Do you get fed up with the spin?

laughing_cow

I found myself wondering the other day about the link between increased house prices and our spiralling credit card debts in the UK.

I remember booking a fancy holiday in my less sensible days for £1500 and whacking it on the credit card. It somehow didn't seem that much. And of course, when your (tiny) London flat is worth £200k+, £1500 seems !!!!!! all in the grand scheme of things. I think I'd lost perception of the value of money. When you have house prices which bear no relation to your salary, and you buy stuff using plastic rather than cash, figures all seem a bit unreal.

I'd love to go on that particular holiday again. I've realised now though that it'll mean saving £60 a month for over 2 years :eek: (or doing a hell of a lot more matched betting ). When I write it down like that, it sounds like an awful lot of money. I just didn't see it that way before and I think that's because I'd got so used to thinking in the big thousands because of my flat equity and banks seemed desperate to throw their thousands at me.

do_it_today!

laughing_cow wrote:

I found myself wondering the other day about the link between increased house prices and our spiralling credit card debts in the UK.

I remember booking a fancy holiday in my less sensible days for £1500 and whacking it on the credit card. It somehow didn't seem that much. And of course, when your (tiny) London flat is worth £200k+, £1500 seems !!!!!! all in the grand scheme of things. I think I'd lost perception of the value of money. When you have house prices which bear no relation to your salary, and you buy stuff using plastic rather than cash, figures all seem a bit unreal.

I'd love to go on that particular holiday again. I've realised now though that it'll mean saving £60 a month for over 2 years :eek: (or doing a hell of a lot more matched betting ). When I write it down like that, it sounds like an awful lot of money. I just didn't see it that way before and I think that's because I'd got so used to thinking in the big thousands because of my flat equity and banks seemed desperate to throw their thousands at me.

Now that is the thing whacking things on plastic and spending thousands without actually seeing the money in your hand is sooooo easy to do and you dont really think about how its going to feel to have be tied to paying out 100's per month :eek: - especially when you have already had the benefit of that money.

On the flip side to save for your expensive holiday you would have to save £15 a week - which is just over £2 per working day a month - a coffee, muffin and maybe a newspaper! thats painless and yes two years does sound a long time but these day's time just seems to fly by so before you know it there'd be £1500 just sitting waiting for you to book your luxury holiday and you wouldnt worry about being skint when you got back! now I never feel like I could afford to have a two week or luxury holiday and usually fly longhaul every 1-2 years -cheap flight and stay with relatives or involve abit of plastic- but If I implimented the two pound a day save scheme instead of spunking it on lunch or magazines I could have a lux holiday! how exciting :j - as I get older Im realising that planning seems to be the key to what you want to doin life! (my parents weren't big planners:rolleyes: )

I cant wait not to have a mortgage any more! BUT if I could find a nice house in a lovely are that to rent that cost less than owning me own home I would definitely go for that option too

laughing_cow

Storm wrote:

So, it looks like I'll be renting for quite some time, but hey the landlord sorts out any problems..........

That is one of the best things about renting, definitely - getting someone else to pick up the tab for and sort out any issues with the property. When we needed work done on our building last year, as a flatowner, I had to 'find' £6.5k. Not fun.

Also, once you own property everything seems to become more expensive. In my pre-property days everything I wanted or needed seemed to be about £50. Now everything I need seems to be about £500!

Broken_hearted

Its cheaper for us to have the mortgage and pay for the repairs ourself than it would be to rent. When I lived in a council house they never came out to fix things, we fixed it up ourselves and they billed us for 'damage'.

JGWT8M

Broken_hearted wrote:

Its cheaper for us to have the mortgage and pay for the repairs ourself than it would be to rent. When I lived in a council house they never came out to fix things, we fixed it up ourselves and they billed us for 'damage'.

It's a bit different now, but I do know what you're saying.

They came around the other week to do an electrical inspection, even through the guy admitted there was nothing wrong and everything was as it should be, they still proceeded to rip out all the sockets in the kitchen, move them along the wall 6 inches, and put the back in.

The master switch for the washing machine/cooker was next to the cooker, but they decided in their wisdom to move it into the hall at shoulder height, so now everytime you go into the kitchen, you end up knocking the switch with your shoulder and switching the washing machine off.

We live in a crazy world.