House ownership - Selling yourself into a lifetime of servitude

dianadors

I bought my 1st house in 1981 with my then husband. We saved like mad to put down as large a deposit as we could so that we would not have to move when we had kids. Sadly, the rogue went off and had a family with someone else!!!1 The house that me and my 2nd husband live in is the same one we bought on a 20 year mortgage - I could never work out how to climb the property ladder and live a life at the same time. At 51 years old, and after hard work and plenty of scrimping, we are now home owners. My Mum is 72 years old and is still paying council rent. She too is a scrimper and has just enough savings so that she doesnt get any help with her rent - it takes up almost all of her state pension. I didnt get chance to go to uni although I would have loved to. Ive never had a great paid job, and worked part time since I had my kids. Ive been made redundant 4 times over the years too. At times is was a huge struggle, but it would have been a struggle if I had been in rented accomodation. I had friends who were renting that have had to find new homes too often when landlords decided to sell etc. I would never encourage any one to pay more than they could afford to buy, but I'm glad I bought.

purch

I have had over 10% returns from government bonds, much safer than bank accounts

I thought that Debt is Theft

You appear to be a little confused on this matter, either that or you are a hypocrite :eek:

ninky_2

debtistheft wrote: »

If you sold your home and invested the cash you would probably find that the return would pay for more than just a betsit. However,if you decide to live in a bedsit, you would be able to re-invest the surplus and grow your wealth even faster or you could spend it on whatever else would make you happy.

I personally like to travel and have found that the mobility provided by renting not only has allowed me to enjoy long-term holidays in far flung places, but it has also allowed me to make the most of any career opportunities that come along. My children speak four languages and correspond with friends all over the world, they ski, surf, swim and have enjoyed sampling many cultures and geographical locations. At one stage we were 'following the sun' by living and working in the Northern and then Southern hemispheres.

Perhaps because we dont live permanently in the UK, we haven't fallen for the spell of home ownership as the sole purpose in life. I cringe when I see people stating 'in 17 years when I am 56 I will be mortgage free and can then start living my life'. Its a shame they dont feel able to live their lives in their thirties and forties, its to be hoped that nothing goes wrong in that 17 years to prevent them from finally living their lives in their fifties.

it's great you are happy with your choices. they do indeed sound good ones. but why not be happy for those who are equally content with their alternative ones? why feel the need to pick holes in their plans and attempt to make them feel as if they've made terrible life moves? it does make me wonder if you are really that happy with it all deep down - or trying to talk yourself into it.

hopefully it's all just a bit of a bored moment on the tintnernet.

debtistheft

diable wrote: »

debtistheft, what do you do with your money, rent buy or live with Mum and Dad also what financial guidance can you give us as I work the system to my benefit and eventually by using the system will opt out and be self sufficient by not paying taxes (theft) and living off my own means.

Please see #64. I'm not sure how you can legally avoid paying taxes unless you invest in approved tax shelters (VCTs, SIPPS, ISAs, Offshore, etc.) that pay a tax free income. A lot of our investments are in a tax free or tax efficient wrapper, which means that the returns are all the better when compared to returns from investing in homes. We have no need to downsize and then drip-feed the released equity into tax havens, our money is already there.

chucknorris

debtistheft wrote: »

I cringe when I see people stating 'in 17 years when I am 56 I will be mortgage free and can then start living my life'. Its a shame they dont feel able to live their lives in their thirties and forties, its to be hoped that nothing goes wrong in that 17 years to prevent them from finally living their lives in their fifties.

But they didn't say that did they? What they said was:

In 17 years (or less with over payments) I will be able to live rent free from the age of 52.

They were talking about 'living rent free' not 'living' which you misquoted.

debtistheft

ninky wrote: »

it's great you are happy with your choices. they do indeed sound good ones. but why not be happy for those who are equally content with their alternative ones? why feel the need to pick holes in their plans and attempt to make them feel as if they've made terrible life moves? it does make me wonder if you are really that happy with it all deep down - or trying to talk yourself into it.

hopefully it's all just a bit of a bored moment on the tintnernet.

Its not so much 'picking holes in people's plans' than to express an alternative. I haven't said (I hope) that people are foolish to buy a house, and certainly those people who have a static life and will only buy one or two houses in their lifetime will be better off as home owners. Thos who have a more dynamic career or lifestyle who buy houses often may be better off remaining outside a home owning society. I believe the average number of moves that someone in the UK makes is 5 times. Imagine the amount of money spend buying 5 houses, selling 4 houses, arraging anything between 5 and 30 mortgages (depending on their duration, I think someone said earlier that they had a 2 year fix), paying stamp duty on the larger homes, all the other fees. All of that money not invested in the actual house but just wasted in the machinery of owning a house.

debtistheft

Here are some facts:

Consumer debt now exceeds £1 trillion.
British people owe more than £1,000 billion on cards, mortgages and loans.
To make things worse, 80% of debt is secured againt our homes.
Over six million households are struggling to make ends meet due to their debt.
Since 2000, 44% more people are seeking help to sort out their debt.
Unbelievable but true that personal debts of £100,000 are becoming the norm.

beecher2

debtistheft wrote: »

I can't go back in time and buy before the housing boom engineered by the banks and government so I am talking about buying in today's market.

Fair enough, but some of your comments seem to be written in more general terms.

Also, not everyone's number one goal is making money - that obsession with houses as investments is partly what got us into the situation we're now in.

debtistheft

Some more debt facts:

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts that household debt will be £2,126bn by end 2015. This would take the average household debt to £84,365 per household.
337 people every day of the year will be declared insolvent or bankrupt. This is equivalent to 1 person every 59 seconds during a working day.
1,603 Consumer County Court Judgements (CCJs) were issued every day during Q4 2010 and the average judgement amount was £3,245.
Citizen Advice Bureaux dealt with 8,004 new debt problems every working day in England and Wales
87 properties were repossessed every day during Q4 2010
296 new people became unemployed for more than 12 months every day during the 12 months to end February 2011
1,392 people reported they had become redundant every day during 3 months to end February 2011
212 mortgage possession claims will be issued and 163 mortgage possession orders will be made today

debtistheft

With those statistics, clearly not everyone is enjoying themselves in this property owning utopia.