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Interest rates so low - don't bother saving!
Comments
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40 years ago people panicked about the national debt reaching £4bn. What a terrible legacy to leave to the next generation!
Well here we are and we still owe the £4bn. But it's small change now.
Am I missing something?
The national debt was just a tad higher than £4bn in 1970 (£33bn)
The £4bn in 1970 might well be small change now but we as a country have added well over £1000bn to that debt since 1970 and the government are still adding to it at the current rate of approx. £120bn a year.'We don't need to be smarter than the rest; we need to be more disciplined than the rest.' - WB0 -
In more normal times bank base rates have been around 2% above inflation...so we would be around 4.5% now.
http://www.moneyweek.com/inflation0 -
Sitting like a mug in cash is pretty grim even in "normal" times but at the moment it means that you're bearing the full brunt of fiscal oppression without even trying to get out from under the jack boot.I am not a financial adviser and neither do I play one on television. I might occasionally give bad advice but at least it's free.
Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them.0 -
40 years ago people panicked about the national debt reaching £4bn. What a terrible legacy to leave to the next generation!
The national debt as a % of GDP in the late 1960s was much the same as it is now and was previously much higher. The % was halved in less than 10 years.
In the late 1960s interest rates were higher than now and so presented more of a burden.
The UK % is very similar to that for the USA, France, Belgium and the Euro area and is actually below the UK average for the past 100 years
So methinks you are getting a bit over-excited.0 -
Negative real returns aren't caused by inflation, they're caused by a depressed economy.
yes, i wasn't demanding higher real interest rates. there are more important things.
my comment that it's protracting the pain was about the suggestion that negative real interest rates are a means of getting excessive levels of debt under control. because this process is, if you are very optimistic about it, going to take decades (during which the economy will remain depressed), and is more likely not to solve the problem at all but merely to transfer the debt from the private to the public sector (to "socialize" it ... i remember when socialism meant something else
). 0 -
gadgetmind wrote: »Sitting like a mug in cash is pretty grim even in "normal" times but at the moment it means that you're bearing the full brunt of fiscal oppression without even trying to get out from under the jack boot.
I think it all boils down to your general situation. I am very simplistic about money. I earn( below the so-called national average) , I save some I spend some.
I was mis sold a pension, back in the day and mis sold an endowment too. Because of the rules at the time, I did not even get an apology-let alone compensation! So now, I do not trust slimeball "financial experts".
It may not be inflation proof, but I keep my hands on cash-like Marathon Man. I do not like risk-any risk. I have liquid cash available , enough to live on for a whole year if I need to(and it looks like my job will finish in a month).
However, as unsophisticated as I ,and many others here, may be, I have ZERO debt. I own my house outright(mortgage paid 6years early-after a 14 year false start),and I am sitting"like a mug" on cash which belongs to me.
If I had a larger income(and it would not have to be a lot more) then maybe I would look at some different vehicles for money. 'Til then I will stick to my debt free,cash rich way of doing things.0 -
marathon_man wrote: »Our intention, in our pensionable years, was for my wife and I to boost our income from the interest on our savings. We would have been spending that interest income thus boosting the economy (to a tiny extent, though!).
However, to get by each month, we are having to eat into our savings in order to meet our day-to-day living expenses. This is not how we planned it to be and it seems that the current Bank of England policy is geared to helping borrowers rather than those of us who put money away, throughout our working lives, for what we intended to be a comfortable retirement.
Totally agree marathon man. We like you and many others controlled our spending all our working years, just to see it all being drained away.nitraM0 -
True and thats where the system has the advantage you see because most people dont even consider let alone understand the concepts which we discuss here. They are sheep for shearing.gadgetmind wrote: »Sitting like a mug in cash is pretty grim even in "normal" times but at the moment it means that you're bearing the full brunt of fiscal oppression without even trying to get out from under the jack boot.Feudal Britain needs land reform. 70% of the land is "owned" by 1 % of the population and at least 50% is unregistered (inherited by landed gentry). Thats why your slave box costs so much..0 -
The national debt as a % of GDP in the late 1960s was much the same as it is now and was previously much higher. The % was halved in less than 10 years.
How can you believe any of the Government's statistics on the National Debt when so much of it is off the balance sheet -
PFI,
unfunded Public Sector Pensions Liability,
commitment to support the insolvent Banks,
etc etc.
The Government is paying battalions of Bureaucrats to produce statistics to support their argument - its about the only area of the Civil Service they have not cut. But most of the statistics they produce are meaningless.“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” --Upton Sinclair0 -
I was mis sold a pension, back in the day and mis sold an endowment too. Because of the rules at the time, I did not even get an apology-let alone compensation! So now, I do not trust slimeball "financial experts".
If you buy a car, and it proves to be a dog, you can either stop buying cars or learn something about cars.
Yup, you always need a cash buffer, but drip-feeding into long term investments also makes sense.I have liquid cash available , enough to live on for a whole year if I need to(and it looks like my job will finish in a month).
As long as you're making well informed decisions, then no-one can really criticise the decision you make.If I had a larger income(and it would not have to be a lot more) then maybe I would look at some different vehicles for money. 'Til then I will stick to my debt free,cash rich way of doing things.I am not a financial adviser and neither do I play one on television. I might occasionally give bad advice but at least it's free.
Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them.0
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