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Travel, Student Loan would be work incurred costs. Pension payment would ofc cease, obviously this is a loss to him in the long term. So he has £400 remaining costs and the ability £250 remaining. On benefits he'd have £320.50. I'd expect you could get utilities and food to under £320.50 without any real hardship at all. His starting point is that his lifestyle isn't much better than it would be on benefits. Based on the figures he has given that assertion isn't false. He's working ~160 hours a month to have ~£350 more than if he didn't work at all.

I would certainly suggest asking them not to increase the rent. Keep it short and polite. I'd expect it to be based on the current rent being fair and you being a reliable tenant. If they insist, you could then tell them you would intend to leave if they require a rent increase (bluff). If they hold there ground you then give up. You lose some face, but no LL/LA will boot you out for it, and best case you save a large amount of money. We agreed to a rent increase in our last place without trying to avoid it. I didn't begrudge the increase, as we looked at other options and it was still better, but I wish we'd tried to negotiate. Saving £25pm is still £300 a year. Having £300 in my pocket requires ~50 hours work (after tax, and essentials) and I value my time.

You need to get back on your medication. I'm normally not a fan of people who play the person and not the ball, but you haven't got an argument to go up against. If there is some cunning worldwide conspiracy do you really think posting, what look like mad ramblings, on the hpc forum is the best use of your time?

The bail out of the banks hasn't cost that much in global economic terms. The very fact that this has been such a large financial crisis shows how much the banks normal operation props up business. We're very quick to blame 'banksters' and other such non-sense. They don't have tyrannical control, they offer services we want and we flock to them for them.

You don't need to fight them, and if they are selling properties at asking price you wouldn't win any way. EAs are going to sell properties for as much as they think they can get. If you are offering less than they think they can get (within reason) they aren't going to push the owner to accept. Most EAs are polite, even when taking low offers. If one isn't he's either crap at his job or he's trying to shock you into thinking the market is strong enough an EA can afford to be rude

26 on £34k. I've been very lucky so far in life, I had the pleasure of getting a sizeable redundancy 2 years ago (generous employer) that kick started my deposit. Additionally I met my wonderful partner a mere 9 years ago, and sharing costs makes a massive difference to living cost. Like you I appreciate that I have been more lucky than many people coming into the workplace in the last two years. My partner and I have a number of younger friends, siblings etc who are all really struggling to find work. It's a million miles away from when I finished uni 5 years ago, walked into an agency and got offered a contract job next day, which turned into a 4 year permanent role. Hope everything works out well for you Earthling

Your astonishment is your shortcoming not ours, and there are no knives protruding between my shoulder blades, which as a computer science graduate of 5 years one would assume there would be. I don't expect the government to take half-arsed steps to protect my 'value' which would in practice do nothing of benefit. Block companies from taking quality foreign workers and the UK becomes less attractive to invest in. I'd rather have to compete on merit than watch companies avoid setting up in the UK to begin with. The government should be focusing on encouraging companies to create jobs, I'll deal with getting them tyvm.

All I here when I see people using such an over-used phrase as this is the scene in Life of Brian: Brian: You're all different! Crowd: Yes, we are all different! Everyone else dumb and follows blindly, but not us. Us HPC users are all just so much wiser and 'edgy' The 'sheeple' are 'told' what to think. Us 'edgy' and 'unblinkered' HPCers know what's really going on. We know because we get our news and discussion from a completely unbias source the HPC website.

It isn't about money. I wasn't 'working class' when I was one of two children in a single parent household whose income was derived from doing laundry for others. My values and ethics haven't fundamentally altered because I'm now in a relationship with a combined income in your 'upper middle' bracket. The truth is that working class means very little these days, and I'm not sure it has ever meant very much. It seems in times past that it was related to families whose work was based on doing comparatively low skilled manual work. Nowadays it more often used by people in dead end low level jobs as a shallow badge of honour. It is like they are saying "Sure, all I've achieved with my life is a job stacking shelves in the supermarket. But at least this is honest working class employment".

Ego and ignorance. The same things that make most people who turn out 10 a penny advice while completely uninformed decide to share their 'wisdom' so freely.

On my drive to work this morning I saw a new dog walker, I assume therefore that everyone is now buying dogs Trying to argue on the basis of anecdotal makes people look so stupendously stupid. House sales at a rate of 10,000s, your single example is almost as irrelevant as the post you just wrote about it. I'm not expecting a major property crash, and I agree with a number of your points but for the love of god don't band around anecdotals as though they have any greater validity than the shape the tea leaves left in my last cup of tea.

If they really warrant more they should ask for it, because if they do warrant it, the employer would be better off paying more than losing them. Of course, what you actually mean is that you think they should get more, which is perfectly noble and utterly meaningless.

I'd save your breathe. I can't tell if Guillotine is trolling or actually believes you're a parasite for working and paying for your own home, either way no rational argument is going to persuade him you're right.

