Ben from Dover
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Posts posted by Ben from Dover
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It says they were running a business, and even paying staff. That is (on the face of it) a Good Reason to borrow: proper entrepreneurs. They're just unfortunate not to be carmakers or (since it was 2009) bankers, who get bailouts.
(and reducing from 250k to 50k debt would seem to indicate people who do care about it, too)
I can't see how that figure is possible. How can you pay off 200K worth of debt in what, by the article, could have been a couple of years max. unless they were earning mega money it is just impossible. something going on here.
They would have had to have earned over £330,000 between them before tax.
That is the thing about debt. You get taxed on the earning that you use to pay it back. This is always ignored when people talk about multiples of salary for mortgages.
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How can it be the recession now that we are in the recovery?
what is with the £1 token payment. there must be a sinister reason behind it. I know that when approached by a company who have purchased debt that you owe they will often ask for such a token payment "to show your intention to honor the debt" However the real reason for this is because they are not legally allowed to charge interest on the balance until you have made one payment. Is this the same thing?
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China won't dance to anyones tune nowdays , we learnt that at the Copenhagen failure.
The only thing you can do is try and not buy Chinese made goods , the leaders of the West seem obsessed that free trade still has a future.
What is missed though is that China had built a trap for itself by doing this. They work really hard making stuff which we then buy with the money they have lent us. they need this to continue forever because as soon as it doesn't Chinese society and the state does bang. If this global trade system suddenly changed than the unemployment would destabilize China in weeks. What they are trying to do now is buy time to restructure their society and create internal demand. However a culture change to a consumerist society takes decades and therefore the status quo will be maintained. there is no chinese motivation to change it and it essentially benefits us not them.
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The work that I have done with immigrants seems to suggest a much lower proportion of benefits claimants amongst the immigrants that the indigenous population.
The sample size that is reflected in my experience is too small to be statistically significant. The same flaw applies to the horror stories in the Daily Mail.
The thing is you cannot take immigrants as a solid group. Many have 'no recourse to public funds' as a stipulation on their visa making it impossible to claim benefits. My understanding is that asylum seekers cannot work and therefore are stuck only on benefits, these are often more generous than benefits for British and obviously have no requirement that they seek work. Immigrants from within the EU, especially people who are marginalized in their own countries, are often attracted to the UK because here they qualify for benefits that they would not at home. such as the gypsies from eastern Europe who dominate my town.
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are you sure? werent these the guys who didnt see it coming.
As an aside, Mick Todd, Chief Constable and Hillwalker had a Politics degree. RIP
true they didn't see it coming (most of them)
I was just using such people as an example but my point was that some people are more qualified to vote than others and therefore in my book their votes should have a higher weighting. I'm surprised no 'democracy' has ever tried this.
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I count 9 Scottish seats in the top 100.
I'm pretty sure you don't know what your talking about.
There was quite an obvious north / south trend in general though, even though it was with notable exceptions.
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Still a problem for the Tories.
They have to win at least some of these Labour seats to form a government.
Just waving the hairshirt at the populace and threatening them with benefit cuts is unlikely to be enough.
In 1979 Thatcher had a populist agenda based around tax cuts, extending property ownership and encouraging social mobility as well as fiscal cut backs. Indeed, she did not have to do that much reduction in spending because Denis Healey did most of the hard work for her government in his 1978 budget . Cameron and Osborne dont have that advantage nor do they appear to have a positive vision of hope for the future.
the problem is with universal suffrage. The vote of a drugged up 18 year old who has just got out of juvenile detention counts the same as the vote of an Oxford economics or politics professor who really understand what we need to do to have a bright future as a country rather than just voting for a little extra benefit and lighter prison sentences. Its a stupid system that somehow is so popular that people fight and die to protect it.
I'm not one generally for conspiracy theories but the international spread of democracy as a system of government does fill me with suspicion. We assume that because we get to vote for them every few years that they will do whats best for the country and for us. What rubbish.
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Why is there such a large north/south divide in the incapacity benefit figures. I understand unemployment figures but why incapacity?
