I think the wait is over

[markyh]

19 hours ago, Dorkins said:

Thing is the required drops are so big. London/SE could go down 70% and it still wouldn't be great value relative to average wages. It's the sheer size of the correction required that makes me think it will take a while.

House prices will never correct to 3 x the main income. 3 x joint income is the new low as women wanted equality and got it. So single earner families will always be out compeated for the better properties on price. 

[Chunketh]

1 hour ago, Bluestone59 said:

Because an extra trip to a cheaper store often isn't worth it in cost and time for the saving involved?  Depends how much you're buying of course.

I work with someone who will drive around town for 10 minutes (in quite a large car) to find a free parking space and not pay 80p.  Will also drive to a cheaper petrol station. 

If there's a saving, fine. And if you have the time of course.  The person I'm talking about, this is a mania whether or not it's worth it isn't considered as far as I can tell. Worst of all, we sometimes get from her the story of the saving recounted in some detail on her return..

 

True. You have to value your own time as well. We just got every couple of months and stock up, probably saves us £80-100 quid, which adds up to a long haul flight every year. That's how I prefer to see it.

 

[Dorkins]

2 hours ago, markyh said:

House prices will never correct to 3 x the main income. 3 x joint income is the new low as women wanted equality and got it. So single earner families will always be out compeated for the better properties on price. 

Trouble with that argument is that when women entered the workplace men left it at about the same rate so the overall employment rate stayed about the same. There are not loads of extra salaries available to service mortgages.

You can do the maths from the graph below. Male employment rate down 14 points, female employment rate up 14 points. No net increase in employment.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/womeninthelabourmarket/2013-09-25 

Edited February 17, 2019 by Dorkins

[markyh]

55 minutes ago, Dorkins said:

Trouble with that argument is that when women entered the workplace men left it at about the same rate so the overall employment rate stayed about the same. There are not loads of extra salaries available to service mortgages.

You can do the maths from the graph below. Male employment rate down 14 points, female employment rate up 14 points. No net increase in employment.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/womeninthelabourmarket/2013-09-25 

Must be a south east thing as every household I can think of has two earners I’d the household is a couple. Even where one earner is a six figure salary the other earns £20kish part time / reduce hours say 4 days a week. Only single people down here have single salary incomes.

[lombardo]

3 hours ago, markyh said:

House prices will never correct to 3 x the main income. 3 x joint income is the new low as women wanted equality and got it. So single earner families will always be out compeated for the better properties on price. 

I remember making this point in the first thread I made on here, and I got a lot of hate because people thought I was a troll because I was a new member. But it's the reality we have to face. But remember that women on average probably earn two thirds of what men earn so it's a bit less than x3. And if Jordan Peterson is right, women will always earn less because many don't really want the high paying jobs or don't want to work full-time.

 

[markyh]

3 minutes ago, lombardo said:

I remember making this point in the first thread I made on here, and I got a lot of hate because people thought I was a troll because I was a new member. But it's the reality we have to face. But remember that women on average probably earn two thirds of what men earn so it's a bit less than x3. And if Jordan Peterson is right, women will always earn less because many don't really want the high paying jobs or don't want to work full-time.

 

True. Funilly my wife earns £8k more basic salary than me and has a final salary pension and 30 days holiday plus bank holidays and healthcare, company Apple everything etc, but I have a company car. We have friends with full time blokes earning £90k and the wives earn nothing or under £15k but pay little tax and limited hours. We keep up by being close to but both under £50k so we keep child benefit and have two lots of tax allowance etc. Once you get all kids to 4 and stop paying crazy childcare  to work full time it becomes easier. I’m sure there are families on my estate who have only one main earner but they live in the two and three bed terraced houses and funny enough all the detached 4 and 5 beds like ours have two working parents and two cars etc. 

[winkie]

4 hours ago, markyh said:

House prices will never correct to 3 x the main income. 3 x joint income is the new low as women wanted equality and got it. So single earner families will always be out compeated for the better properties on price. 

There is a big difference in wanting to go out to work and needing to go out to work......man works, the woman works, and the childminder works.......all paying taxes......three to the power of one.....it is not always about equality it is more about how the system is designed to generate increasing growth and taxes.....what about the children?......is that what they want?

