I had this in my late 30s, again hit me out of the blue, coincided with my best friend since childhood passing away, parent health issues, my own need for an operation. It took me to a dark place and I ended up clinically depressed, not wanting to live really.

The only thing that got me out of it was making some big life changes – I bought a house, something I’d been delaying for a long time, and moved to a new area. Joined Meetup and met new people, go out to regular live music nights on the weekends. Travelled again. Sometimes it takes a crisis to make the necessary changes to move onto the next stage in life. I still get lonely and have rough weeks but in a strange way the crisis was necessary.

Had a tibial osteotomy a while back. Had some underlying issues but the surgeon did speak to me before the operation about what activities I could realistically do after it – for the rest of my life. I’d given up field sports etc, and now just swim, do a low impact gym routine, and cycle.
Some sports physios think I could do more but I don’t want to push it.
As for going back to MMA – crazy!
Anyhow hope the recovery goes well.

Don’t compare yourself with other people. Walk your own path.
I’ve been single for a long time; I have a small house, live on my own, a few friends, but I’m quite happy not to be caught up on the comparison treatmill.
Whether my wider family and friends think I’m weird, well they probably do, but I don’t really care, I just use the xmas period to catch up on reading books and not being stressed due to work. I see them for xmas lunch, make some jokes, disperse some giftcards, then exit.

I recommend you put your life savings into Bitcoin and Ethereum. You won’t regret it. You will be able to retire next year, easy, upgrade your wife, get a bigger house.
Seriously, I had a curiosity about crypto years back so studied it, bought some, exited it all in May this year. If it really tumbles again I may be interested but for the moment it just looks like an excellent opportunity for fools to be parted from their money.

Since the financial crisis China has created a real estate bubble that puts Japan in the 80s and US in 2006 into the shade. There is a real risk the whole thing will pop this year.
China could be like the Soviet Union, it looks powerful from the outside but has major problems internally. It is an authoritarian state and has got away so far with locking up its dissidents but it remains to be seen whether this will continue indefinitely.
Another destabilising factor is the rise of religion particularly evangelical Christianity in China, which the government clamps down on, but continues to grow.

My cousin went to a PL club academy – he was one of those who didn’t make it (hardly anyone actually makes it). The only one he knew who made it was Ashley Young.
He wasn’t the academic type anyway but he still attended a normal school.
I think it’s crucial to either learn a trade or get an education at the success rates are so low.
He was offered the chance to go to a smaller club, but didn’t take it, I don’t know if he regrets it as over time his knees got worse anyhow so he would have probably had to retire early. A new manager came in towards the end who favoured big physical players so it’s all very random as to who makes it.
The other thing that is a big issue is gambling – lots of professional players use gambling to handle the pressure, loads of them end up losing the money they had earned as pros to the bookies.
So it’s right to be weary of the whole thing.

Young people don’t have much of a future unless they have well off parents.
It’s utterly unfair and I’m amazed Labour under Starmer are making no meaningful attempts to grab the young vote.
The country is increasingly pitting old vs young and I expect the political parties to reposition accordingly.

You can never know when the next crash will be, the only thing that is certain is that you get older and start to run out of time.
I bought my first house last year, aged 40, as I could hear the clock ticking. I managed to get it at a reasonable price – and I’d manage to put down a healthy deposit through years of saving. And I knew I didn’t want to buy a flat.
So I can withstand a correction.
I spent many years just hoping for a correction, but it didn’t materialise. But that’s not saying it won’t happen – when you get crazy activity like the last few months, it’s often the sign of a market top.

It’s not just the UK, if it is a bubble, it is a global housing bubble, and if it crashes, well then all bets are off – buy gold, guns, bitcoin, and head out to the Compound for the New Order to emerge.
What can be looked at from one perspective as a UK property bubble could be seen from another angle as a devaluation of paper money.
Calculating house prices in units of gold is quite interesting. At current prices, the ratio is close to the historical average.

Well I joined another fitness group thread on Monday. Went to the pool, then a nice bike ride.
Tuesday – went to the pub and drank half my bodyweight in beer.
Now my hangover has finally cleared, I really need to take this fitness stuff more seriously.
So I am In.

I’m two stone overweight, either I get with the challenge or I have to buy a new wardrobe.
I’m in – will be a mixture of bike commuting and swimming, just hoping my knee doesn’t give up on me, so also throwing in some strengthening exercises.
This thread has inspired me to go to the pool just now!

A lot of it is the luck of the draw, injuries accumulate and some people’s bodies simply age faster and lose strength quicker than others.
I was fit throughout my 20s, very good technically, then suffered some knee problems in my mid-30s and after numerous operations my mind just won’t let me ride the really technical stuff at speed any longer.
I know any fall off the bike could mean time injured off work/laying in bed and at worst another knee operation.
So on the one hand I’m annoyed I have a major weakness I need to monitor closely and which restricts what activities I can do, but at the same time I’m thankful I was the right age to get into mountain biking when it really took off and rode some great trails.
I will probably buy an E mountainbike next so I can continue doing long rides and be a bit fresher for the technical sections.

