gadget

It's because part of the point of a deposit is to show you are not financially stretched and can save a significant sum from your income. Even if the money from mum and dad is a gift, if you haven't been able to save any money yourself then a slight knock might leave you struggling to pay the mortgage.

This seems the likliest explanation. I'd send them evidence of you trading as "kosher food" and see if that helps. Oh and ignore all these posts suggesting you did something wrong using a personal account. If you're a sole trader there's no distinction between you and your business.

Always suprises me the lengths people will go to evade tax. 45k Capital gains. You could do the above and spend the next 10 years worrying about a letter from HMRC. Or you could pay 6k of CGT tax, have no worries and 39k to spend on whatever you want.

To be fair it would be crackers not to have a cutoff. They need to have gone through your February payroll. Otherwise there is nothing to stop you "hiring" 100 friends and family in March, furloughing them and claiming all the money from the governement. This is not theoretical, it would happen. At scale.

Have to say i have little sympathy with the ltd company / dividend issue. Directors pay themselves dividends rather than salary to avoid National Insurance. The point of National Insurance is to pay for / accrue these kind of benefits.

https://www.crowdcube.com/companies/powervault/pitches/bAxVmZ I'm in two minds about utility scale battery storage. Seems a waste to have millions of battery packs in a field somewhere rather than in millions of homes (paired with solar).

These statistically b0llocks / manipulated studies / articles on electric cars or renewable energy keep showing up. I don't know why that is but maybe the massively wealthy oil industry has an idea. Seems something similar happened with health studies on smoking in the mid 20th century.

Not sure it's that clear. Think the minimum of 1 times the deposit includes the deposit. IE you are guaranteed full return of the deposit but not necessarily anything more.

Err... Victoria died in 1901. But anyway that assumes good construction and can be a lot worse with council flats. A relative of mine bought a BTL 70's council flat 10 years ago and literally all the rent over that time has gone out on big bills deemed necessary by the council (new roof, new electrics etc etc)

The reason stamp duty works for shares and property (despite people saying a financial transaction tax will never work because it will just get avoided / transactions will move offshore)is that if you don't pay it you don't own it. Therfore it has to be the buyer who pays...

The letting agent clearly doesn't know what they're talking about. You are not liable for rent until a new tenant is found as you are within the term of the break clause. As to their term about early release penalty charges: that's pretty outrageous. Fortunately i don't think it applies and anyway it's almost certainly unenforceable as an "unfair term". Frankly though if i'd seen that in a tenancy agreement i'd have walked away: even if its unenforceable it marks the agents as nasty pieces of work...

Think this is overblown tbh. The "rich" entrances typically have a 24hrs porter / concierge which means extraordinarily high service charges. The "affordable" flats wouldn't be very affordable if they had to pay these...

Interesting programme. But struck a slight off key on the drug companies. Sure they were just trying to make money, but often eg with the statins example, this would save countless lives http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/crusader-for-statins-was-right-about-the-benefits-of-the-drug-after-all-9617006.html

Don't bring facts into an Internet argument...

Think you've got cause and effect the wrong way round here... It's no surprise that the rich tend to support parties that support the rich... Though plenty of very successful people are bleeding heart lefties too... Sure not the ones who got rich drilling for oil etc. But the music / film / technology industries are chock full of very very rich people who tend to be screaming lefties...

The reason Picketty made such a stir was not simply his future of ever rising inequality. It was showing how wealth begets more wealth in ever increasing amounts (as a %age of GDP). The wealthy will be wealthy because of who they are not what they do. That was the case pre 20th century and he suggests that'll be the case in the future, that the early 20th Century was an aberration.

I do find the sub-genre of miserliness on this forum pretty amusing... I'm glad some on here enjoy weeing in the bath to save on hot water. And i'm pretty good at saving the pennies myself (bottled water and starbucks coffee add nothing to my life). However the amount i spent on my last ski trip would make some on here puke. The point of life is not to accumulate money in your bank account like points in an arcade game. Unless that in itself gives you a thrill* in which case enjoy. *The only explanation for Bernie Eccelstone for example.

You've got good news and bad news The good news is your deposit should have been protected. http://england.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/downloads_and_tools/tenancy_deposit_rights_checker The bad news is you cannot withdraw your notice without agreement from the landlord. Looks like there's a negotiation to be had...

He's paying 39%* of his income in income tax and NI in total. A fair amount but definitely not 50%. His net income is £72,741.72 still a big chunk of change... *It'll be substantially less than 39% if he pays much into a pension, which i would hazard a guess he is.

These articles always make the same silly point: Earning lots of money and spending lots of money (on school fees, big houses etc) is not the same as not earning much money and not spending much money. In both cases you've likely got little left at the end of the month. But in the former case that's a choice. If the people in this article chose to educate their kids like 93% of the country do they'd have EXTRA spending money of twice the average wage...

Nope. But it has helped in the recovery of 59% (and counting) of the loses. Madoff Trustee Tops $10 Billion Recovery With Bank Deal

Yup, that really is a batshit crazy distribution of loses. Still, without regulations and laws I suppose you can just make up any crazy rules you like...

Not quite true. Did they give you the required information on the deposit protection? If they didn't then they may be in a bit of trouble. There's a sticky at the top of this thread on what the current rules are. As for the rent increase: say no and try and negotiate something reasonable. If they won't negotiate then only you can say if it's worth the hassle of moving

Definately worth a read. Not sure i agree with the solutions but he analyses the problem well. http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/bubble-trouble-danny-dorlings-new-book-on-the-problem-with-londons-property-market-9135697.html The intro:

50% of all bitcoin-usd transactions over the last 24hrs have been on mtgox . So 250 IS the market price. (Yes it is panic selling. But IMHO most bitcoin will in the end be sold in a panic)