 

[Bluestone59]

4 hours ago, Chunketh said:

True. You have to value your own time as well. We just got every couple of months and stock up, probably saves us £80-100 quid, which adds up to a long haul flight every year. That's how I prefer to see it.

 

Thanks for your comment. Good call.  Lack of discipline and storage space would largely rule that out for me! I'd eat more of it too, most likely.

I'm constantly impressed by the scale of thrift of some people on here, which I am better at admiring than practising. My keeping a small car for 15 years might make up some ground though.

And I didn't mention the sheer stress involved in making a couple of circuits of a British small town for a free parking space. The colleague I mentioned seems to be in a constant state of panic and never seems to have any money so I would not be following her example any time soon.

[Dorkins]

3 hours ago, lombardo said:

I remember making this point in the first thread I made on here, and I got a lot of hate because people thought I was a troll because I was a new member. But it's the reality we have to face. 

The reality is that for every woman who entered the workforce, a man left it.

[Si1]

1 hour ago, winkie said:

There is a big difference in wanting to go out to work and needing to go out to work......man works, the woman works, and the childminder works.......all paying taxes......three to the power of one.....it is not always about equality it is more about how the system is designed to generate increasing growth and taxes.....what about the children?......is that what they want?

 

That's harsh. There are plenty of ways to be a bad parent and having two good wage earners is not one of them. (Saying this as and my wife both work part time and live in a modest house - to each his own)

[winkie]

4 minutes ago, Si1 said:

That's harsh. There are plenty of ways to be a bad parent and having two good wage earners is not one of them. (Saying this as and my wife both work part time and live in a modest house - to each his own)

Not saying two wage earners are bad parents, many of the people who went to full time boarding schools as young children felt they missed out by not having their parents time......two part time jobs = one full time job, sounds ideal way of doing things, the kids get the best of both parents.

[markyh]

2 hours ago, winkie said:

Not saying two wage earners are bad parents, many of the people who went to full time boarding schools as young children felt they missed out by not having their parents time......two part time jobs = one full time job, sounds ideal way of doing things, the kids get the best of both parents.

It’s perfectly doable with 2 full time parents you just need to plan your kids at least 4 years apart and have enough income to pay the mortgage for 8 years and another equivalent mortgage for 8 years at the same time! Our full time childcare costs from 2006 to 2010 and 2014 to 2018 pretty much cost a constant £800 pcm for 5 day a week 7am to 6pm care. Costs had risen so much from 1st kid to 2nd kid that even with the increase from free 15hrs a week to 30 hrs a week and both claiming the max £243 pcm childcare vouchers. We still ended up paying the equivalent of £800 pcm for fulltime care. And the hassle of juggling employers so one of us collects and one of us drops off. That’s over now so 2019 onwards is financially easier as 2016 to 2018 ment £2400 pcm in combined mortgage and childcare costs alone. 

[Pop321]

4 hours ago, winkie said:

There is a big difference in wanting to go out to work and needing to go out to work......man works, the woman works, and the childminder works.......all paying taxes......three to the power of one.....it is not always about equality it is more about how the system is designed to generate increasing growth and taxes.....what about the children?......is that what they want?

 

A frightening thought. I had always considered the dual tax...not the triple tax. 

My wife was challenged by others ‘why don’t you work?’...reverse discrimination from other ‘some’ others. 

We both took the most efficient roles (her homemaker and me corporate sleezeball) that played to our strengths to make our economic goals work. I earned OUR money, my wife sorted 90% of domestics. 

OUR money was the biggest success. I never had MY cash for ‘luxuries’ because I work...my wife didn’t have money to spoil herself following a hard day at work. Alien to many but funds were always and completely spent jointly. Although we may spoil EACH OTHER......we never spent money on ourselves....because it never felt any money was one of ours individually. 

A key difference I notice with some dual earnings is dual spending. 2 cars, 2 lunches at work, 2 outsfits. Lots more ‘spend’ tax I imagine. 

Now we are both retired @50. Apparently I cook, clean and pick up grandkids now...well I am enjoying learning to.?

[GeordieAndy]

12 hours ago, markyh said:

Our full time childcare costs from 2006 to 2010 and 2014 to 2018 pretty much cost a constant £800 pcm for 5 day a week 7am to 6pm care. 

What is the point of having kids if you don't get to enjoy them by showing them by your actions they are the most important things in your World!? How many hours per day after the 11 (or more with travel!) they are out of the house do you actually see your own kids? ?