I bought my first house last year and according to the local EAs it has increased by 60k since then.
I’d be unable to afford it now – just 12 months later.
I just want a place to live, fed up of sharing and paying rent; but this house price appreciation is royally screwing over young people. And I know how awful it is to reach middle age whilst still renting – I bought the place the same week I turned 40.
Housing should be a human right; instead it increasingly brings out the worse in human nature – house price bragging, predatory banks and EAs, and the government are underwriting it all as they know it gets them re-elected.
The whole thing stinks.

Lots of sad stories at the moment esp with lockdown. A family friend has become a full blown alcoholic in response to the stress of it.
If someone has been abusing booze on that level for that long the chances of them making a recovery are v slim.
All the alcoholics I’ve known have had depression below it all. The only thing that stopped me from drinking heavily was to move house and change my life. I’m not a depressive but my depression was situation based. As some as I got my own house the need to drink disappeared

I can’t believe a deal to film a documentary (and I’m using that word loosely) had not been struck before they bought the house.
He’s a TV person, I know a few people in the media and what you see is not what happens in real life, the magic of TV!

If you were to do this independently, unless you had serious money to start off with for the renovations, it just wouldn’t work financially. That’s why so many of the chateaus are relatively cheap, they are too expensive to turn around without a huge capital outlay in the first place.

I tried sertraline a few times but the side effects were just too much for me. My system tends to react heavily to any drug. I actually had a huge 3 day acid like trip reaction the last time I tried.
The only thing that’s worked for me is to de stress my life as much as possible.
I’m single and have made a decision to remain so as I cant really handle the emotions of a relationship.
I suspect I’m also on the adhd spectrum but a lot of us are simply being over stimulated by our environment which makes what would have been 200 years ago a latent condition now a prominent one. Very much a hunter gatherer type who loves to hyper focus but struggles to manage the farm.

Some friends – who also own a pub – have been caught out by the boom. They sold their house, had an offer accepted on another which then fell through, and the whole family are now trying to live above the pub. The landlady has taken up smoking to deal with it all.

An Italian friend went back to see her parents in Lombardy – the first time in over a year – but now can’t wait to get back to blighty as it’s too hot.
I was tempted to do a last minute trip to Croatia but I think I will wait until next Spring now. Too much hassle – on top of a normal holiday, which is always hassle.

People have caught a strong dose of Fear of Missing Out and that is undoubtedly making them over-bid, whipped up by Estate Agents.
It’s crazy when you think about it – when would you normally bid 20percent over an asking price!
I suspect the market is in the overheated stage now and will cool down over the next two years.
Psychology of lockdown was also a huge factor in this rally – people were bored/anxious, so spent their time on RightMove, then property viewing was the only thing you were allowed to do during the lockdowns. The Race for Space and need for a Zoom room are howevever longer terms trends that were happening anyhow with the rise of WFH but Covid has accelerated the trend massively.

Yes London is growing more slowly than the rest of the country. But the Levelling Up agenda – if it only leads to higher house prices, but not actual jobs – could serve to undermine the Tory’s Red Wall strategy by building up local resentment as locals are priced out of local housing.
I suspect the main casaulty of this recent house price growth will be flats, which along with the cladding issues and management fees, will decline in popularity over the longer term.
And in a year’s time we will see plenty of articles along the lines of, “I regret moving to the countryside now.”

Not all EAs are terrible. I was very lucky with my ones, so just search and ask around for the most reputable local Estate Agents company and use them.

I was very lucky. I’d been renting for 10 years or so, thinking I had no chance of buying locally in hertfordshire, other than a flat, and I didn’t want to live in a flat.
I started looking in norwich instead, and got a mortgage organised, then one day on a boring teams meeting at work, I looked at a local estate agent and they had a 2 bed house with garden, just within my affordability range and 10 mins drive from where I was living.
I put the offer in and moved in this spring.
Housing affordability will be the number 1 issue for the next 2 or 3 elections I think.

OP best thing you can do is rent the place for 2 nights, hold a huge party, invite some hells Angel’s along, trash the joint so the landlord decides to take it off Airbnb.

I lived in the EU before brexit but only as a student. The employment situation even then would have been very hard – my university scholarship was as much money as my Italian gf’s brother was earning in Italy as a well trained engineer.
Remote working/WFH will open up a lot of opportunity for the “digital nomad” esp as said above in countries that want new influxes of people and are willing to change their tax systems to do so.
Before that the main ways of being an expat were retiring on a pension, selling the UK home, or opening a BnB.
Croatia are trialling a digital nomad visa along with Estonia, it will be interesting to see if other countries follow suit. As mentioned, NZ, Oz and Canada are no cheaper than the UK in terms of housing. I wish I bought a place in Croatia years ago when it was dirt cheap, if you go inland you can still get some bargains but the coasts are all very expensive now.

