I'm not sure what to contribute to this thread, on this subject.
My mortgage is just under 8% of my take home pay, which without context sounds ridiculous. Context being we bought our flat when house prices were at their lowest due to the financial crash (aka, luck) and bought something that needed a lot of work.
But that's lacking the broader context that I'm 45 and have no kids, so the demands for things like bedrooms and so forth just aren't there - I admit, I'd always thought (when younger) that by this point in my life I'd have two kids and a dog, and live in the countryside, but that never happened.
Which means that I essentially I'm responsible for very little, and everything that I thought I'd have to put in place for my kids has never been required - school trips, outside interests, university and so on, up to help with deposits for their notional first houses.
So! I have, relative to my peers who have 2.4 kids and everything that goes with that, a lot of disposable income, and just do what interests me with very little thought to the future (other than a pension, which I've recently moved to an advised fund, no idea if that was a good idea but it made me feel I'd done something).
Without any dependents I admit I have only minor savings and don't really plan anything, you could fairly accuse me of living a very self-centred and thoughtless existence, in the main.
On the subject of inheritance tax given that the cats are unlikely to outlast me I don't really have a dog in that fight, but my suspicion is that if it were to be made 100% then we'd see an awful lot of property transferred to holding companies, or moved to trusts - basically that the rich would find a way round it that would likely elude the less well off, so it would probably catch out one-man operation farmers but do nothing to tax the Dyson's of this world.
I'm not sure what to contribute to this thread, on this subject.
My mortgage is just under 8% of my take home pay, which without context sounds ridiculous. Context being we bought our flat when house prices were at their lowest due to the financial crash (aka, luck) and bought something that needed a lot of work.
But that's lacking the broader context that I'm 45 and have no kids, so the demands for things like bedrooms and so forth just aren't there - I admit, I'd always thought (when younger) that by this point in my life I'd have two kids and a dog, and live in the countryside, but that never happened.
Which means that I essentially I'm responsible for very little, and everything that I thought I'd have to put in place for my kids has never been required - school trips, outside interests, university and so on, up to help with deposits for their notional first houses.
So! I have, relative to my peers who have 2.4 kids and everything that goes with that, a lot of disposable income, and just do what interests me with very little thought to the future (other than a pension, which I've recently moved to an advised fund, no idea if that was a good idea but it made me feel I'd done something).
Without any dependents I admit I have only minor savings and don't really plan anything, you could fairly accuse me of living a very self-centred and thoughtless existence, in the main.
On the subject of inheritance tax given that the cats are unlikely to outlast me I don't really have a dog in that fight, but my suspicion is that if it were to be made 100% then we'd see an awful lot of property transferred to holding companies, or moved to trusts - basically that the rich would find a way round it that would likely elude the less well off, so it would probably catch out one-man operation farmers but do nothing to tax the Dyson's of this world.