crash-and-burn

The Wholesale energy market means that the price of electricity is determined by the generator who successfully bids the highest price, not the lowest bidder, and as it's usually pegged to gas, the windfarm producers make a killing, and the likes of your and I do not benefit whatsoever from these cheaper methods of generating electricity.

It sounds like you found your profession, it seems to be a rare thing these days. I know a few people who loved what they did so much, they carried on into their 80's and 90's until they could do it no longer.

I'm a Gen-Xer, but from the late 70's. I'm all for retirement, but not there yet. I've never had career ambition - it's one of those things that's driven into you at school, and you're expected to have a direction from a young age, and then follow that path for the majority of your life. I never found my 'thing', but I didn't get stuck in some mind numbingly boring job either, working at somebody else's behest. I've scraped by in life by doing things I enjoy, and have lived frugally, having never gotten into debt; not even a mortgage or monthly rentals. If a few things click into place, I might be able to retire at 60, however since I turned 40 I live a semi-retired sort of lifestyle anyway. Time was always more important to me than career and money, and I already have all the material things I need.

I'm grateful to have all my fresh food grown from seed in my polytunnel, some of it planted out already. I've installed all the frameworks and canes, to accommodate 60 tomato plants, my winter and summer squashes are mostly outdoors, corns, salad, achocha, cucumber, spinach, beetroot, beans etc. I've added to my berries, perennials and fruit trees. Some of the fruit trees are only 3 times the price of a bag of supermarket fruit themselves - long term investment (time wise), and some are free like the walnut trees I grew from the nut (seriously long term investment!), and if you don't have much space just buy and maintain an espalier pruned tree. Fresh fruit and vegetables are vital for health, the fact that the poorest can't afford them doesn't bode well for the future.

Does the FSCS really have enough funds to pay out if a bank went under?

That can also be fraught with problems of course. My wife is an only child counting on a reasonable inheritance, but she's long estranged from her one living parent, and whilst she's French so can't be disinherited, I do warn her not to get her hopes too high as any manner of things can happen, not least selling the house to pay for health care. In the UK it's even more complicated! It is a depressing state of affairs for many people when they look at their life circumstances and know the possibility of ownership is but a pipe dream... I recall finding an old local newspaper a few years back, from the mid-90's when I was a young adult, and it was full of very affordable property.

Surely it's going to fluctuate wildly as everybody's circumstances are different. I've never had a mortgage, as I bought outright. In hearing that you'd probably assume I was probably rich or well off, and compared to some that's of course true, but I suspect the larger majority have a disposable income somewhat larger than myself.

The digital pound: A new form of money for households and businesses? https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/paper/2023/the-digital-pound-consultation-paper You have until the 7th June to give them feedback.

If you exclude Monaco, I believe Japan has the highest life expectancy in the world.

My wife has an apartment in Paris, and there's rent caps there too (3.5% a year I think). Also with the new diagnostic report requirements, you cannot raise your rent at all if it's a G rating (soon to extend to F), in fact if you're G in 2023 you cannot rent full stop! Given the majority of housing in the city is more than 100 years old, it means at least 50% of property in the city falls into an F/G rating. A lot of people have been selling because of this, and I'm not sure if it's had a big negative impact on the amount of property available for rent. You can't stick a heat pump or solar panels on historical city apartments, which is one of the criteria for getting into the top three tiers. Exterior insulation is tricky too (the owners need a majority agreement, and certain walls can't be hidden), so it doesn't leave many options. Goodness knows how anyone is supposed to score an A,B or C which is the intended goal for everyone.

19p for 1.5kg of potatoes, and 19p for a kilo of carrots!... I can assure you those sorts of prices do not exist across the channel, and I doubt in Lidl Germany itself. How can they possibly sell them at that loss? 1.5kg of potatoes from Lidl in France is generally 2,99, euros, although you can get a 1.5kg bag of the cheapest chip making variety for 1,99 euros.

Won't they given 4 weeks notice that the police were going to come snooping? If so everything we see in the news is theatre, and they won't uncover anything, at least not tangible.

I have a yoghurt maker and do my own, it works out much cheaper... I have done the oat milk trick in the past, but we have a clearance shop in France where lots of European products are sold on discount... They have a lot of barista milk from the UK, still in date, for the equivalent of 60 pence (I stocked up big time). Also picked up many bargains like Waitrose pumpkin pizza for under a £1, and we have Heinz ketchup, although only the small sized ones, for about 50p. Interestingly in the main supermarkets, there is an aisle dedicated to biscuits, and the cheapest by a reasonable margin (going by the price per kilo), are McViities digestives.