You can't underestimate the long term benefits of just sharing the simple things with them each day like having breakfast with them and walking them to school where you should make sure there is uninterrupted time to listen to their hopes and fears whilst by your actions showing them they have your unconditional love and support as and when they need it. This is especially important during the crucial 0-8 years which most experts agree makes or breaks you as a human...

By being complicit in the current system where 2 full time parents chasing the money and material things is seen 'normal' you are effectively giving over your children to the state. You are also letting the system's values indoctrinate your children and one day you will wake up realising you have sold your most valuable and important years of the most important things in your life to others for those 2 wages.

Having and raising children is pretty much the only reason I suggest we are all here at the deepest level - learning from our World and passing on our knowledge, experience and values to our offspring.

Unfortunately if you don't see this yourself then your children will probably make the same mistakes as you and keep the system we have going as adults. The other possible outcome is that you will end up having a strained relationship with them when they are old enough to question why you didn't want to do everything you could to spend more time with them resulting in yet higher rates of depression, anxiety and addiction but this time for your own children.

It's possible to break the above cycle but you have to accept less shiny things and take full personal responsibility for your own actions and decisions by not taking the promotion for more money and less family time or selling yourself to the system so completely. I would suggest going self employed is the best way to break free so your work fits around your family not the other way around as personal sovereignty is what we as humans should all be looking to achieve.

Edited February 18, 2019 by GeordieAndy
Extra

[Errol]

17 hours ago, Dorkins said:

The reality is that for every woman who entered the workforce, a man left it.

They wanted equality and now they have the right to sit at a desk in a badly lit office for 40 years doing dire paper-pushing. I'm not sure they thought this through.

Edited February 18, 2019 by Errol

[Errol]

14 hours ago, Pop321 said:

My wife was challenged by others ‘why don’t you work?’...reverse discrimination from other ‘some’ others. 

The answer to this is : 'I do'.

Raising children and creating a home is the most important job that most people (mainly women) will ever do.

[Si1]

13 minutes ago, Errol said:

The answer to this is : 'I do'.

Raising children and creating a home is the most important job that most people (mainly women) will ever do.

My missus would go mad without the social outlet that work represents. So we both work part time. Each to his own. I love cooking too.

[Aidan Ap Word]

24 minutes ago, Errol said:

The answer to this is : 'I do'.

Raising children and creating a home is the most important job that most people (mainly women) will ever do.

And as the part of the team with the office-flunky -side-of-the-team I can say categorically that it is easier to walk away (and - in extreme cases - even ignore completely) those colleagues who are destructive or time waster or endlessly selfish.

Our children are too important to dismiss.

That - alone, and as one of many things - makes the work my wife does way more important and, in many ways, way harder.

So it is true that I will only ever be a (primarily) office-flunky till I retire (or die, whichever comes first - and the jury's out on that one) ... so I am thus "left" with trying to be the best dad I can be with the resources I have left.

Edited February 18, 2019 by Aidan Ap Word
Punctuation fix.

[Aidan Ap Word]

3 hours ago, GeordieAndy said:

It's possible to break the above cycle but you have to accept less shiny things and take full personal responsibility for your own actions and decisions by not taking the promotion for more money and less family time or selling yourself to the system so completely. I would suggest going self employed is the best way to break free so your work fits around your family not the other way around as personal sovereignty is what we as humans should all be looking to achieve.

+1

"going self employed is the best way to break free"-> yes. I suggest there may be additional risk involved ... so better to break free before you have children (when it is easier to mitigate the risk and/or respond to negative events).

[Dorkins]

35 minutes ago, Errol said:

They wanted equality and now they have the right to sit at a desk in a badly lit office for 40 years doing dire paper-pushing. I'm not sure they thought this through.

Yeah it's not so much boozy lunches, jetsetting to interesting cities and flirting with secretaries, more constant stress as yet another impossible project timeline is announced and wading through nonsense like office politics and compliance monitoring while you try and get something that might actually be mildly useful done.

[Pop321]

13 minutes ago, Dorkins said:

Yeah it's not so much boozy lunches, jetsetting to interesting cities and flirting with secretaries, more constant stress as yet another impossible project timeline is announced and wading through nonsense like office politics and compliance monitoring while you try and get something that might actually be mildly useful done.