Also does anybody have any figures or know off hand what % of a society being incapacitated should be considered normal. Especially since we have not had a serious war for such a long time. I know it has been said a million times before but the UK really does have to re-look at the whole incapacity thing.
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Probably just a change to stam duty.
At the moment, a landlord buying multiple properties pays stamp duty as if buying a single property with the same total value. So, buying a 150k propert costs 1%, but buying 10 at once costs 4%.
The plan is to change stamp duty so that the tax is calculated for each property individually.
I'm all for sending BTL'ers to hell but the current stamp duty laws do seem silly for them. Surely anyone with 1/2 a brain would just buy one one day, the second the next and so on for 10 days.
The BTL / New Build sector are no strangers to getting arround rules as our hero Fergus shockingly exposed through his investigatory journalism
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i am looking to retrain from scratch into something new. i am thinking about perhaps carpentry or building related.
if you were starting over, what would you train to be in preparation for tomorrow's UK?
serious replies only !
Credit Control and Debt recovery.
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Nothing is going to happen - there will be no crash! I really do think the UK will escape this one. It feels horrible to be disenfranchised. My wife and I earn £50 k per year and we live in Coventry - we are probably some of the best paid people in the city. Even that is not enough to buy us more than a terraced house in a sink neighbourhood! We always said that we would by a house before we had children because we wanted to give them stability. Now we are resigned to the fact that we will never be able to own our own home - all because of baby boomer greed! We now agree that we will rent and have kids (and risk being evicted at three months notice by the LL!)
We will be a generation of renters whilst our parents will be the last generation of OO's. I love my parents but as far as I'm concerned their generation deserve to piss into plastic bags and have long lingering deaths for the way they have selfishly raped and disenfranchised their children! YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW.
As a generation, they have to die and therefore sell at some point.
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Help me father for I am losing my faith in HPC. I have been been waiting patiently for years waiting for a correction that has never happened. I got excited when the US crash started because I naively believed that the UK was "bumming" the US and that are economies were so similar. It would now appear that the UK is immune from the US HPC. I think this is mainly due to the British irrational obsession at a "house at all costs." The British would encourage their parents to sell their vital organs if it mean that they could get a foot hold on the "housing ladder." Even if a Brit has to buy a rat infested over priced two up two down on a mortgage of 20 times salary! It is my assessment that there is no hope for the British housing market. It will continur to rise forever! At social functions now I just lie and say that I'm a home owner. But the sad fact is that the majority of 20 and 30 sometings of this country will never own their own home.
Ok so we have been sh#gged up the **** buy our own parents - baby boomers, their's nothing we can do about it. Human beings are an animal and ALL animal are inherantly selfish in nature.
I have come to the conclusion - I will have to emigrate to a normal country where the property obsession is not so important.
I hate to leave my country but there is nothing for me here anymore.
It will just take another 10 years but it will happen the key is just not to let it bother you in the mean time.
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See above. I happen to agree with all your three ethical criteria (among others), and I too keep my money away from those companies. It seems you and I have much in common as investors[1], except that all my investment happens inside tax shelters.
I don't know for sure but I assume that it is possible to choose 'ethical' pensions. I only use 'ethical' funds for my stock market investments, which is why I don't go for a tracker. Ethical investing is quite a big deal these days and I would be very shocked if there are not pension funds tailored to it.
for example I have investments with Ecclesiastics, Aegon, Jupiter and they all have 'ethical' products. I also use a 'ethical' IFA from www.the-ethical-partnership.co.uk (excuse the plug, other 'ethical IFA's are available (probably)) who is particularly good at helping me choose funds that share my ethical views. for example I avoid all Arms trade but don't really care about animal testing/alcohol or tobacco
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I pay into my NHS pension scheme. It is worth it because of the employer contribution, the 40% tax relief, and the guaranteed pay out (although I don't really trust this bit).
Other than gold plated pensions such as this one I do not pay any money into a private pension for several reasons.
The main one is that I am a control freak and absolutely abhor the thought of putting my money into an investment and not being allowed to get it back out until I retire and even then there are limits on what I can do with it. I also don't trust the UK government to play around with pensions add infinatum.
