bearwithasorehead

Op has answered own question - if rent is 3% of price to own then keep on renting! Life's too short otherwise!

yeah, I was kind of being provocatively ironic with the hangover word. Actually the govt there and companies like VW hate that so many people own property - it means they have less leverage over the proles. However, people being people and the difficulty of passing on property if you have more than one kid means that within less than a generation the whole debt bondage will be as bad as here. And they pay their auto workers not so well in comparison to Wolfsberg.

High home ownership in Slovakia is a hangover from the socialist period - it's a major source of intergenerational inequality and so within a decade or so they'll be in a similar position as us.

I really hope my complete twit of a sociopathic smug colleague who bought a Hackney BTL for 500k last year gets completely rinsed. He earns 55k. I really, really hope so.

Top management get top dollar, everyone else has had near zero pay increases meaning erosion in real terms over last 6 years or so. Massive lack of transparency at prof level and above. Lots of informal bargaining which means the weaker the management, the more likely the system results in the 'loudest' voices getting heard

This. Quite shocked when one of my secret HPC colleagues bought a five-bed new build and an Audi A7 (?). Eventually the status bug infects all the non-zombies.

An admission of failure if every there was one.

You're not saying it's a bubble are you?

Cash is king?

Yep, that's me. And the irony is, the missus and I are even thinking we don't want to keep any money in this country anymore. Considering leaving the UK now.

All I want to know is when I should look to buy a mobile phone online from Amazon.

This is my thinking on why I won't ever move from my poky three-bed semi, even though now I need more space.

My costs (incl. missus and two kids - various feckless relatives who need bailing out) - just because they seem so much higher than others here: Housing 400 Utilities 145 (big gas bill in cold house) car costs 130 Food 250 Work/Travel costs 200 (have to do a lot of international travel for job and a lot comes out of my own pocket!) phone, internet, tv licence 45 all insurance costs 65 2x life; employment; house, dental. council tax 120 kids school costs 30 sundries 400 (clothes, luxuries, etc) About 1800k a month. Would love to cut it down, but at the moment while the kids are growing up I don't want to socialise them into my own inner penny-pinching ways. Go out a few times a month, buy treats, lots of international travel. Before kids, looking back at my spreadsheet it was about half of the present expenditure.

Generation rent on Radio 4 about an hour ago. Piss poor radio skills and struggled to get argument across - mainly about lack of social housing. Then Anne Power from LSE came on and was equally poor - mainly arguing we just need to increase housing density!

What's so disturbing is that he clearly thinks that we have access to that money as debt, etc.