Now we're older - how well did we manage our money?

beedeedee

Life is full of "If only's"..........but we only regret that we weren't brave enough to do a few things and we just wish both our families had been a bit more worldly wise to give us good advice. For instance neither of our parents or siblings ever owned their own houses (it wasn't the norm where we came from) and no-one was a builder or anything.
When we wanted to buy our first home, we thought about buying a closed down pub that we knew and converting it into a number of flats (one for us and rent out the rest) but we got scared and put off by our families, who we should have realised didn't have a clue about the housing market in the early seventies......If only we hadn't listened to them. We know now that we could have done it quite easily.

ceridwen

Thats the one thing I've heard people be most regretful about ITRW - things to do with housing. One person saying she wished she'd bought a house when she had the chance (she ended up spending years in rented accommodation and only has her current house on a "lifetime" basis). Others I've seen have lost homes of their own that they had - by not bothering to "keep an eye" on their finances in one case, by selling it and blowing the money in another case.

Guess thats down to a house is THE single most expensive purchase any of us are likely to make - so greatest scope for "messing up". The biggest thing I am glad of on that is my decision to have a repayment mortgage, rather than an endowment mortgage (I've been watching the resultant financial "mess" with more than one friend - when the endowment "went wrong" on them and didnt fully pay up the mortgage when it was due to).

What other Big things are there that people feel they either got "really wrong" or "really right"?

ceridwen

Cross-posted with BeeDeeDee - ouch! Thats a "big miss" financially isnt it...wincing in sympathy with that one....:(

I guess it can be easy to get "sucked into" going along with the financial ideas of those less capable with money than we are...particularly if they are family....

lemontart

been well off been skint now doing ok and in credit on utilities after being a tight wad for few years to get on top of earning less and higher prices ..............so all in all think I have done ok to date.

ash28

ceridwen wrote: »

Thats the one thing I've heard people be most regretful about ITRW - things to do with housing. One person saying she wished she'd bought a house when she had the chance (she ended up spending years in rented accommodation and only has her current house on a "lifetime" basis). Others I've seen have lost homes of their own that they had - by not bothering to "keep an eye" on their finances in one case, by selling it and blowing the money in another case.

Guess thats down to a house is THE single most expensive purchase any of us are likely to make - so greatest scope for "messing up". The biggest thing I am glad of on that is my decision to have a repayment mortgage, rather than an endowment mortgage (I've been watching the resultant financial "mess" with more than one friend - when the endowment "went wrong" on them and didnt fully pay up the mortgage when it was due to).

What other Big things are there that people feel they either got "really wrong" or "really right"?

We were in the endowment mortgage category - but we moved in 1993 when noises were starting to be made about possible shortfalls in predicted payouts - so we opted for a repayment mortgage - the best thing we ever did. One of my big regrets is listening to the building society in 1982 advising us that an endowment mortgage was the best way to go. After 11 years of paying premiums and interest our loan was exactly same as when we started.

That is one thing I'm really glad we changed - also the decision to stay in our pension schemes - we had a number of friends who left them and invested their money in Equitable Life and what a horror that turned out to be for them.

We've made good and bad decisions over the years, we've had debt (too much at some points), but in the end we were able to retire at 55 (last year), our hope was to go at 50 but it wasn't to be for various reasons, mainly the pensions were way below our comfortable figure and we still had a fair amount of mortgage to pay off.

Overall life is pretty good - one thing I have found is that as I've become older the desire for "stuff" has virtually disappeared. I don't know if that's an age thing or if it's a subconcious process going on - we're not earning therefore we should be more frugal.

