Hi Everyone
For those of us now approaching middle age, the opportunity to buy our own home was available to many of us. We spent 2 years saving really hard, I did 'foreigners', jobs outside the normal five and a half day working week while Dot spent virtually nothing on new clothes, shoes, etc.. Having saved a deposit in 1960 we bought our first house with a monthy mortgage payment which sounds ridiculous now of just under £14. To put that into perspective, our total income was £15 per week. It was quite normal to pay interest on that mortgage of 5% or 6% and on occasions even higher than that. This week, over sixty years later, bank interest rates are climbing quickly and with it mortgage repayments. In my opinion, there are major differences in the situation we found ourselves in then and now. In the writing section of this Rubbish blog is something I wrote about four years ago called Affordable Housing. That illustrates the difference between a new house built in 1960 and a house built today. To buy our 1960 house now we would probably need a £200,000 mortgage which at a 4% interest rate would cost a home owner a monthly payment of approximately £1000 with rates probably going to exceed that in the coming weeks. That means that if you then apply the 1960 income, then the present couple needs a total income of more than £4000 per month. Even if my figures are 20% wrong it shows why many home owners will struggle this winter. Add to that the fact that many couples in the 60s did not own a car with much better public transport available, did not have credit card debt, bought no takeaway meals, mainly did not go on holidays abroad, and had much fewer expectations than people today. All that does not include that despite government help we will still be paying a lot more for energy this winter and at least 10% more for everything else. Faced with all that can somebody or anybody explain to me why the government mini budget of last week will grow the economy when 98% of the population will have less spending power?
My longtime Rubbish readers will know that I love useless information, you know astounding facts that will blow your mind. Well, how about this one - there are about 47.000.000 people in the UK eligible to vote. but only 81,526 voted for Mrs. Trustworthy, the Yorkshire woman with the thin lips, into power and I bet that 50% of them would not now admit it to even to their best friends. Now two weeks later we are calling Putin's referendum in Ukraine a fake. Scary isn't it? Even scarier, I found out this week how she did it. She was interviewed by a number of radio stations one morning this week and the answer she gave to almost every question put to her was that she had helped every household in the country with their winter fuel costs. Almost every other question put to her she avoided answering. There is a good end to this story, however. Just imagine if that other Yorkshire lady with thin lips who was tight with money, the Senior Partner, was living next door to Mrs. Trustworthy in Downing Street. We would all have had to make do with a box of candles and a book of matches advertising the Conservative party.
I saw my doctor this week. So what, I hear you say. Well, it was the first time in four years that I had seen a doctor. She was very nice and it did not hurt a bit. I just hope that it will be at least four years until I see her again.
When I was at school I never considered that I was much of a whizz at Science but I did learn that if you had a flight in a glider you used the thermals (warm air) to keep the glider in the air. Now as we approach middle age and winter, thermals take on a whole new meaning.
Just a Thought :
Due to the recession and to save on energy costs, the light at the end of the tunnel will be turned off.
Thanks to the recession my friend is back on my feet again. The bank took his car.
My friend who is a Chartered Accountant explained inflation to his wife. "You used to be 36-24-36, but now you are 46-40-48. So, theoretically, you have more than you did before, but your value is less. That my dear is inflation".
Don't let the energy bill bite.
Brian