I prefer the flexibility of an ISA. Although you don't get the tax relief on money you put in all the gains are tax free which long term will make a huge difference. The governement cannot bring any rules in to mess around with the money already in your ISA. You can get the money out again at any point.
Do you have to admit to ISA savings during a government means test, say for CTC or your children's student loans. does anybody know?
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The other draw-back to pnsions that no-one has mentioned (or I haven't noticed) is the whole dieing thing. I assume if you die before you retire you get jack. If you self invest you can pass that money (minus IH) on to somebody you care about.
Am I right on this?
If so to me that is a massive draw-back. Not that I'm planning on dieing any time soon but I would be pretty cheesed off if I had saved a massive % of my income for 40 years and then I died leaving all that money as profit to the pension fund.
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At this stage of the economic cycle, let alone the worst economic situation since the 1930's if not before/ever, what have P/E's historically been?
10?
12?
If 16 is the trend P/E, how much undershoot should we expect after an overshoot this high, this persistent?
Where are the fundamentals, micro as well as macro to support these P/E's?
Unless someone has some serious answers to these questions (and I'm not hearing any), equities look seriously overvalued to me.
And by more than a mere 20%.
I'm not big on complicated analysis but I look at it from a point of view of inflation expectations.
I have a little under 40K spread across in 3 different UK and International equity funds. This money is essentially what I plan to use as a house deposit one day in the future (Decent 2 bed terrace where I am is under 100K). I expect high inflation in almost everything over the next few years which will lead to high nominal growth for stocks. However I don't see how there can be any HPI (why I come on this site). Houses have had their inflation over the last 15 years and with the problems in the mortgage market HPI will definitely not keep pace with overall inflation and (hopefully for me) the stock market.
There is an article somewhere on the market oracle where Nadeem compared how many FTSE points it has cost to buy an average house over the years. Houses have become even more out of wack compared to the FTSE than they have compared to £. Therefore I expect my FTSE points to buy me more of a house in 3/4 years time than it does today.
That is my 'strategy' for what it is worth.
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I wish you much success with your business.
Thanks - We had a quiet start but have just started to turn a profit and March should be a good month in terms of sales figure.
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The street in that article looks much nicer than most "good" streets in this country.
If you could convincence all your family and friends you could buy the whole street for next to nothing and turn it into a gated community. It would cost a fraction of the money saved on getting the houses for free to employ a full time security guard.
In 20 years time this will surely be seen as the bargain of the century.
I think that is an amazing idea. In the town up the road from me that chap who used to own saga bought loads of run down sh!tty property that was formerly the crappiest part of the town. He then rented them all for next to nothing and did them up really nice. It has turned into a really nice place now, lots of art shops, ect and I bet he has made a killing as the price of all the property rises due to the change he has made in the area.
You could do that here if you could find a load of really nice people, who don't need to have a local job to survive for a little while. totally transform the local area and then sell each house for a massive profit. You wouldn't even need to be a billionaire.
anyone know a load of incredibly nice people who don't need to earn an income and are willing to relocate to Detroit. Maybe we could make it a HCP project.
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Agreed, they are just a tax deferral scheme. One way they might work is if you are going to pay lower tax in retirement (say 40% to 20% or 20% to 0%). One benefit in the pension structure (ignoring things like employer contributions etc which are effectively just salary and not generated by the pension structure) is the 25% tax free lump sum at retirement. Although how long that will last is anyones guess as future governments grab for revenue.
Annuity is not the only option - USP's and ASP's now available but with lots of restrictions.
I wish you much success with your business.
Thanks WICAO. I wasn't aware that you had other options than buying an annuity. It doesn't change my mind on pensions though.
I think the thing people miss with pensions is that they are becoming culturally irrelevant. What I mean by that is:
1) People my age (27) have seen their parents get ripped off by pension products and are naturally suspicious of the whole industry.
2) Employers these days are not offering the final salary pensions they used to, accept in very few cases. This leads to pensions becoming a periphery benefit when considering a new job.
3) People in my generation do not stay with an employer long enough for it make sense paying much attention to an employers pension scheme. I'm an example of that. Since I left Uni in 2003 I've worked at five different 'proper' jobs (and countless temp ones), I needed to to work my way up. This is becoming the norm.