Agree....and trying carefully to ensure I am not positioning any resistance for ‘fighting for equality’ ?.....I think the fight came at a time when things were changing rapidly in the workplace in the way you describe. The bosses job is no longer the easy job  

For me, overall work was great but it was work. Stressful, ageing, tiring and it cost me my youth. It was never a ‘career’ or my chosen path....and I would happily have swapped it and stayed at home. I don’t need that social interaction I got from work. 

Its also not a male/female thing for me...it’s a dual income thing. Very senior execs at my work are female, are more competent, more resilient, more suited to corporate culture and much more capable than myself. So I am glad ALL those who are capable seemed to be rising as they should be  

It is vital we all pursue our dreams but many are being herded into having dreams like ‘marketing, finance, HR and professional office jobs’ and they sound great. Even better if we can herd someone through Uni and make them work in London. Tax, tax and tax  

But it’s a big myth for many...so many people are lost, believe the hype, think they are doing well because of the flat screen tv, Lexus, 2 holidays and new sofa. 

Now don’t get me wrong. Those office jobs were the dream for some people....but so many of us  are forgetting what truely feeds our soul. Music, motor racing, astronomy, art, surfing, dance...who knows, just get an office job and work 60 hours a week.  

I hear people talk about careers but they are confusing it with a ‘job’.  

41 minutes ago, Si1 said:

My missus would go mad without the social outlet that work represents. So we both work part time. Each to his own. I love cooking too.

Not so sure about the cooking, unless it’s a BBQ....but joking apart social interaction is so work centric now because everyone is working. My wife never worked (sorry, she did as homemaker) and made sure she had a good social interaction....but she had to work hard at that to maintain/build that interaction. 

No judgements though it’s definitely horses for courses. Also many have little or no choice. I just wonder how many people (who have a choice) take 2/3 hours....sit down and ask themselves what they truely want from their short time on this spinning rock. We don’t have long and it’s important we grab every opportunity we can to have a truely wonderful life. 

[Wayward]

On ‎17‎/‎02‎/‎2019 at 11:37, markyh said:

House prices will never correct to 3 x the main income. 3 x joint income is the new low as women wanted equality and got it. So single earner families will always be out compeated for the better properties on price. 

You are assuming that there will always be competitive bidding between buyers for housing ie conditions of scarcity.  That is very much the case now and is engineered by the authorities.  As such prices are as high as the funds folk can raise and linked closely to credit availability and ability to service that debt.  However it is not always a given that there will be competitive bidding between buyers for housing in the event of over supply (eg massive over supply) or collapsing demand (eg migrants leaving).  The conditions of scarcity that we all take for granted is a construct and can be de-constructed either by design or by accident. 

[Dorkins]

9 minutes ago, Pop321 said:

No judgements though it’s definitely horses for courses. Also many have little or no choice. I just wonder how many people (who have a choice) take 2/3 hours....sit down and ask themselves what they truely want from their short time on this spinning rock. We don’t have long and it’s important we grab every opportunity we can to have a truely wonderful life. 

This is the crux of it. Sure we all want to buy a bit of freedom to be able to do what we want in at least a part of our limited time on Earth, the problem is the exchange rate of work to freedom is so poor for the large majority of the population.

[longgone]

37 minutes ago, Dorkins said:

This is the crux of it. Sure we all want to buy a bit of freedom to be able to do what we want in at least a part of our limited time on Earth, the problem is the exchange rate of work to freedom is so poor for the large majority of the population.

That problem itself makes the 1%ers time on earth much easier.  hence why you need to dedicate most of your time just to buy a terrace house. 

[rockerboy]

Pretty sure we are ALL going to have an almighty *Bang* soon - and I don't think it's directly related to Brexit either.

I'm seeing almost all major manufacturing wanting to exit the UK  - there's no jusification for a UK base any more - especially if that company wants to supply the rest of the world.

Heck, even supposedly British companies like Dyson are leaving.

House prices will fall  - and deep - but I'll still keep being a home owner. 

If I was younger and able to leave the UK , I would do so - probably go to US, Canada or Australia, but certainly not the EU with its with is enforced "democracy" and the resulting huge civil unrest - Yellow vests scare the crap out of me

Edited February 18, 2019 by rockerboy