The potential lifespan for human beings hasn't really changed much over millennia. Obviously there are many periods in history where infant mortality was particularly high, certain diseases, war and hard labour might have prevented people from reaching older age, but they were certainly capable of living to 70/80/90 and even 100+... We don't hear about quite so many centenarians from past ancient history, but then the world was far less populated also.... Times of famine may have played a role too, but one but thing they didn't have in abundance was processed, convenience food. Today, people are generally reaching their potential for older age, but if you've been eating crap half your life, your body and mind probably aren't going to be functioning all that well.

I think society will collapse before that ever happened. Life expectancy and quality of life is on a downward trend.

I have everything on that list - am I successful or live in a mansion, nope, but I don't live in the UK. I hate things that measure success by physical possessions or material gain, as though that were THE goal... I've seen people chase that, get that, burn out, depressed and into an early grave. Comfort is good, I don't knock anybody who has it, but inner peace of mind is what I consider success.

I lived in central Paris for a number of years, not anymore, but I visit occasionally and still have friends in the centre. It's fine, there's just certain areas to avoid at certain times...

I remember you once said I was wearing a tin foil hat... I'm not knocking preparedness (I was once a boy scout), but if we reach a situation where everyone needs a few grand of cash in their house, then clearly everything has gone to hell and law and order will break down with it.

I came across this channel recently. Haven't seen much, but the chap bought a really, really cheap house and did it up over the years, because they had no money, but then somehow manages to buy a chateau... Really just the shell of a chateau, burnt out by a fire in the 80's. I'm all for preserving these old beautiful structures, but it seems like an insane, and potentially impossible project. I can't imagine the sort of money that would have to go into its restoration - certainly well in excess of a million euros I would have thought.

When Brits see the French market, they tend to go for the largest property they can find with the most amount of land, and feel they have the bargain of a lifetime. It usually doesn't take too long to realise that unless you let the neighbouring farmer graze his sheep on it, it'll swallow most of your time. The old character houses are beautiful, but are usually in a state. They are definitely money pits, which is why the French typically opt for new builds. The more rooms you have, the more heating bills, taxes and potential problems. A gite or B&B deep in sparsely populated Creuse, will be competing against thousands of similar ventures - there's no money to be made from it in that neck of the woods. I love the region incidentally, I've visited numerous times, but it's an easy day trip for me. Tiny little windy, hilly roads, but very cold and precarious in the winter. One of the reasons I didn't move there.

My mobile phone stays off the majority of the time, I'm not a fan. If they sent me an alert I'd probably get it a week later. What's the point of warning people? We'd all be dead or slowing dying anyway.

I'm sure you didn't mean it the way you worded it, as I imagine the original poster considers the UK their home. Sometimes location trumps finances.

Your typical gangster bank. As reported in the Guardian: " In the past three years alone, Credit Suisse has been caught in corporate espionage after hiring professional spies to track outgoing executives; admitted to defrauding investors as part of the Mozambique “tuna bonds” loan scandal, resulting in a fine worth more than £350m; and been embroiled in the collapse of the lender Greensill Capital and the US hedge fund Archegos Capital in 2021. It also came under fire after the release of the Suisse secrets investigation by global reporting outlets including the Guardian in 2022, which showed it had served clients involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and other serious crimes over decades. That same year, Swiss prosecutors found the bank guilty of helping to launder money on behalf of the Bulgarian mafia, although the bank has denied wrongdoing and intends to appeal against the ruling. But problems have not yet gone away. Earlier this week, the lender admitted there had been “material weaknesses” in its internal controls linked to financial reporting, but assured bosses were working on a plan to “strengthening the risk and control frameworks”."

Bare in mind you have to work 42 years to get a full state pension, and this is going up to 43 years (for those born from 1973 onwards) by 2035, so if you come out of higher education and into a job at 21 or 22 , you wouldn't be able to claim it until you're about 64 anyway. If you start working earlier it sucks, and I get it. I went to the post office on the day of the strikes and did my food shopping, everything was working as normal. The schools were open, but the canteen was closed and half the teachers weren't there, but the French education system is falling apart anyway, with a chronic lack of teachers and almost no supply teachers. Some days I have to pick my kids up by 11am as they're finished for the day. There's still the odd pocket of yellow vests converging at the weekends, but covid pretty much wiped them out, still the spirit is there, and I suspect if I ventured into the cities on certain days I would see the weight of the protests which are downplayed somewhat by the media.