[Deleted User]

we had endowment mortgages and what a mess that could have been, only by some huge stroke of luck I had been paying money off the capital whenever we could, any works bonus went that way, a bit here and a bit there. The endowments matured far short of what they `promised`but by then enough to cover what was left. I have a shiver up my back even now, thinking about that and about how I kept looking at equitable life and thinking `should we?`. Getting the mortgage paid off was the single best thing we ever did financially. Mortgage was paid off by 50 and 2 children had flown and I had a job so that is when we started saving as though there was no tomorrow. No big fancy holiday but small holidays fitted in and by golly I am glad we did it that way

yes ash, here too, the wanting stuff thing has long gone and I am still giving stuff away as the grandchildren get older. I no longer want all my teddy bears and card making stuff and my expensive carved animals made by US indians out of rocks and semi precious stone. Bit by bit, they will be handed over but I`ll be watching to see what they do with them and they won`t be wasted and the carvings will have grown in value

ceridwen

I could have been "caught" by Equitable Life (long story...) - but there have been a few times in my life where I've felt a "mental reluctance barrier" up in my mind about something and have had the sense to listen to it - and that was one of them....thank goodness...:D I was hearing all the "positive spiel" - but somehows just didnt quite believe it...whew....

There's advantages to having become a bit "cynical" over the years...:rotfl:

The endowment mortgage thing - thats the one plus side to the unemployment I had been through prior to buying a house. I was pretty aware of what benefits I would get if I became unemployed ever again and I could see that the DHSS (as was at that time..) wouldnt cover paying the endowment premium for me if I were on benefit and I would have to pay this myself out of my "personal benefit" and I knew that the benefit level simply wouldnt have stretched to be able to cover this. I knew that the benefits would get cut to an inadequate level to live on anyway and I would struggle if unemployment ever hit me again. Hence - I made sure I got a repayment mortgage - so that the DHSS would pay my "mortgage interest" for me and the building society would accept that the "capital" wasnt paid until I got back in work again and there was no "endowment premium payment" to concern myself with...

The mortgage is now gone and was all paid by me as and when due without any problem. I never did experience unemployment whilst I had that mortgage - so the question didnt arise and now I dont have to worry about that any more...

If I hadnt experienced being on benefit I might not have realised that no-one would cover that payment for me - and gone and believed all the "sales hype" at the time about how good those mortgages were supposed to be:eek:. Lucky escape time that was...whew..

tanith

I had no control over finances in my first marriage , I stopped working while I brought up children and I stupidly let my OH deal with stuff... badly as it turned out. When we divorced and I married again I took charge of my finances and my 2nd OH was happy for me to deal with the finances, we have now almost paid off our mortgage, have no debts and a small modest amount saved for when he joins me in retirement in 3yrs.. I can't imagine where I would be if I were still in my first marriage, well I can actually and its a nice place.

pollypenny

We have always had to count the pennies, firstly to save for a deposit - no heating only a gas fire, couldn't manage the extra £350!

Then we moved for the kids to go to a good school - mortgage rates soared!

Well enough off for them to not have a grant in uni, but god it was hard.

It's only since youngest left uni that things started to turn round. The irony is that retirement and lump sums, as well as the endowment pay out, has made us better off than ever.

Not sure if the survivor could manage on one pension though. NB: OH won't get half my teacher's pension, 2% up to 1987, then half from then on.

zygurat789

pollypenny wrote: »

We have always had to count the pennies, firstly to save for a deposit - no heating only a gas fire, couldn't manage the extra £350!

Then we moved for the kids to go to a good school - mortgage rates soared!

Well enough off for them to not have a grant in uni, but god it was hard.

It's only since youngest left uni that things started to turn round. The irony is that retirement and lump sums, as well as the endowment pay out, has made us better off than ever.

Not sure if the survivor could manage on one pension though. NB: OH won't get half my teacher's pension, 2% up to 1987, then half from then on.

Isn't that a typical middle class scenario from our era?
Save hard to buy house.
Scrimp to put the kids thru uni
Save a little regularly throughout
And lo and behold your retired and have a bit of cash to spend on yourself.
Don't cry too much about pensions you appear to have four, three of which are indexed and one of them is so good that the country can't afford it, so Gideon tells us.