A UKRM retreat

Kitchen: Beer
Telephone: Food

 

All you youngsters with your big mortgages: I don't know how you sleep
at night.

What sir wants is a nice, non-contrib, final salary scheme. Preferably
with 24 years built up.

 

There's a 2 bed flat over the road available for £290 a week.

Shall I put your name down?

 

I have/had one with contrib, and with company contribution holidays
(Grr...). Still blinding value. <smug>.

All you youngsters out there, get yourselves some decent pension advice.
Decent mark you, not from a salesman. One day you'll GRIN!
h
And take it from someone who cashed the check yesterday, a Mortgage
Protection policy is very, VERY good value.

Sad circumstances here, but GBP2,200 premiums over ten years converted
into GBP42,000 cash. A sanity saver.

 

Plan for downtime, and maintenance costs (all payable in pounds
sterling, not RMB).

It is. The food is great, and it's a hell of an experience. I didn't
really like China that much, though.

 

So, I'd maintain that in Enfield, renting is at least 25% more
expensive than buying.


You forgot to calculate house repairs etc. that are paid for in the rental.

 

rental.

I'd hardly expect "house repairs" to amount to anything close to 25% of
my annual mortgage payments.

 

What about us old folk with big mortgages?

 

Having a large amount of positive equity helps a lot. In a way it's
just like paying a large-ish rent, with the theoretical ability to
realise well over 100K in cash should it be necessary.

we have a reasonably good pension scheme here (unsurprising really
given how many pension funds we manage) but it's still not going to be
worth very much, adjusted for projected inflation. I'd definitely
prefer just to own something readily convertible into a large sum of
inflation-adjusted cash.

 

there you go - you've hardly been there a few months, and you've
already fallen into the NI mindset of thinking anyone else outside the
province really gives much of a shit what goes on there.

 

The basis used in commercial property is that you should set aside 2%
of property value per annum. The leasehold payments I make on my flat
approximate to this.

 

*boggle*

There's no way my house will need >6K of repairs each year - that sort
of formula completely ignores regional pricing variation - you can't
really be saying a 4 bedroom house in Enfield requires 5 times as much
expenditure per year than a 4 bedroom house in Scotland?

We could have new double glazing every year for that sort of money.

It hasn't needed anything really in the three years I've owned it.

Well, we had the central heating serviced, but that cost 50 quid.

Even if you count "elective surgery" - the new kitchen, new shower
unit, decorating, we probably spend less than 1.5K a year on the house.

It probably helps that the previous owners had the place rewired and
re-roofed within the past 10 years, mind.

Oh, and I'm just about to pay a tree surgeon 150 quid to trim a birch
back - does that count?

 

You are, of course, quite right.

Commercial property owners need to budget for large 'exceptional'
costs over time, so things like a new roof, which is obviously
expensive, but not done very often, needs to be accounted for. I only
know this cos a friend has recently opened a hair salon [1], and she
was advised to budget the 2% figure.

[1] yes, ha ha

 

I wouldn't dream of it.

 

Oh no not at all, my daily dealings with Govmint make that patently
obvious, indeed the equivalent South is somewhat more useful. My thought
were, if some splinter decided to pull a stunt, well they have learned
that the financial districts in London are the only targets worth going
for.

'Hog

 

You seem to have omitted accounts of the Tottie?

'Hog

 

fair enough.

Well, I'm sitting here in a building next door to The Old Bailey, two
doors away from the London Stock Exchange, and across the road from
Merrill Lynch - do I look worried?

Actually, I think I might just nip out for a moment...

 

Fantastic shitters.

 

I do hope you're using that word as a noun.

 

That's Nina sold then

'Hog