catdog1121

My experience is the oposite, like the OP I have a while to go however a lot of guys at my work are 55+ some as old as 65, most have no plans to retire until at least 65 as they dont want to end up doing nothing, they can financially retire earlier however they are choosing to work on to get an even bigger pension and live a life of luxury and holidays in retirement. This act of people staying in jobs instead of retiring means jobs are not becoming available as would normally be the case for younger people, I think this has contributed to the high youth unemployment... There is no easy answer.

Math not her strong point clearly, doubling 2.99 would make 5.98, its increased by half its amount, ie increased by roughly 50%. Back to school

http://www.taxinsider.co.uk/767-New_for_Old_The_End_of_the_Renewals_Allowance.html Interesing, article seems to suggest that repairs made to properties will no longer be tax ofsettable. Is this the start of government tax crack down on buy to let landlords? I dont think this is really the best way to handle the situation, this will result in a few things, either rents going up or more likely landlords more reluctant to make non essential repairs. pulling the tax releif on mortgage interest I think would have been better. Can only be a bad thing for renters. Rahter than replacing things landlords are more likely to mend and make do, dont need to encourage any more landlords to become skin flints, this will just turn good landlords into bad landlords.

I dont think they are doing anything illegal, the tax thing is pretty mute as the BTL will not be generating any income. Most buy to let mortgages do say that you cannot live in the property and it must be available to rent. 90% LTV in the buy to let mortgage sector now is next to non existent. The only thing keeping a lot of buy to let investors out of trouble is they took out BBR + x amount for term of mortgage. Back to the original post though, in theory yes the lender could say they are living in the property and they are not meeting the terms of the loan and could call it in at any time. However it is unlikely they would do this if the mortgage is being paid on time. So thats the legal thing etc sorted. Is it financially a wise idea? good god no... when their current deal ends they will find the best or only deal will be SVR which is generally quite a bit higher than residential SVR, can they still afford this when the mortgage goes to SVR? As for buying a new house, any residential mortgage is based on your income, they take into account your out goings, as the BTL mortgage is an outgoing and they have no income for it then the new mortgage company could very well look at that, if they are porting the morgage to a new property then it is unlikely the mortgage company will actually look again into the finances so they may get away with it. So in answer, is it legal? yes, can they get away with it? As long as the lender doesnt call in the mortgage for breaking the terms then yes, will they have problems getting a new mortgage for the new property? I would guess they are porting the mortgage so however stupid it may seem I think they may get away with it, depends on the lender, Are they doing the right thing? No you are totally correct they are stretching themselves so far and relying on property price increases that are unlikely to happen in the next 5yrs and they are opening themselves up to all sorts of trouble. The turning point for them I think is if they cant afford the mortgages for what ever reason, then the bank will want to know why and if they find its because they are living in it could either call in the debt or move to an alternative higher rate, if they call it in then the house could be repossessed, the bank will not care about the 10% they think they have in equity and they could end up with nothing.

I hope they go after these people, anyone found of this should have the ltd company shutdown and all assets of that company seized under the proceeds of crime (fraud). The individuals should be prosecuted for fraud. Few of these cases will have all these people clambering at the door of HMRC to pay their taxes. On another note have to agree it is crazy that earned income is charged at a higher rate although you could argue that the money involved in inheritance has already had tax paid on it, but makes you think would it be such a bad society if inheritance tax was say 90% on everything but income tax was lower. Would definitely in my opinion help in the sociable mobility. Put everyone on a more even starting playing field rather than some born with a silver spoon in their mouth while others never having the a chance. Of course there would be a lot of loop holes you would have to close, I stand to inherit a fair bit of money so it would effect me but I think it would be a fairer society if we all started on a more even playing field, it could also help be stopping those at the top hoarding all the assets and money as there would be little point. I wonder what it would do to buy to let, could reduce the popularity of it.

