How much cash y'all got ?

pblakeney

okgo wrote:

For those thinking buying in London is pretty easy and that if everyone wasn't so YOLO they'd be fine, to be in the top 5% you need to earn £103,000 a year. The competition for property is hot. I would almost say that if your job has no clear route to paying you 6 figures, sack it and go and live elsewhere. Its just not worth it.

As I said.

meanredspider

What I find tough to understand is that the Highlands struggle to attract teachers, police, nurses, doctors etc yet house prices are sooooo much more reasonable than much of the country and the quality of life is soooo much higher than much of the country. Why is that?

joelsim

meanredspider wrote:

What I find tough to understand is that the Highlands struggle to attract teachers, police, nurses, doctors etc yet house prices are sooooo much more reasonable than much of the country and the quality of life is soooo much higher than much of the country. Why is that?

People are scared of isolation/change blah blah blah.

I've lived in London for 25+ years since I went to Uni, a few years back my missus wanted to move out for schooling reasons and we moved to Cobham, a wealthy, middle-class area. I absolutely hated it. Completely dead and stuck-up. Split up and moved back to grubby Tooting which is now Hipster Central (not me I may add, have had a beard for 10 years now).

Mind you, now I'm stuck here unless I want to start all over again, given what I now do. Tooting it is then for the next 20 years.

meanredspider

I've no sympathy for anybody who won't help themselves though.

People in the Highlands are incredibly friendly. There's almost no crime, no pollution, no traffic, and the schools are great. If you enjoy cycling, or walking or pretty much any outdoor activity, it's fantastic.

Bizarrely the biggest issue is that there is a shortage of teachers, police, doctors, nurses...

joelsim

meanredspider wrote:

I've no sympathy for anybody who won't help themselves though.

People in the Highlands are incredibly friendly. There's almost no crime, no pollution, no traffic, and the schools are great. If you enjoy cycling, or walking or pretty much any outdoor activity, it's fantastic.

Bizarrely the biggest issue is that there is a shortage of teachers, police, doctors, nurses...

Yep, if I was going to move out of London I'd want somewhere like that, not a half-way house which doesn't work on quiet/lovely or busy/exciting.

rjsterry

meanredspider wrote:

I've no sympathy for anybody who won't help themselves though.

People in the Highlands are incredibly friendly. There's almost no crime, no pollution, no traffic, and the schools are great. If you enjoy cycling, or walking or pretty much any outdoor activity, it's fantastic.

Bizarrely the biggest issue is that there is a shortage of teachers, police, doctors, nurses...

So no crime, no pollution, no traffic, no pressure on services because... next to no people.

meanredspider

rjsterry wrote:

So no crime, no pollution, no traffic, no pressure on services because... next to no people.

Except for all the tourists that pay to visit

Flâneur

meanredspider wrote:

I've no sympathy for anybody who won't help themselves though.

People in the Highlands are incredibly friendly. There's almost no crime, no pollution, no traffic, and the schools are great. If you enjoy cycling, or walking or pretty much any outdoor activity, it's fantastic.

Bizarrely the biggest issue is that there is a shortage of teachers, police, doctors, nurses...

You can comment lifestyle choice for one, be it bars, shops, population/isolation but there is also the affect of attempting to find work for two. Though there may be jobs for such professions is there a job for someone trained in something else?

Then you could ask, does a single person want to move to a place where social and romatic options are limited? Further more should John or Jane have lived in London all their life or Bristol or X then the change could be pretty drastic

All options have pro's and con's

rick_chasey

Eugh living in the countryside.

Grim.

Countryside is to ride into and out from. Not to live!!

meanredspider

Remember that Inverness is the Highlands and it's a city with an international airport. There's a University and quite a thriving biotech industry - it's not all tiny villages.

okgo

Rick Chasey wrote:

Eugh living in the countryside.

Grim.

Countryside is to ride into and out from. Not to live!!

I grew up in a property with 30 acres in Surrey/Hants - nearest neighbour a mile away, I'd far rather live near something where stuff happens.

pblakeney

Live in the country, go to the smoke for events.
Horses for courses.

briantrumpet

PBlakeney wrote:

Live in the country, go to the smoke for events.
Horses for courses.

Or have two houses.

pblakeney

briantrumpet wrote:

PBlakeney wrote:

Live in the country, go to the smoke for events.
Horses for courses.

Or have two houses.

