So how do you (and your family) intend to ‘hold you nerve’?

SporeRB

Maddyone,

My daughter’s redundancy pay is quite generous, she can afford to take a few months off work without my help.

No, I am not privileged. The only reason I can afford to buy a second property overseas which in I am currently renting out is because over there I can use my state retirement pension contributions -similar to National Insurance contributions to buy a property.

They gave me a mortgage based on our combined income (myself and my daughter’s) here in the UK.

So, when I said the ‘bank of Mum and Dad’ which clearly upsets you that is technically not correct, all I am doing is letting my daughter access to the rental income which is rightfully hers since she is the co-owner.

If I were to sell the property, I will have to put some money back into my retirement fund and at age 65, I will get my monthly pension.

Since I have a local government pension here, I am pretty sure I will get an exemption, so I should be able to withdraw the whole lot as a lump sum and it is non taxable.

There is no requirement for me to sell at age 65.

Not priviledged at all, just wise use of funds. Well done.

Maddyone,

My daughter’s redundancy pay is quite generous, she can afford to take a few months off work without my help.

No, I am not privileged. The only reason I can afford to buy a second property overseas which in I am currently renting out is because over there I can use my state retirement pension contributions -similar to National Insurance contributions to buy a property.

They gave me a mortgage based on our combined income (myself and my daughter’s) here in the UK.

So, when I said the ‘bank of Mum and Dad’ which clearly upsets you that is technically not correct, all I am doing is letting my daughter access to the rental income which is rightfully hers since she is the co-owner.

If I were to sell the property, I will have to put some money back into my retirement fund and at age 65, I will get my monthly pension.

Since I have a local government pension here, I am pretty sure I will get an exemption, so I should be able to withdraw the whole lot as a lump sum and it is non taxable.

There is no requirement for me to sell at age 65.

If you’ve got a place to rent out and also own your own place I’m afraid I find that privileged. When interest rates went sky high earlier on in our marriage we did without any frills whatsoever and there was no bank of mum and dad to help out. We did without, it was that simple. And our house was not special, it was nothing fancy at all. So we had no holidays, no luxury foods or cosmetics, no new clothes, no day trips out except for walks, no cinema or theatre visits, no take aways, no anything extra at all. We could barely afford to buy our children clothes. So no, I don’t feel particularly sorry for people who need to tighten their belts or those who find they can afford to take a couple of months off work because the bank of mum and dad will cover it.

My daughter has just exchanged contract on a new house and was told out of the blue that her job will be terminated at the end of this year.

The British company she is working for makes the decision to move their operation to America because of the increase in corporation tax from 19% to 25%.

I did not tell her to ‘hold her nerve ‘or ‘just keep calm and carry on’ because she needs a plan.

With her generous redundancy pay and the help of mum and dad (ie our rental income) she should be alright and there is no need for her partner to get a second job to make ends meet.

Her job has been horrendous for the last couple of years to such an extent that I worry constantly about her mental health.

I told her to use this opportunity to just enjoy her new home and have a complete break from work for a couple of months or however long she feels she need before she starts looking for another job and not to feel low and depressed if it takes her a while to get another job.

We do not have a mortgage here, so we are not affected by rising interest rates.

I do receive government pay outs from my country of origin to help with the costs of rising inflation, £380 this month and two more payments in August and December but I got no idea how much I will get which will help towards our winter energy bill.

Cossy and Freya 5 my comments were slightly tongue in cheek but it is very naïve to imagine that people in this country don't take bribes and backhanders. My son, who has worked in Russia, says it is much simpler there where the bribe is built into any quote for a job. It may be more subtle here, but it does exist.

I can remember the inflation of the 1970s but I was renting a flat back then. I had no financial commitments and no children. This enabled me to take the decision to go back into (higher) education when my career stalled due to structural changes in the profession over which I had no control.

I was lucky enough to inherit money from my grandmother and risked some of it on Bitcoin so was able to buy the small detached house I was renting. Mortgage now paid off.

Rather than "hold your nerve" a better platitude might be "noses to the grindstone" for the many people who are now working simply to pay the bills and no more treats to break up the drudgery. Thats no way to have to live.

Norah

Anniel People often mention Sunak’s wealth.His mother was a pharmacist and his father was a GP. I have always admired the Hindu families I have known. They have a great work ethic. My husband was friends with our local newsagents and with a small shopkeeper with a sub post office. They worked long hours and gave their children the best education they could afford. Rishi went to public school but the wealth is from his wife’s family. There are many immigrants who are comparatively well off via hard work. Sunak could have earned much more had he not gone into politics and I think he does not take his parliamentary salary. To say he cannot understand what being poor because he is rich is just plain nastiness.

Agreed.