I dont think the building of houses is the issue, its the cost of the land, its better for land owners to keep hold of the land and let it sky rocket in price as the shortage of houses keeps on going up. Of course the way round this is LVT, I think all council tax should be replaced by LVT. Councils should allow or disallow building on land regardless of if application has been made or not, this stops someone holding land but not getting planning permission knowing that it would increase the value of the land and so they would be liable for more tax, by designating land potential for residential it increases the value of the land meaning the owner has more tax liability so more likely to sell and build.

People at work desperate for overtime, my company used to pay people just to be on standby for when planned work came in over the weekends, now they feel they dont need to as work colleagues are so desperate for money, not having had a pay rise for almost 10yrs and now with high inflation. But apparently were lucky to have a job.

At the time of the crisis the bankers thought they were untouchable, they brought in so much money to the government they thought there was no way the government would even think about touching them, with their claims of we will go to another country. Little did they realise no other country wanted the liabilities these bankers could cause. The arrogance and the subsequent pain felt by all of us made them a political target, with nowhere to run they are now realising while the people are suffering the will be a continued target because of political pressure placed on the government by the people, its a good political move to add extra taxes to bankers and the government is doing what the public want. In the face of this the bankers have now realised, no matter how much your in the pockets of politicians if the people speak, the people together will win. How much of this is just for show makes you wonder, a PR stunt...

So heres an idea ill float, how about we take all the kinda jobs the polish are doing, working in the fields, packing in factories etc. Tell the owners the goverment will make up half the wage if they employ these lay abouts. Its a win/win, the owners will employ them as if say they are paying min wage, they get a work force at half the cost of the current polish work force. It will mean all those kind of jobs will be taken up so no more immigration issue. If the lay abouts dont like it then stop the benifits, I dont really see any downsides. Maybe you guys can though?

Ok so I just got my pension statement in for the year and somehow the bankers have managed to lose over 15% of my pension pot in a year. I literally cant put money into it fast enough to keep up with what they are losing from it, when they are producing results like this how on earth can they even think about bonuses? Dont even get me started on public sector pensions, think ill be lucky if the damn bankers leave me anything left, but as long as they get their bonuses thats all that matters I suppose. I would really question any public sector workers going on strike, I started my work pension at 20, I put in 6%, company puts in 6% at the moment im projected to get about £3000 a year on retirement, of course thats going down pretty quick with the fund being creamed off. Oh and before you say it went up loads in the boom, actually no as im only 28 my pot was tiny then so made no difference. And they expect hard working people like me to pay more taxes to pay for their nice pensions? They will get not sympathy here. Ok rant over....

Prices have fallen, Im sorry which prices are these, food? Electricity? Gas? Fuel? these are the kinda things you buy. and savers have been stolen from, by using QE ie printing money it devalues currency, this means savings are worth less and debt is worth less so quite simply put you are robbing peter to pay paul so it is steeling....

Think that is half the problem, people see other houses that are now reduced, and think they can get a free upgrade as they think their house is still worth top of the market prices. Until people are forced to sell a crash is unlikely, it will happen one of two ways. 1. interest rates go up to combat inflation meaning people can no longer afford the higher mortgage. 2. Inflation remains at a high level for 5yrs plus with little wage inflation to match meaning people have to pay more for food, fuel etc so cant afford the mortgage. Problem is scenario 1 is recoverable and is the norm, scenario 2 is a whole new ball game and with hyper inflation buisnesses start dropping like fly's as people spend all their income on the essentials and there is no profit anywhere, all the money goes to importing products like food, the wealth drains out of the country.

It has a huge four poster bed though, haha, doesnt quite look right in such a small house, near the bradley stoke estate I would agree that is way over priced even for peak prices.

