I’m hoping it will get cheaper after nursery stops.
£500 a month *just* to pay for the regular club fees
you know how much nursery costs right? £500 for 2 sounds a bargain to me.
on the boiler cover subtopic...as I'm just looking into this, check out Aviva (I believe homeserve do the work). It's about £18 a month all singing/dancing cover (plumbing/electrics/CH etc) if your boiler is over 7 years old and needs replacing you pay £500 - unlikely other cover I've looked at. (wife is an employee so we get another 40% off)
As much as self insuring on things sounds a good idea, due to unluckyness I think overall we are 'up' quite a bit across our insurance payouts vs claims. Probably not much in it
If I had a brand new in warrenty bolier I wouldn't be paying for cover
Very little savings here. We are in the "pay off the huge mortgage early" school of thought so anything we have we throw at paying the house off.
"We currently save £500 a month *just* to pay for the regular club fees for our girls – music (x2 piano, flute and drums), sports club, singing lessons, dancing, gymnastics, horse riding, art… And that’s before the clothes, books, tech, bikes etc etc etc."
All of which are mandatory expenses unlike child care which is optional.
Oh no wait it's the other way round.
It’s refreshing to see some real world cash figures popping up in here, rather than the instant dismissal by those in the North that us Southerners have got it easy..
The reality has always been that is not the case, yet it’s still a preconception few understand or care to.
As for the Brexit “correction” that’s always been the case whether the U.K. was in or out of Europe. The U.K. has always had an odd way of property ownership, it’s always teetered on the edge of collapse and successive governments have always seemed to pop out of the hat yet another market correction tool to cool the negative equity the 90’s kids suffered.
Carney is the most successful BOE Chair the U.K. has ever had. His pragmatic approach has seen this country flat line in the boom/bust since the Banking Credit turmoil of 2008.. his steadfast and secular view has removed him from the previous generations governmental political piss poor decisions and an economic policy set in the dark ages.
Be thankful he’s remaining until 2021..
Carney is the most successful BOE Chair the U.K. has ever had. His pragmatic approach has seen this country flat line in the boom/bust since the Banking Credit turmoil of 2008..
Nothing against the man, but I think the global macro economic environment has had more to do with the recent stability than him personally. How he fares through the next global recession will be his true test of character.
Isn’t that what insurance is for?
Just to confirm, buildings insurance won't cover something like this as its happened over a period of time. It'll only cover sudden, unavoidable issues, ie neighbours pipes burst and your roof caves in. Worryingly however when I spoke to them they couldn't understand why dry rot was caused by damp.. They kept telling me it was wet rot that was caused by that!! 😬
As for house prices falling.. Well sure you will lose a ton of equity, but then so will all other houses. So in reality you won't be that worse off unless you are investing in buy to let.
you know how much nursery costs right? £500 for 2 sounds a bargain to me.
Yes - we have been there obvs.
All of which are mandatory expenses unlike child care which is optional.
Oh no wait it’s the other way round
trail-rat - neither are compulsory though. But if you need childcare for a pre-school then you’ll equally need to provide after school care if you needed to put the child into pre-school in the first place. Obvs.
When the childcare stops, school starts. And with that comes clubs, and hobbies and sports, and the list goes on. We currently save £500 a month *just* to pay for the regular club fees for our girls – music (x2 piano, flute and drums), sports club, singing lessons, dancing, gymnastics, horse riding, art…
Laughable, imo . ... Would be cheaper to buy each of them a bike.... Would be more fun, too.....plus, bikes have brakes and horses don't.
The GF and I have about 3 months safety. She certainly doesn't earn mega. I can earn alright when I knuckle down, but ultimately I'd rather not. My free time is worth more to me than the time spent working..... (and taxes being as they are in the Vaterland is rather take three weeks off and go ride my bike in Italy than work those three weeks and pay one weeks worth of wages to taxman).