Who's asking for sympathy? There's very little to feel sympathetic about, it doesn't mean that we should all be rejoicing at the fact a family is completely stuffed. A heroin addict who lives rough on the street may well have brought it on himself. I still don't go down the pub and laugh about it with my mates, and I do think "Wouldn't it be nice if he hadn't ******ed his life up".

The spectrum of choices isn't limited to 'sympathise' and 'revel in the suffering of'. I did not, and still will not defend her actions which are clearly ill-advised. I said that threads like this, which quickly become circle jerks about the problems of others, have given this site a negative reputation. Have your fun. I'm not attempting to censor the content, I'm expressing an opinion on it.

Thanks. You're right, up until you added that the lowest it had gotten was general amusement. I'm glad you took the time to strengthen my case No need though, Brave New World kindly set the bar even lower just afterwards. You lost your bet any way. I don't have a long list of agenda items that I'm trying to sneak onto the site when opportunity arises. I come here for a useful perspective, and some good analysis, about property. It would just be nice if some of the other content didn't leave me feeling tainted by association.

I think 'some' of the responses in this thread are good examples of why this site has a pretty negative image. Sure, the OP may well have made some monumental stupid decisions, but that doesn't stop this being about a family with 2 (soon to be 3) children who are drowning in debt. There's nothing to be happy about in that thread, even if we all think that this kind of behaviour was unwise. I read through the thread, frankly I can't think of anything reassuring to tell her. The debt is massive, the income shortfall is large and without massive property value rises soon I can't see a way out that doesn't end in bankruptcy.

How much did the people now receiving that pension pay towards it. Certainly in the UK the people currently receiving state pensions paid nowhere near enough (in tax) to fund it. They are reliant on current taxation or government borrowing. The single best excuse the current generation of pensioners has for not properly funding their own retirements is ignorance. They either didn't know or didn't want to hear that they'd need to put more money aside to pay for it themselves. Now the current generation of tax payers are being asked to pay more to increase the last generations higher than inflation rises, free public transport and other benefits.

Absolutely, I am completely clueless as to the cost effectiveness. I didn't bring up another countries system as a example either. I, and the vast majority of the population who don't have 8 different coloured bins already know that. My point wasn't that better ways don't exist, but that you (and I) don't know if there is one which isn't vastly more expensive. There is no point in lauding a system without understanding its cost. It'd be like highlighting the low levels of repeat offending in Saudi Arabia (and not knowing it's paid for by executions).

From Expatica: You can't compare the quality of refuse systems if you ignore cost. If every council in the UK added an additional £200pa to your council tax I'm sure we could have weekly collections of any kind we liked. Personally, I'd rather keep the £200 and use the system we've got; which is fine.

You keep saying this, and I'll continue to ignore it until I see the financial information to back it. Firstly, I doubt social housing is cost neutral; even if it was offering it below the market rate is still a subsidy. If social housing wasn't a cost then why aren't councils across the country building 1000s of them and charging 1% more than they currently do as a sure fire money making scheme? Probably because they'd have to borrow the money now to build the houses, and given that our government is perpetually in debt pay interest on that debt indefinitely. I'm sure that cost is factored into your assertion that council housing isn't a subsidy... isn't it? Then give me £250pm and I'll go live in one

Explain why subsidising peoples rent regardless of their current financial situation is good? I've worked with people who got council houses 20 years ago, still live there paying negligible rent while earning ~£30k a year. Either you kick people like this out of council housing (unpopular) or you stop subsidising it (by charging below market rate).

What I don't understand about any one who thinks we can continue to see real terms HPI for ever is where they think the money comes from? HPI so far has been funded by the 'next generation' of house buyers taking on increasingly large loans to purchase an asset off of previous generations. If we continue to see the same behaviour in the housing market until 2030 as we have seen since 1983 then the average house would be worth the equivalent of £210,000 today (based on Halifax figures). To put this another way, house prices have increased by 7.6%pa since Halifax started publishing figures. If that continued until 2030 then the average house price would be £765,000. By the time I reach 65 (2049) the average house would be worth £3,170,000 (that's 3 million!). Given that this is based on a period that on average hasn't seen high inflation this is assuming that the value of money decreases but gradually.

Will be interesting to see if this happens. My partner and I (no children) are looking to avoid the 'small property' step altogether. The difference in cost between an ok 3 bed-semi and an ok 4 bed detached seems to be getting smaller.

Makes perfect sense to me. He needs £200k, if he puts it on the market at £200k he won't get it. Put it on at £215k and hope someone offers low, if they don't you can get some attention by dropping the house £5k a couple of times and still accept a £5k under bid. A lot of people who see a house they'd estimate is worth £190k wouldn't think twice about offering £185k if it was listed at £200k. They might find it more difficult to offer £25k below asking. The problem is most people use asking price to guide value. Ideally, you would inspect the property and decide what you think it's worth without knowing what the owner wants. Even I get suckered in. I use sites like property snake to find big 'discounts', some of which are bound to be artificial: The owner started way high to gain attention when they drop it.