So we all know that the reason the UK has faired better than greece, Italy, Ireland, spain etc even though our debt is just as bad is the fact we devalued our currency. A lot of people are saying thank got were not in the Euro. It made me think though if the Euro didnt exist all those other countries would have devalued their currencies just as we have, this would have meant the UK's own currency devaluation would have had less of an effect. So in a way it was our saving grace that other Euro countries could not devalue their own currencies. However, it has now come about that all these other countries are now in so much trouble that I believe it is just a matter of time before global credit crunch 2 is here, The debt level being run up by the western world is far to great to be sustainable. We think we have had it bad, Euro countries can only keep buying other countries debts for so long, all they are doing is putting of the inevitable fall out. This will bring down the UK as well regardless of extra QE and devaluation. So the Euro will be the worlds downfall.

The Labour party do seem to be the stick your head in the sand and ignore the debt party. I don't think anyone can really blame them for the global recession however you can blame them for leaving us in such a bad position to deal with the recession. Logic dictates that if your still spending more than ur getting in at the good times when the bad times come ur screwed. They never looked into where this money was coming from, it was not generated wealth is was debt fuelled wealth which a prime example is house prices. I am however slightly disappointed the condems have be so pro excessive house prices rather than allowing them to fall by putting pressure to reduce inflation on the MPC.

How do you work that out? They bump up prices forcing locals out. They only us it at weekends or in the summer which means shops get less foot flow through the door so have to as you say make things over priced, this drives away tourism and reduces employment. How is that good. I agree just taking the house away is illegal but doubling of the council tax that could then be used to help generate local buisness or build affordable housing for locals is a great idea.

But surely if the bailifs go in and there is no assets in the office then they should take ownership of the office and sell it, obviously this should be a last resort, they should take the money owed out of the sale and hold the rest and its upto the landlord to come forward. Would make landlords think twice about hiding from council tax and I bet they would come forward pretty quick to collect their money where they should then be arrested and charged with not paying council tax and fined on top.

Dont know the figure but it does seem like quite a lot, think they did come down at some point although this was not as well publicized as the rises

The promise to pay back though can be broken through bankruptcy/default, you may have read a little about this in the press..... Debt to buy aptly as an example a house is taken more lightly as if you dont pay the house can be repossessed and sold to pay off the debt, in the same way the government can sell the shares to pay off the debt, this is different from debt where there is no actual asset bought with that debt. Its not the same and is so imo should not be classed in the same sense to sensationalise a story.

Much the same picture in most places think you will find..

I actually didnt say anything about where the money came from, printing money and the effect of devaluing your currency is technically a completely different issue compared to the debt of the country and if anything actually reduces the countries debt but causes knock on effects that anything imported goes up in price, hence why our inflation is so high. So please dont make out im an idiot.

Not all borrowing is against an asset, if you borrow money to go on holiday, there is no asset there.... If you borrow money to buy a mars bar, eat that mars bar, there is no asset, unless RBS etc go under which wont happen then there will be an asset there. Also they use households instead of people as again this increases the amount of perceived debt, its classic sensationalist journalism, as much as I hate when HP goes up they say house prices are back on track I also hate this kinda of journalism, you cant pick and choose when you accept stats that are not meaningful.

This is such bad reporting, what they fail to explain is the bank bail out was not money handed to banks it was in return for shares, the government will get probably all the money back, where it is costing us is that they had to borrow that money so they are paying interest on it with no real return. When you take this back out of the equation as you should because although its a debt, unlike the other debt it is offset against an asset. But of course that wouldn't sound so dramatic. Cant stand this kind of reporting. Only plebs can read this and not realise they have picked and choose the amounts without looking at the detail to sensationalise a story that is nothing new.

Get an independent valuation done, when it comes back at a much lower price than they are asking if you go in above that as the property is clearly worth a little more to you as its being local then it wont seem like so much of an insult. Failing that if its been on the market a year and at a "deluded" price, chances are they are not serious sellers, just these people that put their properties on the market at silly prices, if someone pays up, great they will move on buying a property at a lower price making some money, if not they are happy to stay where they are. They may have looked at other properties like you and they may not be in the situation of needing to be in a specific geographical area so figure its worth trying it to make a few quid then they could get one of the other properties. Ive seen this quite a lot, there is nothing much you can do, much better leaving well alone dont waste ur time or money and wait for a willing seller.