Owning your own home

You do realise every right you have is because people complained about stuff and tried to make it better?

Making the best of a bad situation is all well and good if you have options but for a lot of people the best of a bad situation is moving the boot from their throat to their chest.

edit - and to add complaining about things and looking for your best option at the time are not mutually exclusive.

edit - and to add complaining about things and looking for your best option at the time are not mutually exclusive

fully agree, but that didn't come across in the tone of your post

(https://www.gov.uk/lifetime-isa)

I know what an isa is, cheers.

Get on it then. 25% interest.

Lifetime ISA is pretty non-standard to be fair, but yes, as some kind of not-quite-pension like thing it's interesting.

Instant-ish access stocks and shares ISAs like nutmeg are what you want but you need to have been feeding them for the last fifteen years

It's sensible to put savings away, if you can, and even if you only just get in before your 40th birthday, if you put £4k in every year that's £20k from the government by the time you're 60. Nice little £100k lump sum.

Good point.

Assuming inflation remains stable, that's would probably give you a solid 8 months in a retirement home. Nice little stay.

Sad lol

^ cba to post my workings, but that was a genuine guesstimate (allbeit wrapped in a snarky comment).

It's sensible to put savings away

You have to be careful though - if you are putting away large amounts of cash savings for retirement you should have first

• maxed out your pension allowance (somewhat age depending)
  
• maxed out your S&S ISA allowance
  
• paid off any expensive debt
  
  

What you describe is for people who are so rich they just don't know what to do with their money, and are happy for their capital to be munched by inflation (unless you were assuming it was backed by S&S, in which case your return is guaranteed, but in all probability it will be better than what you'd get with a cash savings in interest rate.)

But if you’re a high rate tax payer, isn’t it better to put that into a pension (40% easily beats 25%)? If you have a salary sacrifice scheme you get national insurance relief too.

Do both.

Isn’t the annual pension contribution ceiling £60k? Who’s putting in more than that???

It tapers down to £10k if you earn enough, which is admittedly not the worst problem to have.

1% of earners in the UK earn more than £160k

1% of earners in the UK is a large number of people.

Long way through buying first house, thought of buying the top and getting smashed by high rates and market corrections is not filling me with joy

We been lowering our boiler water temperature to 45 degrees (from 60), and notice no difference beside it taken maybe 10-15 second longer to get hot water.

Is there’s any risk for running boiler at that low a temperature?

Is there’s any risk for running boiler at that low a temperature?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legionnaires%27_disease

Yeah, if you have a storage tank you have to keep it hotter to prevent legionnaire’s disease. The bug doesn’t survive above 60, I would set the outflow a degree or two higher to be sure. But if you have a combi boiler with on-demand hot water you can do 50. But IAMAP etc.

Can you imagine what I’d be posting if I’d gone through with using AGL 😉?

FWIW I’ve dealt with Extra a couple of times and they were always dead sound and nice, stress can get to people.

As people have said, if it’s a combi with no cylinder or storage tank then no, it’s all upsides. Combis are often set far too high, to the point they’re not even condensing to recover the heat from exhaust gases, they’re much more efficient at lower temps. If you can get away with running the heating circuit at 45 then even better.

Even with a tank the risk of legionella for youngish healthy people is very low. A fortnightly half an hour at 60 degrees is probably all that’s needed.

*all info gleaned from HeatGeeks

You can see why they set them high, especially if there is a water tank. It’s probably ingrained in to quasi-official guidance. Setting them to 65-70 is risk free for the installer. Setting it to anything less means customer education and / or some kind of technical intervention to make sure the buggies get roasted once a fortnight. And that system needs to be reliable as you ain’t gonna notice if it stops working until you get sick.

Aye the full thing is a fuckin shambles

So I’ve just received a copy of the lease for the flat I’m planning on buying, and there’s quite a few provisions which are scaring me. There’s one about no storing of bikes anywhere on the development except for the communal bike storage (I currently have 7 bikes), and also storing nothing on the balcony except for one good set of quality garden furniture. I can kind of imagine that these might not be strongly enforced but do I need to be worrying about them?

It really depends, can you see any bikes other stuff on balconies at present? If you had some on the balcony could it be seen from the ground below?

My first flat was shared ownership/housing association and they did enforce in communal areas, my second was faceless freeholder and nothing was enforced on balconies there but it was a relatively small block with 7 flats (this lease did contain a no pets provision I just ignored it).