I wouldn't be surprised if people's attitudes to pensions reverts to simply pumping out lots of kids and hoping they are nice to you when they get old.
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The government and the pensions industry would have us believe that the right way to save for retirement is through a pension. I was however thinking that this might not always be the case.
IMO what actually matters during both the accumulation phase and then the drawdown (if you don't buy an annuity) phase is to generate an acceptable return for an acceptable risk (asset allocation), minimise fees, minimise taxes and protect from inflation. Then it's a matter of allowing compound interest going to work.
I therefore ran a couple of simulations to study if pensions are the be all and end all with full details, calculations and explanations here http://retirementinvestingtoday.blogspot.com/2010/03/are-pensions-good-retirement-planning_07.html
In summary though the results were quite surprising.
Simulation 1 was a person like myself. A 40% tax payer who is planning on being a 20% (or whatever it is by then) tax payer at retirement, salary sacrificing and employer matching contributions. When compared to saving in say an ISA under the simulation conditions I am 178% better off which is very significant. I am therefore prepared to accept all the risks and negatives of pensions in exchange for attempting to pick up this extra gain. Even with this benefit though I'm not putting all my eggs in one basket with around 1/3 of my net assets in pensions.
Simulation 2 was the big surprise. A 20% tax payer who will be a 20% tax payer at retirement, net pay scheme and no employer contributions. When compared to saving in an ISA this person would be 3% better off by not using a pension. This is mainly due to the fact that within the S&S ISA you generally can invest for lower annual fees than a stakeholder (or similar) pension coupled with the effects of compound interest over a long period. So in addition to being worse off this person also picks up all the pension negatives and risks. The ISA method however cuts out the pensions industry and all those commissions so you can see why this method is not so talked about.
Thoughts?
As always DYOR.
The only benefit to a private pension I can see is that you put off paying the tax until later and that savings in your pension do not disqualify you from benefits.
Hardly worth tying up your money in a product for decades. The fact that you have to then purchase an annuity later also turns me off the idea.
My retirement plan is to poor my heart and sole into the business I have just started, avoid sinking my savings into an over expensive house and carry on smoking so I don't have to pay for 35 years of retirement.
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Educate yourself. Learn, learn, learn... and learn to love it.
By the late 20's you still have 2 or 3 major career changes ahead of you. Choose whether you decide where they lead you, or if you are led by them.
The sooner you should realise you aren't going to be rich, you simply weren't born with the silver spoon in your mouth, the easier the pain becomes. However you can earn a guaranteed income by looking at market trends, and paying for your own education (noone else will). Avoid IT, it is too far gone to resuscitate. Get your hands dirty and consider which areas will always be needed by society, not what might be needed by a technology created to reduce the need for workers.
From experience, it might take 2 years or so to make ANY return from education, but it hasnt let me down yet, and i've been at it for 30 odd years now.
Alternatively simply 'learn' to sell, then work hard at selling.
And you can become rich if you take a few risks.
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It's not obvious how they can legally pay less than minimum wage.
I'd be inclined to take the job then progressively nick all their kit and bunk off at 5pm.
Your an MP and I collect my £5
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Buy your way into a council house for £5,500, what's going on?
you have a great point there Tonkers. shared ownership schemes are basically disguised 'buy yourself into council housing' schemes.
Think about it. You pay rent, normally at a low rate, to a LHA which is not an option available to most people in the rented sector. However to be included into this new form of council housing how have to pay an entry fee of 25% of the property value. this is a fee that you will basically never get back but it does buy you access to the cheap rents in local authority housing.
whenever you unpack this Labour government's various scheme, they are almost always extremely un-socialist
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Nah 1000's if not 1000,000s of Chinese will come on the high speed train, to patronise British brothels and will pay small sums of money like 100RMB (which will be about an hour's pay in 2034 China) and that'll include everything including in ar5e.
why would anybody come here for the brothels - not that i have any experience of brothels - but for sex tourism you would hardly choose a country of over-weight, badly dress CAVs
Ed Balls 'wants To Expand 50P Tax Rate' To Double The Number Of Earners Hit
in House prices and the economy
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and inflation is the most sneaky of all