That's just showing off!
Also explains the house prices in Devon & Cornwall etc.

briantrumpet

PBlakeney wrote:

briantrumpet wrote:

PBlakeney wrote:

Live in the country, go to the smoke for events.
Horses for courses.

Or have two houses.

That's just showing off!
Also explains the house prices in Devon & Cornwall etc.

I'd not have a hope in hull now of house ownership, let alone two. When I started renting, back in 1985, my rent was £200 per month, and then when I bought, in 1992, my mortgage was £210 a month on a mortgage of £30k (the house cost £55k, now worth about £250k). (Incidentally, that mortgage was a fixed rate at 8%, which was a good deal at the time!)

It's meant that my housing costs have been very low - I realise what a contrast that is to the young people today, and how lucky I've been. I'm also absolutely rubbish at spending money (a trait learnt from my parents, who were both wartime children), which has made saving up easy.

rolf_f

It's easy to be complaisant when you were lucky enough to buy a house when they are cheap. When folk say £98k is affordable I spit in my coffee - for me, on £20k ish around 1990, I thought I was being extravagant buying a house at £65k. £100k was ludicrously out of reach. My house is now worth £200-£250k and nobody on any salary in my organisation could afford, on the old rules (3.5 times salary) to buy it as a first time buyer. And this is in the supposedly cheap North where even workers back to backs can easily cost over £80k. Affordable maybe, and desirable by London standards, but you'd think that middle income folk should be able to afford better.

I rofl'd a bit at Ricks horror of the countryside. It's not as though he probably really lives in London - not properly. More a depressing suburb miles away from London. Pick the right spot in the country around here and you can be in the centre of your choice of cities in 45 minutes or less easily. You might be in the country but you get no less of the benefits of the big city than many people living in outer London.

mamba80

Rolf F wrote:

It's easy to be complaisant when you were lucky enough to buy a house when they are cheap. When folk say £98k is affordable I spit in my coffee - for me, on £20k ish around 1990, I thought I was being extravagant buying a house at £65k. £100k was ludicrously out of reach. My house is now worth £200-£250k and nobody on any salary in my organisation could afford, on the old rules (3.5 times salary) to buy it as a first time buyer. And this is in the supposedly cheap North where even workers back to backs can easily cost over £80k. Affordable maybe, and desirable by London standards, but you'd think that middle income folk should be able to afford better..

well, we had a joint i/c of over 70k per year back then, so it was affordable, for us.

but the point i was making is that at 96k, a couple on avg earnings each back then could have bought this with a small ish deposit, a cheaper terraced house in a nice village would have been 1/2 that, those days have long gone.
Earnings have nt even kept up with inflation, its interesting listening to Carney and May on wage growth/cost of living, its almost as if they think companies will start dishing out pay rises or that we ll swallow their BS.

for me, not having a pay rise for several years, isnt such a hardship but our company has just announced some very good profits, yet this will all go to shareholders, nothing for the pension fund or the staff, either in wages or training budgets.

a big prob with rises in min wage is that it is reducing differentials, the staff above min wage, are not getting rises and skilled workers will soon be getting the same as a new starter with no skills or experience, hardly conducive to increasing productivity!

rjsterry

Rolf F wrote:

It's easy to be complaisant when you were lucky enough to buy a house when they are cheap. When folk say £98k is affordable I spit in my coffee - for me, on £20k ish around 1990, I thought I was being extravagant buying a house at £65k. £100k was ludicrously out of reach. My house is now worth £200-£250k and nobody on any salary in my organisation could afford, on the old rules (3.5 times salary) to buy it as a first time buyer. And this is in the supposedly cheap North where even workers back to backs can easily cost over £80k. Affordable maybe, and desirable by London standards, but you'd think that middle income folk should be able to afford better.

I rofl'd a bit at Ricks horror of the countryside. It's not as though he probably really lives in London - not properly. More a depressing suburb miles away from London. Pick the right spot in the country around here and you can be in the centre of your choice of cities in 45 minutes or less easily. You might be in the country but you get no less of the benefits of the big city than many people living in outer London.