I've 60k£ worth of pension at age 36.... No idea if that's good or bad, but I've only got that (plus a bit of accessible cash in d funds) thanks to a rather successful year of cash-is-king about ten years ago.....
With our outgoings now it's not easy to put much away. Our rent is high and the general cost of living is on a par with London. We don't want to live like paupers, but at the same time we are far from extravagant.
Laughable, imo . … Would be cheaper to buy each of them a bike…. Would be more fun, too…..plus, bikes have brakes and horses don’t.
Our girls have bikes but we choose to let them explore other activities than the ones we like. Each to their own ehh?
Oh and 5k take home is a shit load of cash regardless of where you live ....
I'd be working my arse off to earn that gross. And there is no way I could do it month on month out.
I'm from the Essex commuter belt and some house prices are ****ing stupid, but there are plenty of folks I know going in and out of London reach day on far less reach month.
It's all about choices.
Work less live more has been my motto since about I left school..... Maybe that should be "work smart, work less"....i don't know .... But **** debt.
Better things to spend my money on than interest and (perceived) stature.
Alpin - does your approach include not letting your children experience new things so you can work less because it would cost too much to pay for horse riding lessons as opposed to a bike for example?
This is a really interesting thread!
47 years old and I've just upped and moved to the other side of the world (kinda home for me), and that has chewed through a stack of what would otherwise have been savings. No kids and had a dual income until moving here - the mrs hasn't found anything yet; we don't really consume a lot: went car-free a year ago, but got rid of a 15 year old car that we'd had for 15 years and barely used any more. We do have 6 bikes between us (they're *still* on a ship, grrr!) but lived in a modest 2 bed Edinburgh "colony" flat (which we've kept - we're renting it out at *way* below market rates, but enough to pay the mortgage and maintenance). At the moment, we've got about £7k left in savings, but that is largely because of my redundancy payment and sale of the shares from ex-work - it's cost us a lot to move. There is probably also about £2k in a cash ISA and I think we've got about £5k in a stocks&shares ISA too.
We have, though, got a significant amount of overpayment in the mortgage and, because of the deal we're on, we can access it nearly instantly if necessary - that's about £50k. I've got a pretty good pension pot, but the mrs has less. Right now, we've got about £200k equity in the house (excluding the overpayments) but I'm expecting that to plummet when y'all realise exactly what Brexit means (that might take 3 years)
I work in IT, so that helps, and I'm on a good but not stellar salary over here - NZ$115k (I never really understand why folk are so careful about publishing their salaries - I think it should be transparent). For what it's worth, I do work hard but I don't credit that with getting me to where I am - I don't try to kid myself that it is much more than a result of blind luck and privilege.
We're renting now - house prices in Wellington are crazy and it's hard to find >80% mortgages. Even if we transferred all our overpayments and savings, we'd still need to find around $50-100k.
Just weighing-in on boilers. Best insurance is to buy a Worcester Bosch IMO. Probably not a better boiler than any of the others, but if it goes wrong, for 250 quid they will send an engineer who will throw parts at it again until it starts working. Includes parts and labour.
Found this out after a local heating engineer wanted to charge me a 60 quid call out fee for turning up and telling me he "didn't know anything about these ones" and, "lets just replace the PCB first as its probably that". He got sent away with a flea in his ear (as did his invoice) - Bosch chap came round, cleaned a furred-up filter..... fixed. God know how many visits/parts the other chap would have burned through before he got to that!
Bosch chap felt bad for me getting charged 250 quid for what was literally a 2 min job, so he then spent the next hour replacing some of the parts that were most likely to fail in future. But I figure that even without that, he saved me at least 250 quid of pointless work by the other chap.
Why pay insurance when you can put the money away in savings
Because as part of a bigger policy that includes bikes, accidental damage etc. It will only take one large claim to wipe out the money you have saved from not having insurance.
Besides 450 a year in savings will make bugger all.
Why pay insurance when you can put the money away in savings
The quote mentioned £'000s. I'm assuming something catastrophic meant a lot of money.
