ChinaReader

That's slightly unfair - his advice was never to take out extra debt just for fun, but rather to move your debts to the least expensive option, while paying them off as fast as you could.

What I don't understand is how you can fail to run a successful BTL at present if you've a) got a tenant and b ) got a mortgage with a UK bank - which such a pathetically low base rate, surely it's almost impossible to get it wrong?!

I'm no guru, but aren't shorts shorter than this...? Rights issues take time to be announced, negotiated, etc. Don't most shorts wrap up in a few days? Maybe I've just added more questions and no real answers.

I was about to argue that one, remembering when it hit 6 per month (i.e. just over one a week), and that was pretty dire. Then I noticed this was 9.5 per *quarter*!!

Put your full cash ISA allowance (+ herself's) into ISAs - e.g. First Direct Regular Saver is 7% for a year, as long as you save some each month and don't take it out for a year. If you do, it drops to 3% or something, but you think you might be stashing it away for the whole year, so don't worry too much. Since that probably won't cover your entire saving plans, if you're genuinely saving like a loon, tuck some of it away in other bank savings accounts as you see fit. Spread it around a few institutions below the £50k guarantee in each one, and you'll be fine. And if you save so much that you can't get less than £50k per institution, you can afford better financial advice than HPC ;-)

But we get to nick their gas for free, so there's some benefit to keeping them in the union ;-)

Surely you can extract this from the Nationwide data?

It doesn't have the last couple of years on, but here's the historical view backwards on house prices. Blips at 1990ish, 1980ish, and somewhere before 1975. Nationwide's data.

Sounds like a pretty good guess. Not sure about the recycling, but certainly more repairing and reusing and growing. I was chatting to my uncle last week who comments he still darns his socks... I don't think many of my mid-twenties friends even know how to darn a sock - just buy a new pair (made in China), dur! So, recession proof: sign up for your allotment today, before the rush starts. I kid you not.

http://www.financemarkets.co.uk/2007/11/20...-credit-crunch/

Well, at least the tenuous link to HPC made it onto the first page of the thread, albeit in post #15. Local election in your area around now? Or just a routine political advertisement?

When the bears turn bull, the estate agents will be busy and the forum will be quiet.

Don't worry, you get 2m for passing go... because that's what life's like in the real world.

And one of the discussions about China at the moment is the concept of hyperinflation freezing an economy. For example, selling prices for a kilogram of everyone's favourite pork went up 12% last month alone. Timber and steel do similar crazy things occasionally. And if you can make 12% just by warehousing, why bother with the financial risk of production? Just hold raw materials, sack all your staff, and sell the raw materials a year from now. But if some people hold, the price will go up and up (shortage of supply), so those holding will be even more likely to stay holding (human greed is considered constant in this equation), others may join and the holding game, and prices go up, and... etc. I genuinely wonder how the dance ends. But to come back to your original point, I'd agree that high inflation makes a mockery of traditional measures.

http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm

My completely unqualified and uneducated suggestion on this topic would be to: 1) find the exact terms and conditions of the lenders; 2) run them in three or four scenarios (e.g. house prices up loads, up inflation, flatline, crash'); 3) show your parents what they have in each scenario in terms of a) money and b ) % of house owned by them. My suspicion is that if you "release" 50k of a 200k house now, if the price crashes to 50k they own the whole house, and if the price soars to 300k you only owe them 50k+int. (But check - If they actually own 25% of the house then you'd owe them 75k I guess.) Anyway, the deal will be rigged in favour of the lender, to varying amounts depending on scenario. If your parents are happy with going into that deal, you act as the lender with the exact same terms and conditions. They get the same deal, but it keeps the money in the family, and you'll be in a good position. Because that's the way the "we'll have part of your home off you" crooks have made the contracts.

Sing along with the punters and they'll assume you're their friend. Whether you care what happens to Interest Rates or not. Sneaky. But it'll probably work.

Nice idea. That's what they tell us too. But last time the numbers were available, they actually make more profit per square metre for their smaller shops. So the main reason is "because we can (and you're too lazy / disorganised / busy to go further for a better price, or you don't have a car)". Which is why we love Tesco.

I think he was suggesting that Labour spin isn't delivered by road. So I think you're in agreement.

I got back my deposit in full each year, no problems.* So now you've heard of someone. *although in my second year we hadn't realised that the housemate paying the bills hadn't given a reading to the electricity company for the entire tenancy - ten months of underestimates and there went the deposit. But the landlord didn't keep it. Fortunately.

"Absolute dive; would suit gullible late-entrant to precarious market." Well there must be at least one honest agent out there somewhere?!

In manufacturing, Just in Time is often the alternative option to China-outsourcing - don't confuse the two.If America doesn't want to print its way out the hole, what does the government have that it could give to the Chinese in exchange for the treasuries/bonds/thingies? And out of what they could give, what would they give (i.e. bombs and guns are pretty unlikely!)?

Always have to go one better don't you?!

Just a smidgen! I was about to ask if it's possible to bump half a thread to the off-topic forum...

Then the blue line twists left, ducks right, round the defense, and shoots for a home run.