I dunno, that doesn't sound that different from where I live in Zone 5: central London is 12 miles or 50-60 minutes away depending on mode of transport and I can be out in the countryside in 15 minutes if I head the other way. Doesn’t seem very depressing to me.

okgo

Rolf F wrote:

It's easy to be complaisant when you were lucky enough to buy a house when they are cheap. When folk say £98k is affordable I spit in my coffee - for me, on £20k ish around 1990, I thought I was being extravagant buying a house at £65k. £100k was ludicrously out of reach. My house is now worth £200-£250k and nobody on any salary in my organisation could afford, on the old rules (3.5 times salary) to buy it as a first time buyer. And this is in the supposedly cheap North where even workers back to backs can easily cost over £80k. Affordable maybe, and desirable by London standards, but you'd think that middle income folk should be able to afford better.

I rofl'd a bit at Ricks horror of the countryside. It's not as though he probably really lives in London - not properly. More a depressing suburb miles away from London. Pick the right spot in the country around here and you can be in the centre of your choice of cities in 45 minutes or less easily. You might be in the country but you get no less of the benefits of the big city than many people living in outer London.

I thought he was in Fulham, granted its not the same as living in Marylebone but its not exactly a commuter suburb?

I live in a suburb which is miles from London, its probably quicker for me to get to work via public transport than many in z2, but the issue with it (and your commuter cites) are that they feel a bit provincial (actually Surbiton isn't too bad for that, but somewhere like Woking is) and you have huge train costs, even in Surbiton its 5k of your salary each year and it takes 16 mins to get to Waterloo...Somewhere like Fleet where I know many people who commute from is more like £10k of your salary, it all gets a bit depressing soon enough.

rolf_f

rjsterry wrote:

Rolf F wrote:

It's easy to be complaisant when you were lucky enough to buy a house when they are cheap. When folk say £98k is affordable I spit in my coffee - for me, on £20k ish around 1990, I thought I was being extravagant buying a house at £65k. £100k was ludicrously out of reach. My house is now worth £200-£250k and nobody on any salary in my organisation could afford, on the old rules (3.5 times salary) to buy it as a first time buyer. And this is in the supposedly cheap North where even workers back to backs can easily cost over £80k. Affordable maybe, and desirable by London standards, but you'd think that middle income folk should be able to afford better.

I rofl'd a bit at Ricks horror of the countryside. It's not as though he probably really lives in London - not properly. More a depressing suburb miles away from London. Pick the right spot in the country around here and you can be in the centre of your choice of cities in 45 minutes or less easily. You might be in the country but you get no less of the benefits of the big city than many people living in outer London.

I dunno, that doesn't sound that different from where I live in Zone 5: central London is 12 miles or 50-60 minutes away depending on mode of transport and I can be out in the countryside in 15 minutes if I head the other way. Doesn’t seem very depressing to me.

The difference is that you can have the same access to the city centre without having to live in a drab suburb. People talk about how great city living is when they don't actually live anywhere near the things that they define as being great about city living. At the same time they think that living in the country means a five mile drive for the milk. It can do but it doesn't have to. In Brexit terms, the cake and eat it option is the countryside with close access to a rail link into town - not the crappy suburb.

FWIW, I don't live in the countryside - I live in somewhere which just about counts as a suburban village but it is just outside the Leeds suburban sprawl. But the difference is I can get to Leeds or Bradford (though why I'd want to in the case of the latter is a good point!) in 15 - 20 minutes depending on mode of transport or even Manchester in an hour or so. And an hour in the car gets me to Derbyshire Dales, Yorkshire Dales, NY Moors, Yorkshire Wolds and a bit more the Lakes. In London, even if you can get to the Countryside in 15 minutes it's always going to be the same bit of countryside and none of it is going to be that stunning.

rick_chasey

Rolf F wrote:

I rofl'd a bit at Ricks horror of the countryside. It's not as though he probably really lives in London - not properly. More a depressing suburb miles away from London

25 min cycle into the city of london. On the zone 1/2 border. Hardly the 'burbs.

I like the anonymity of cities (the embankment commute excepted, clearly....).

It's nice being able to go wherever and not worry about having to bump into people. It's a perennial worry whenever I go back to the village I was brought up in. I didn't like the fact the entire village knew I was engaged before some of my friends in London did.

iPete

There are good and dull suburbs the country over. I'm very thankful to the live in one of the better ones.

I personally wouldn't want to live somewhere where car is king and the only way to get around. True that there are plenty of satellite towns in the countryside but they are almost certainly dull and you become heavily reliant on public transport. The reduction in living costs would almost certainly be swallowed by the rail tickets.

okgo

Quite.