We had one claim on our combined policy for the house/all risk/bikes/contents etc that was worth £4000. We're still ahead.
This whole savings thing is definitely overcooked. Even moving my £30,000 savings around I still don't make that much.
In fact taking inflation into account - it's dire.
Best return I had was to sign up to a £5000 managed account where they gave you £500 cashback. And then it returned 4.7%
does your approach include not letting your children experience new things so you can work less
Each to their own obviously. But this to a certain extent is a valid approach. Given the choice of working longer hours to provide all those extra curricula activities, or actually having some time to spend with my kids I'd choose the later. A walk in the country is largely free and something I'd enjoy aswell.
Not sure what your point is about childcare not being mandatory.
Child needs cared for by someone see you pay for it or one of you stops working but the child needs cared for by someone .
They don't NEED any of the stuff on your list.
But you have justified it to your self and that's cool. But its by no means the norm to have that extensive list of activities and be shelling out 500 a month for the privaledge that's your choice. ..... Do you ever see them ?
I do - in fact I am baking cakes with one of them right now (the other is at ballet lol)
They don’t NEED any of the stuff on your list.
But they do need TO BE cared for. Ffs grumble grumble
My parents were lucky, I was obsessed with BMX from age of 9 so spent all my time at the BMX track (riding to and from myself). Their only expense was a supply of seat posts and cranks which I kept bending.
Alpin – does your approach include not letting your children experience new things so you can work less because it would cost too much to pay for horse riding lessons as opposed to a bike for example?
My approach is very much based on not experiencing having children....
If it were to happen the last thing I'd want them doing is horse riding! Those things don't even have brakes (and are ruinously expensive!)
But, in my opinion as a parent, it isn’t for us to direct what a child should or shouldn’t do - rather we should give them all the opportunities we can afford them so they can find out what inspires them.
And if my daughter continues to enjoy her riding then when, aged 10, she can start to help out at the stables and get more opportunities to ride with no additional costs to us. At this stage there is no hope (despite her begging) that we can afford a horse of her own.
my point was £500 is bugger all compared to what I've been paying in.nursery so kids do get cheaper. when they are both in school even.if I was paying 500 for other stuff is be 1k better off pcm.
and i' d say steer them.away from horse riding. that way is ruinously expensive. family had a.couple as did.my sister who constantly complained about being skint....it would have been cheaper to run a Porsche.
We currently save £500 a month *just* to pay for the regular club fees for our girls – music (x2 piano, flute and drums), sports club, singing lessons, dancing, gymnastics, horse riding, art… And that’s before the clothes, books, tech, bikes etc etc etc.
I am am glad I’m not the only one who thought 😳😳😳😳😳😳 when I read that!
Kids are unbelievably spoilt nowadays. No wonder they are getting into debt when they leave home.
Kids are unbelievably spoilt nowadays. No wonder they are getting into debt when they leave home.
Why bother struggling to not be in debt? You get introduced to it at UNi then are saddled with loans (house,car etc) for the rest of your life. Debt is normal now
alternately life will be hard and dull when the kids grow up so why not let them have fun/experiences if you can afford it. There are no re runs on life
Kids are unbelievably spoilt nowadays.
What does that mean? That they are lesser people because they have piano lessons?
Why bother struggling to not be in debt?
It helps me sleep at night.
Couple live over the other side of our road. They came out having a blazing row. All I heard was the bloke saying “you never have any bloody money!” She then gets into her 50k pimped up Range Rover and roars off. I don’t know how much savings they have though.
and i’ d say steer <span class="skimlinks-unlinked">them.away</span> from horse riding. that way is ruinously expensive. family had a.couple as <span class="skimlinks-unlinked">did.my</span> sister who constantly complained about being skint….it would have been cheaper to run a Porsche.
At least when the horse croaks it, it will be a good time to get the BBQ out. A tasty, albeit expensive, meal.