Wealth is not an inherently bad thing. He seems a fine person.

I don't think Rishi is an inheritently bad man. Not like Boris and co. I just don't think he is strong enough to be P.M. He is rabbit in the headlights of a government in its dieing days

Anniel People often mention Sunak’s wealth.His mother was a pharmacist and his father was a GP. I have always admired the Hindu families I have known. They have a great work ethic. My husband was friends with our local newsagents and with a small shopkeeper with a sub post office. They worked long hours and gave their children the best education they could afford. Rishi went to public school but the wealth is from his wife’s family. There are many immigrants who are comparatively well off via hard work. Sunak could have earned much more had he not gone into politics and I think he does not take his parliamentary salary. To say he cannot understand what being poor because he is rich is just plain nastiness.

Agreed.

Wealth is not an inherently bad thing. He seems a fine person.

Annie1 you may be old fashioned, but then so must I be. I agree with you.

DaisyL

Do you think it would be better to have an impoverished prime minister who could empathise with the people - on the other hand he/she might be more fallible when it came to taking bribes or backhanders!

There’s a huge difference between being “impoverished” and a billionaire ! Assuming that comment is tongue in cheek !

I can remember our mortgage being 14% probably 1980.

Jb2022

You are correct *Grow stuff. I live in Ireland.

Thanks for replying. I was a bit puzzled.

Sorry forgot the link
Banking firm that owns Southern Water posts record profits
This article is more than 1 month old
Macquarie’s net profit is up 10% with top commodity trader landing A$58m through profit-share deal

Business live – latest updates
Alex Lawson
Fri 5 May 2023 14.50 BST
The Australian banking group that controls Southern Water, the utility company criticised for discharging sewage into the sea, has posted record profits after a boom in its commodities trading division.

Macquarie, which owns a string of UK infrastructure assets, recorded an annual net profit of A$5.18bn (£2.8bn), up 10% on the previous year. The profits outstripped analysts’ expectations of A$4.96bn for the 12 months to 31 March 2023.

A rise in profits in its commodities business – which trades oil, gas and electricity, largely in North America – handed its top commodity trader, Nick O’Kane, A$58m through a profit-share agreement, up from A$36m the year before.

The payout meant O’Kane earned far more than the group’s chief executive, Shemara Wikramanayake, who still landed A$33m – itself a payout putting her ahead of some of Wall Street’s best-paid bankers.

A surfer stands on a balcony at Watergate Bay, Cornwall
South West Water fined £2.15m for dumping sewage in sea and rivers
Read more
Macquarie owns a diverse collection of assets, including retail and investment banking activities, and is one of the world’s largest infrastructure owners.

In the UK its interests include Southern Water, the gas network Cadent, Southampton and Glasgow airports, and several windfarm projects along the east and north-west coasts of England.

Southern Water, which handles water supplies across the south-east of England, has been among the companies criticised for regularly discharging raw sewage into the sea. Campaigners accused it of “environmental vandalism” last year when data showed that Southern discharged raw sewage for more than 3,700 hours at 83 bathing water beaches during the first eight days of November alone.

Macquarie also faced political scrutiny during its ownership of Thames Water between 2006 and 2017 as it extracted billions in dividends while Thames’s debt soared. It controversially returned to the industry when taking control of Southern Water in 2021.

The group said the value of its assets under management had increased by 10% since the end of March 2022 to A$870.8bn. The group said 71% of its profits had come from outside Australia during the year, with 51% of its overall profit derived from its commodities business.

The oil and gas companies BP and Shell this week reported healthy profits, helped in part by improvements in their trading divisions that have benefited from volatile energy markets.

Wikramanayake said: “Against a less certain market and economic backdrop, the diversity of Macquarie’s activities and the expertise of our teams ensured we maintained strong performance during the year.”

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A few years back, we arranged to pay our mortgage weekly, this reduced the total amount to be paid and it also meant that we paid it off faster than by paying monthly. Luckily, our income was pretty steady at that time.

In the US the housing/mortgage market is shaky, rents have become astronomically high, food inflation is on the rise again, the political circuses are a never ending shitshow (as someone here already used the term…), add the horrendous impacts of dangerous weather events and devastation on top of all that… throw in mass shootings… chaos in other countries too, crisis after crisis. Extremely hard to stay positive. I sometimes wonder how we can remain normal?