My plan is to move to Croatia for a while, Im lucky in that I have an irish passport through parents. But I’m going to do a short-term trial first next spring.
I still need to sort out the tax implications of working remotely over the longer term for a UK based company.
It’s a fuzzy area that a lot of people were ignoring esp in places like Spain but the authorities will clamp down esp on non-Eu citizens going forward.
The main reason I finally bought a place in the UK was so I could have a place to return to in the future as I know lots of “Brexpats” who now can’t afford to move back.

Well don’t sell the UK house, rent it out as you may want to return some day.
If working remotely, you need to check out the tax implications, otherwise your employer or you or both could end up paying tax in two different countries.
Also unless you have an Irish passport living in an EU country has suddenly become more of an admin burden to say the least.
I’d go for Canada, Australia or New Zealand. NZ would be top for a Scotsman.

Sorry to hear that, hope it all works out and you get a good treatment plan.
Completely naive but related question here – does continuing fairly intense exercise into your 40s increase your rate of having a heart attack? I’ve heard a few stories of local people who’ve been described as fit as a fiddle, but then collapsed when training for their latest triathlon.

Jeremy Grantham rightly says that rationality has little to do with investment decisions – rather people follow the herd, create manias, the old animal spirits are the reason we boom then bust.
I think we may be at the mania stage of the current bull market.

I bought last year. I thought this all looked quite bubbly then, I think it looks even worse now. The “race for space” is very real, plus many FTBs have been living at home with parents since the GFC to save for deposits, and now are taking the plunge.
I don’t know what will happen, nobody does, but I think flats/apartments will trail behind house prices for the foreseable future, as Working From Home is being cemented as a long term trend.
There are two big gaps in the market – suitable houses for FTBs, and suitable houses/bungalows for downsizing retirees. Housing policy has tried to cover both trends by building flats. But the truth is, people increasingly don’t want to live in flats, and they may no longer function as the first step onto the housing market due to things like the cladding scandals.

I agree, I’m a spurs fan, and used to go a lot as a kid, but the turning point was Abramovic buying Chelsea, that was the big change, Money has always dominated who is successful but that was a big turning point.
So I don’t really watch the games and attend – in normal times – perhaps once a season at most.
For many fans, it is indeed their life, and the protests show what a good investment football is – what other brand would command so much loyalty?
Nothing will change, money will still rule the game; and the fans will just have the odd protest once in a while, then get lulled back into complaince with beer, Sky Sports, and the promise of Champions League football.
The super league is also inevitable however – young people aren’t getting into football, doing things like Gaming instead, and the new markets are places in Asia, so the teams will inevitably splinter off and then play games all over the world. It’s the logical endpoint of a league that was globalised some time ago.

I work in IT but since switching to home working roles, things have improved, I can just go out on the bike when I fancy it. So couldn’t you get wfh roles, or go freelance?
I remember the days of labouring in my summer holidays at uni and don’t want to go back to that.

I’ve worked remotely for five years, so on the surface of things, there is no real change. However, I was very dependent on getting out the house, going to restaurants and pubs, without those outlets it’s been quite challenging. But beats commuting every day.

I’ve gone full circle. As a kid my mum insisted on only buying me Clarkes, when all the other kids were getting Nike Airs.
It turns out not only are Clarkes very good shoes in general, they are now a status symbol in Jamaica, so I’m finally cool too.

On a big birthday I think normally it is good to buy someone an experience, like a car track day, something they will remember.

Working from home is not good for losing weight.
Saying that, now the weather is better, I’m going out for a lunchtime walk most days.
Unfortunately I have a tendancy to walk to the local kebab place.

Only Italians can make the best coffee because they use the secret ingredient:
LOVE

Less to do with the system and more to do with the management company/living in flats.
That’s one of the reasons I would never buy a flat (there are many more).
Unfortunately with the cladding issue a lot of young people (who were forced to buying flats as they’d been priced out of houses) are now trapped.
How are you able to live in Portugal full time – what’s the situation post-Brexit? Do you have an Irish passport or something? My mother’s Irish and I’m thinking of applying for one, will make the queues at airports more bearable plus I wouldn’t mind living in Italy or Croatia for a while.

@nick, it’s a fox triad, known for their relatively short shelf life. I think I could get away replacing it with a rp23 from some of the research I’ve just done online. Cheers.

As someone who has been involved in crypto for a few years, there are a number of things to bear in mind:
It is not investing, it is gambling
Only put in what you are happy to lose
It is probably a ponzi scheme, unless it somehow discovers utility (I don’t buy that it is the future the money or digital gold); I’m not ruling out that it could discover utility through a killer app but I think it would have done so by now
Some people say that BTC has been around a long time so is no longer a gamble, but that just says to me that it has been around 12 years and is still the same thing it was at the start, a highly speculative gamble
If you are still interested, then invest small amounts over time (dollar cost averaging), buy when high, buy when low. Don’t chase rallies, and don’t cash out after it crashes.