More average salary stats to argue over.....

Really2

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Having a secure job in say the NHS with pension scheme and sickness benefits at the current time is better than many self employed "jobs".

Make that most jobs, employed or SE, civil service etc is always better in the current circumstances(well for security at least)

As for margins we have lost 2% margin or in laymans terms profit is 15% lower on like for like sales due to the current climate.

Cannon_Fodder

JonnyBravo wrote: »

They do!

Could it be you're talking without checking facts first? Surely not. :rolleyes:

Which index are you talking about, JB ?

carolt

Really2 wrote: »

I agree,

I am not saying self employed = mega money.

But I do not think adding self employed would make the average wage lower either (well it might do officialy but we did that earlier:))

Not sure I agree, Really.

I'm mostly self-employed these days and earn a lot less than I would working employed - but I do it because it gives me the flexibility to work when I like, as I like, which is beyond price. I'd rather have time with my family than wave goodbye to my son at a nursery door every morning - there'll be time enough for earning more when he's older.

So - astonishingly not everyone who is self-employed does it for the big bucks.

In fact, thinking about it, I know absolutely loads of mums who are self-employed; few jobs give you the same flexibility. Very, very few of them make anything like the same wage they would in a regular job.

JonnyBravo

Cannon_Fodder wrote: »

Which index are you talking about, JB ?

Well both the Halifax and Nationwide for starters.
They actually report the price of "a typical house".

I'd bet that almost all the indices use some sort of statistical method to eliminate or reduce the impact of outlying "anomalous" properties.

JonnyBravo

Really2 wrote: »

What are you on about earn is PAYE! (where did I mention turnover)

She pays herself £17K on the books the rest is cash in hand. Most self employed use good accountants.:rolleyes:

If you think the self employed do not earn more than they state you are naive or foolish or both.

lostinrates wrote: »

I'm not naive enough to think this doesn't happen, I am howvever naive enough to consider illegality distasteful.

I suppose I too think this distasteful, especially on any large scale.... but when you think about it, I'd bet lots of us are hypocritical on it.
For instance, I've paid cash in hand for work done for me before.
Have you never done this?

Cannon_Fodder

Maybe they do, maybe they don't.

They don't exclude the £million+ openly like ROS in Scotland, so when you're critising someone else for not doing their research, could you perhaps provide evidence of the exact way in which they do exclude high price properties ?

Thanks.

i.e.

"Properties over £1 million are included (since December 2002) and the index is seasonally adjusted with the seasonal factors updated monthly."
http://www.lloydsbankinggroup.com/media/word/07_06_07HPImethodology.doc

lostinrates

JonnyBravo wrote: »

I suppose I too think this distasteful, especially on any large scale.... but when you think about it, I'd bet lots of us are hypocritical on it.
For instance, I've paid cash in hand for work done for me before.
Have you never done this?

I usually get paid in cash when I work thse days. I always ALWAYS declare it, even th tiny amounts I'm talking about now are recorded, even though they might come under the threshhold, I don't know till the end of the financial year, and of course the impact on earnings not in cash (e.g.savings earnings) might be an issue. I'm quite happy to legally avoid tax, I would not evade tax.

I have broken the law in the past something I am both proud and fully repentant about about (not tax evasion FWIW), if I continued to break the law I would agree it pretty hypocritical to complain about other law breaks now, and also to refuse to accept the repentance of others. Similarly, I wonder how many cash in hand payers are griping about MPs allowances and Fred the Shreds pension...similarly hypocritical? I think very fe people will have been totally adherant to everything and I think the complexity of the systems (both fiscal and otherwise) mean sometimes people probably transgress not to break law/evade ayment but because of he complexity of the situation.

JonnyBravo

Cannon_Fodder wrote: »

Maybe they do, maybe they don't.

They don't exclude the £million+ openly like ROS in Scotland, so when you're critising someone else for not doing their research, could you perhaps provide evidence of the exact way in which they do exclude high price properties ?

Thanks.

i.e.

"Properties over £1 million are included (since December 2002) and the index is seasonally adjusted with the seasonal factors updated monthly."
http://www.lloydsbankinggroup.com/media/word/07_06_07HPImethodology.doc

I'm not bothered whether they are included and then "averaged out" by statistical methods or not in from the start.
If he was so bothered by the methodology he'd have looked it up beforehand. The fact is that I have, so I know it doesn't matter if twice the number of £1m+ properties sell in one month compared to the last. The fact is he was arguing about the stats being wrong to suit his side of the argument without checking first. I told him he was wrong, if he's that bothered as to the exact why and wherefores he can go look it up himself..... but seeing as you wanted it, heres a handy link for him to start as you seem to worry he cant....

http://www.nationwide.co.uk/hpi/method_qs.htm

• Nationwide house prices are mix adjusted - i.e. we track a representative house price over time rather than the simple average price. We do not use the simple average price (Land Registry uses this method) because it is too easily influenced by a change in the mix (i.e. proportion of different property types, locations etc) of houses
• Although it remains similar to the Halifax method we substantially updated our system in 1993 following the publication of the 1991 census data. These improvements mean that our system is more robust to lower sample sizes because it better identifies and tracks our representative house price

Thanks.

:rolleyes:

JonnyBravo

lostinrates wrote: »

I usually get paid in cash when I work thse days. I always ALWAYS declare it, even th tiny amounts I'm talking about now are recorded, even though they might come under the threshhold, I don't know till the end of the financial year, and of course the impact on earnings not in cash (e.g.savings earnings) might be an issue. I'm quite happy to legally avoid tax, I would not evade tax.

I have broken the law in the past something I am both proud and fully repentant about about (not tax evasion FWIW), if I continued to break the law I would agree it pretty hypocritical to complain about other law breaks now, and also to refuse to accept the repentance of others. Similarly, I wonder how many cash in hand payers are griping about MPs allowances and Fred the Shreds pension...similarly hypocritical? I think very fe people will have been totally adherant to everything and I think the complexity of the systems (both fiscal and otherwise) mean sometimes people probably transgress not to break law/evade ayment but because of he complexity of the situation.

Very honest of you.

When you pay cash for a job do you think most people declare it?

andykn

wolfman wrote: »

It's an old fashioned rule of thumb, but 3.5x the median (not the mean, it's not truly representative, as it's skewed by extreme high salaries) salary is a good judgement. Even if it were 30k, it would mean 105k mortgage, which is some way off current prices.

It's not a rule of thumb at all, old fashioned or otherwise.

Halifax have used Mean, Male, Full time earnings as a long term trend comparator.

You cannot use median earnings as a yardstick to measure mean house prices (skewed by extremely expensive houses).

Neither can you use the earnings of nearly 30 million workers to judge the prices of 17 million owner occupied houses.