#207

For home owners in the UK, what is the standard mortgage time? 15 or 30 years are the norms here. Is that similar to over there?

#208

25 years is what we started with

1 Like
#209

25 used to be standard but I think 30 year terms are pretty common now.

Lots of European countries 10 years was the standard until fairly recently but you’d buy a lot later and have probably a 50% deposit.

1 Like
#210

turns out this was wrong and they were renting.

#211

Guessing a lot of the 70k deposit crew are folks who’ve paid off a decent chunk and then moved from one house to another. So using the money paid off the previous house as the deposit. Rather than saving up 70k in cash from scratch

7 Likes
#212

This is the thing about being rich (which I am by any reasonable standard, this isn’t a gloat): it’s not the ivory back scratchers, it’s the not having to worry about money. Or even think about it much. I’ve had an easy life but there have been (mostly student) times where I’ve not had any money for a food shop or not been able to go to the dentist/optician etc or had my outgoings exceed my income for sustained periods and not knowing how or when that was going to resolve, and even those fairly minor things were fucking horrible and draining.

Now I don’t think about money because if we get a big bill through or the boiler packs it in at the same time as needing new glasses or whatever… it’s fine. And this is the kind of banal thing that radicalised me. Everyone should have at the very least that absolutely minimal level of security. Everyone. Nobody should have to worry about normal shit happening and that putting them into a precarious living situation or not being able to eat, particularly when there’s so much wealth around. Nobody.

What have I done to deserve this security that other people haven’t? Fuck all. Honestly, fuck all. It’s just luck and circumstance, and anyone telling themselves otherwise is buying into their own hero myth and needs to get a fucking grip. The rich people I work with aren’t working any harder than the admins (if anything, it’s the opposite), far less the factory workers or the cleaners. It’s a crock of shite. All of it.

45 Likes
Where do your political beliefs come from?
#213

I would be up for a DiS retirement retreat that we all go to once kids have been punted off -only another 14 years to wait/ save!

4 Likes
#214

TWDR:

(too wealthy didn’t read)

6 Likes
#215

Absolutely this- and if you live in parts of the south with housing price inflation, depending on timing (and less true in the last 3 years) if you bought a flat and sold it on 5 years later, you could “make” tens of thousands on it which then gets put into your next purchase (albeit at the inflated price point if you move within the same location- so it remains proportionate but the number grows.) When you add on capital repayments The number can get big quickly.
(This doesn’t really happen so much in Scotland outside of Edinburgh/ certain racy parts of Glasgow/ our market is more stable.)

#216

Yeah it’s ridiculous innit. My parents had a ground floor flat with a basement looking over Clapham Common (as a single earner household on a teachers salary). Sold it to move out to Essex in 1991 when my ma got pregnant with me.

If I’d not been born they’d have become millionaires in a decade for absolutely no work

5 Likes
#217

Yeah I think our first deposit was £25k, second deposit was £50k, third deposit was £75k

#218

I put ‘no’ to this, but it’s actually a lie. From all four grandparents dying, I got left £100 because it turns out my granddad had been stashing cash in tobacco tins all over the house for decades, which were only discovered when my nan died (she really could have done with the money too :cry:.) Anyway, my mum said I had to spend it on something nice as a way to remember them, so I spent about about half of it on a coat I’d wanted for ages. Literally the first time I wore it out to the pub with my friends, as we were leaving I got cornered by some dickhead who “liked my coat” and proceeded to rip each of the buttons off it one by one out of spite. Never told anyone what happened.

When my dad died, I found out my parents had no money saved at all, and still had a mortgage outstanding on a property they’d bought for peanuts and I assumed they owned outright, so I had to pay for his funeral across three credit cards while telling my crying mum that of course that was absolutely fine and not going to be a problem.

I earn a decent salary these days, and in a very fortunate financial position in lots of ways, but still feel like I’m playing catch-up compared to so much of society despite working my nuts off for decades now - the number of older colleagues who casually drop into conversation their second property in France that they’ll be heading to for the summer :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:. Fuck me, growing up working class in this country can feel like you’re being asked to compete in the Olympics with both hands tied behind your back at times.

7 Likes
#219

sharpen the guillotine surely? Why would it need to be warm?

Accept I’m not an expert here.

3 Likes
#220

Pension plans…?

  • never
  • nothing yet
  • state only
  • small
  • working on it
  • good
  • great

0 voters

#221

Great, but only because my current employer has an extremely generous pension plan and my previous one didn’t. Luck and circumstance all the way down.

3 Likes
#222

Paying in as if there’s going to be any form of world to live in when I’m allowed to retire

9 Likes
#224

Local authority here, so it’s 6.8% of wages from both me and them. On month 7 of that now. Pretty sure I get to retire soon?

2 Likes
#225

think I only started when prompted by my company and them agreeing to (up to a level) double what I put into it.

still baffled as to how it works tbh.

2 Likes
#226

Current job has a brilliant scheme, but having to move my old ones in feels like the most impenetrable piece of admin imaginable.

1 Like
#227

Oh God I keep thinking about this. I’ve had so many jobs and no idea where to start

2 Likes