The less grim ones are not much cheaper than the ones in the zones either. Then again I wouldn't live in Luton or Milton Keynes, or any of those types of places, I could deal with Guildford, but its no cheaper.

rolf_f

Rick Chasey wrote:

Rolf F wrote:

I rofl'd a bit at Ricks horror of the countryside. It's not as though he probably really lives in London - not properly. More a depressing suburb miles away from London

25 min cycle into the city of london. On the zone 1/2 border. Hardly the 'burbs.

I like the anonymity of cities (the embankment commute excepted, clearly....).

It's nice being able to go wherever and not worry about having to bump into people. It's a perennial worry whenever I go back to the village I was brought up in. I didn't like the fact the entire village knew I was engaged before some of my friends in London did.

Yep - that's doing it properly!

iPete wrote:

There are good and dull suburbs the country over. I'm very thankful to the live in one of the better ones.

I personally wouldn't want to live somewhere where car is king and the only way to get around. True that there are plenty of satellite towns in the countryside but they are almost certainly dull and you become heavily reliant on public transport. The reduction in living costs would almost certainly be swallowed by the rail tickets.

Naah, you've lost me there. You don't want to be dependent on the car and you don't want to be heavily reliant on public transport! In any case, you over estimate the cost of the rail tickets. Less than a grand a year buys bus and rail rovers and I suspect that the difference in living costs between a place like, say Skipton (ideal balance between creepy village and suburban hell) is a lot greater than 1k a year.

okgo

Difference between Surbiton and Woking (which is about 20 mins on a train) is about £3k gross on train tickets. Reading which is 20 mins from Paddington would cost me nearly £9k gross salary.

iPete

Rolf F wrote:

Naah, you've lost me there. You don't want to be dependent on the car and you don't want to be heavily reliant on public transport! In any case, you over estimate the cost of the rail tickets. Less than a grand a year buys bus and rail rovers and I suspect that the difference in living costs between a place like, say Skipton (ideal balance between creepy village and suburban hell) is a lot greater than 1k a year.

Is that baffling or have we crossed wires? I wouldn't want to be reliant on either trains or a car to get to work.

As okgo says, the train cost is a significant increase if you want to live far away and not spend hours a day on a train. It's especially big when I'm currently paying £0.

fenix

I did London working when I was young and free - much prefer a quieter life nowadays. The Highlands sounds even better - but man it's a long way away.

finchy

okgo wrote:

I wouldn't live in Luton.

I was on a train which went through Luton the other day. This Muslim bloke stood up to get off the train somewhere in Hertfordshire. Just as he was about to step off, I noticed he'd left a small bag, which was stuffed with money. I shouted at him to wait, and took the bag to him. He looked at me, and said "You could have stolen that but instead you gave it back to me. I don't know how I can repay you for this act of kindness, so all I can do is give you this piece of advice - don't get off the train at Luton today."
"What?" I gasped, "is there going to be a terrorist attack?"
"No," he replied, "it's a sh1thole."

dinyull

okgo wrote:

For those thinking buying in London is pretty easy and that if everyone wasn't so YOLO they'd be fine, to be in the top 5% you need to earn £103,000 a year. The competition for property is hot. I would almost say that if your job has no clear route to paying you 6 figures, sack it and go and live elsewhere. Its just not worth it.

dinyull wrote:

In London, it's totally f*cked and the yooth have no hope. I agree.

However, being a northerner I struggle to see how some can't get on the market. Can't help but think it's because of the whole #YOLO culture - either pi$$ing it all up the wall or expecting to buy what mum and dad have.

I meant folk in the north-east - not London.

ballysmate

finchy wrote:

okgo wrote:

I wouldn't live in Luton.

I was on a train which went through Luton the other day. This Muslim bloke stood up to get off the train somewhere in Hertfordshire. Just as he was about to step off, I noticed he'd left a small bag, which was stuffed with money. I shouted at him to wait, and took the bag to him. He looked at me, and said "You could have stolen that but instead you gave it back to me. I don't know how I can repay you for this act of kindness, so all I can do is give you this piece of advice - don't get off the train at Luton today."
"What?" I gasped, "is there going to be a terrorist attack?"
"No," he replied, "it's a sh1thole."

Islamophobia!!!
Islamophobia!!! Assuming because he is a Muslim he must be a terrorist.

Rick won't be happy.