Are we on the precipice of some new world order? I’m still clinging to This Too Shall Pass. We have to stop electing Idiots.
Deep breathes!
USA Gundy

People often mention Sunak’s wealth.His mother was a pharmacist and his father was a GP. I have always admired the Hindu families I have known. They have a great work ethic. My husband was friends with our local newsagents and with a small shopkeeper with a sub post office. They worked long hours and gave their children the best education they could afford. Rishi went to public school but the wealth is from his wife’s family. There are many immigrants who are comparatively well off via hard work. Sunak could have earned much more had he not gone into politics and I think he does not take his parliamentary salary. To say he cannot understand what being poor because he is rich is just plain nastiness. When times are good young people never seem to save for a rainy day something my husband drilled into our kids. I have only 2 grandsons now in their,late 30s. One works in cyber security for a large bank and his wife is in HR. I marvel that even with such ridiculously high amounts charged for preschool services ( one child is 2) my young family members seem to own great cars, pay the mortgage and take more than one holiday a year. My generation knew what it was like to live week to week and my father, who served in the war, never earned a great wage and my mother became too sick to work. These days people seem to be able to not take a job and still live whereas older people took any job going because they were too proud to be on the dole. I know my views are very old fashioned but blaming Sunak for economic problems that currently affect most democratic societies is unfair. Remember the battle to curtail COVID? The war in Ukraine? It is not only Britain that is affected. If you think Sir Keir has a magic wand and will make everything better then good luck but the same Grans come on here and spend their days attacking Sunak. It is time for a change and we do not need the same members here every day telling us about Sunak. We can all read but it is so repetitive that it becomes a chore to read it. I note not a word about Scottish politics and the goings on in the failing SNP. I hope Labour sweeps to victory in Scotland and be a poke in the eye to the Scots grans who never write about the situation there.

Jess20

I remember 16% interest. I'd just bought out my ex and had a huge (for the time) mortgage. I had to work agency nights at weekends and have a houseful of students as lodgers just to make ends meet. There was also MIRAS if anyone remembers that! These days young people live in smaller houses and don't always have room to do this sort of thing, plus there are more restrictions on letting and tax implications. I feel very sorry for families who are suffering from this. I think it's all very well to ask people to hold their nerve when you are used to spare cash on the bank, a full larder and plenty of clothes in the cupboards but many live from paycheck to paycheck to service mortgage debt, childcare and basic living costs already. Many landlords with a mortgage are likely to have no option but to increase the rent to cover the extra interest - in many circumstances they can't claim mortgage interest against tax, so again ordinary families suffer. I remember the autumn I had to buy school shoes and football boots every couple of months as my son had growth spurts and imagine how dreadful the budgeting decisions are going to be even for the reasonably well off. After austerity, followed by soaring fuel costs people have worked through any savings they may have built up. Now water bills are set to rise in order to clean up their filthy messes in our rivers and coastlines, having creamed off profits for years to pay the shareholders and management ahead of investing in a good service. The sooner this government gets kicked out the better.

This is one of the reasons we are in a mess well Thames water.
This is appalling, and the Gov should step in. This bank should be held accountable and fined, heavily.
Just heard J Hartley Brewer and Vince Cable on talk tv.

DaisyL

Do you think it would be better to have an impoverished prime minister who could empathise with the people - on the other hand he/she might be more fallible when it came to taking bribes or backhanders!

Do you live in the real world. We aren't Belarus.

You are correct *Grow stuff. I live in Ireland.

Do you think it would be better to have an impoverished prime minister who could empathise with the people - on the other hand he/she might be more fallible when it came to taking bribes or backhanders!

How come you were paying 65% income tax on a low salary?

What do you mean by social insurance? NICs weren't 7.5%.

Just thought - maybe you weren't in the UK.

At one point in the 80s we were paying 65% income tax plus 7.5% social insurance from our relatively low salaries and our mortgage interest went to 14%. We were both lucky to have jobs.

4allweknow

There used to be very strict control on mortgage lending. Bought first house in 1770. I remember the meeting when we applied for mortgage, one and a half times DHs salary, mine was totally disregarded. This control in a way restricted the price of property. We managed to buy a 3 bed in the south east. It was a bit of a fixer upper but we had enough left from our wages to do what was necessary. Interest rates were certainly higher than 3, 4, 5%. 1992 was the highest I can recall at 15%. Hold your nerve at that!

1770? Wow! You're doing well for your age!

I don't think even Sunak knows what he means, he has no idea at all what it's like for the 'man in the street'. No good telling people to hold their nerve when they can't afford to feed their children properly or pay their utility bills let alone their mortgages.

There used to be very strict control on mortgage lending. Bought first house in 1770. I remember the meeting when we applied for mortgage, one and a half times DHs salary, mine was totally disregarded. This control in a way restricted the price of property. We managed to buy a 3 bed in the south east. It was a bit of a fixer upper but we had enough left from our wages to do what was necessary. Interest rates were certainly higher than 3, 4, 5%. 1992 was the highest I can recall at 15%. Hold your nerve at that!