting outside the house for 95% of the time, or have to MoT or tax or insure it yourself. Will be far cheaper to subscribe to a service than own one (will work out cheaper than using a regular taxi because you aren't paying for the driver, and the robot taxi can be busy for 20 hours a day. My sister doesn't own a car in London, she cycles or uses public trasnport but if she wants a trip away then she hires a car for a week. An extesntion of that would be just to call one to drive you around - over whatever distance you wanted A nationwide scheme would mean you could get one to take you from the south coast up to scotland if you wanted (as long as the overall cost was no more than a train ticket or plane ticket), because there is likely to be someone else up there who wants to use it when you are done. It's going to completely change the way we think about cars. I appreciate that some people really enjoy their cars, but I don't think it is in any way the majority of road users. For a lot of people a car is either a luxury they can't afford, a necessary evil, or just a simple box to get from A to B to C because the bus is always late and the trains are crap. Offer them a robot car whenever they need one for an overall cost that is cheaper than either owning/taxing/insuring a car and cheaper or equivalent to regular train or bus use and I think most people will jump at the chance. I do feel a bit sorry for people who love driving and love their cars, because as has be mentioned on here, the move to self-drive will make things more and more expensive for "traditional" drivers as they will suddently be the most dangerous things on the road, and there will be fewer and fewer traditional cars built meaning they will become a true luxury item and more and more people will decide that it doesn't make financial sense to own a car and just hire one at the race track if they feel a real need for speed. Personally I can't wait.

""they" have been testing self driving lorries in pheonix arizona, trials kept secret for obvious reasons" Can't be that secret, as there have been loads of articles about self driving trucks in the media. http://www.topgear.com/uk/car-news/mercedes-benz-future-truck-2025-self-driving-truck-2014-09-24 http://www.thetruckersreport.com/ata-self-driving-trucks-are-close-to-inevitable/ https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/first-self-driving-lorry-ready-134515573.html Wonder what will happen to employment in vast swathes of the US loses their primary occupation? Automation of the entire distribution system must be coming in the next 5 to 10 years.

Thank you for running the CH4 figures There are some tasty falls there - every month is negative.

The thing I've always hated most when looking for somewhere to rent is always the agents' descriptions of otherwise perfectly ok houses as having "an easy to maintain garden" which is t**t-speak for "the BTLetter concreted over the whole lot and now it looks like crap".

Could I humbly request CH4 7 (or if there aren't enough results there, then CH4 generally)? I've been following pretty much everything in CH4 7 for a while now and there have been a lot of £10K reductions recently, although these won't be in the sold figures just yet, so not sure how things were going before then. A lot of stuff seems to have been up with no asking price reductions for over a year now.

These numberplates are sold by the DVLA initially, so depending on how the money is allocated after that - isn't the current system already a self imposed tax on narcissistic idiots?

Google's search results are individual to the person/computer/phone that you are using and change over time to reflect your own interests. You'd need to try your "house p" test on a fresh system or perhaps it might work in a Google incognito tab, to ensure that you were getting standard results and not ones skewed to your own likes/dislikes.

I wish I knew what any of those words meant. The fact that I don't, tells me I should stay away from trading!

Incredibly accurate nonsense... If anything it underestimated the Tory victory.