Food Bank latest

[Roxanne]

18 hours ago, Gizo said:

Well this supposed family you waffling on about need to rebudget their income and expenditure. It really isn’t that hard, it’s just people won’t because they might lose face on tik tok or insta. And the Range Rover evoque will have to stay darling. 

It's harder than you're giving credence to.

For one, people get used to a standard of living and budget accordingly. It takes take tie to make readjustments to that.

Second, we're bombarded with so much bad news that people can be forgiven for thinking that the economic situation is just another piece of bad news to be taken with a pinch of salt. Sadly, they are wrong and millions of them are going to find out about the reality sooner rather than later. At that point there will be a LOT of Range Rovers flooding the market in the scramble to release funds.  By then the Range Rovers will be the least of their problems. it's going to be a bit shit methinks.

 

[Asthehills]

13 hours ago, finlo said:

Exactly don't know they're born, how do they think shop workers etc get by!

It’s not the same though is it?

A shop worker in a rented flat or social housing is going to have been impacted a lot less by recent events than a person on more money who is paying a mortgage at a newly revised rate.

Yes everybody has faced increases but as is so often the case it’s the middle earners who have tried to provide for themselves by buying a house who are getting squeezed the hardest.  I would imagine a lot of police officers fall Into that group.

[Andy Onchan]

On 7/5/2023 at 5:54 PM, Asthehills said:

You must live on a different planet.

How many people who had their £250k mortgage in their 30’s with young kids can easily absorb a jump from 1.75% to 6% on top of a doubling of their utility bills?

In much the same as those of us had to contend with high interest rates (up to 15%) and low incomes in the late 70's and through virtually all the 1980's? 

[Cambon]

46 minutes ago, Andy Onchan said:

In much the same as those of us had to contend with high interest rates (up to 15%) and low incomes in the late 70's and through virtually all the 1980's? 

Exactly! I remember living on beans on toast, and the like. Mortgage payment alone was half our takehome pay. Actuaries had not predicted it, but it happened. 15% for a couple of months. 12% for ages. Virtually 0% interest rates were never sustainable long term. 

[Andy Onchan]

30 minutes ago, Cambon said:

Exactly! I remember living on beans on toast, and the like. Mortgage payment alone was half our takehome pay. Actuaries had not predicted it, but it happened. 15% for a couple of months. 12% for ages. Virtually 0% interest rates were never sustainable long term. 

Beans on toast?..... luxury!

[Asthehills]

1 hour ago, Andy Onchan said:

In much the same as those of us had to contend with high interest rates (up to 15%) and low incomes in the late 70's and through virtually all the 1980's? 

I never disagreed with that.  I was simply saying that like back then, pensioners who don’t have a mortgage or private rent are not as hard hit as some of them seem to want to make out

 

[Roxanne]

5 hours ago, Cambon said:

Exactly! I remember living on beans on toast, and the like. Mortgage payment alone was half our takehome pay. Actuaries had not predicted it, but it happened. 15% for a couple of months. 12% for ages. Virtually 0% interest rates were never sustainable long term. 

Didn't one day it go up an incredible amount? I seem to remember my husband ringing me at work (no mobile phones) to say it had shot up to 25% or was it 35% or even higher? We'd just bought our first house and the value of it had dropped by a quarter in a year and we were up to our ears in high interest rates and negative equity. It took about ten years to equalise. But yes - did Imagine that huge interest rate at one time? My husband was at his wit's end and I just remember laughing maniacally down the phone at the absurdity of it all. Surely I couldn't have imagined it?

[finlo]

6 minutes ago, Roxanne said:

Didn't one day it go up an incredible amount? I seem to remember my husband ringing me at work (no mobile phones) to say it had shot up to 25% or was it 35% or even higher? We'd just bought our first house and the value of it had dropped by a quarter in a year and we were up to our ears in high interest rates and negative equity. It took about ten years to equalise. But yes - did Imagine that huge interest rate at one time? My husband was at his wit's end and I just remember laughing maniacally down the phone at the absurdity of it all. Surely I couldn't have imagined it?

I think it briefly hit about 16/18% in the early nineties (just as I'd bought my first house) and I was bricking it as well.

[Albert Tatlock]

10 minutes ago, finlo said:

I think it briefly hit about 16/18% in the early nineties (just as I'd bought my first house) and I was bricking it as well.

The average was 15%, but of course averages are made up of a range of rates (dependent on who mortgages are with). Was higher still late 70s (17% average then I think).

[Gladys]

48 minutes ago, Albert Tatlock said:

The average was 15%, but of course averages are made up of a range of rates (dependent on who mortgages are with). Was higher still late 70s (17% average then I think).

Even higher if you were on an endowment mortgage because all the repayments were interest.  I know because I was that soldier.  

[Non-Believer]

1 hour ago, finlo said:

I think it briefly hit about 16/18% in the early nineties (just as I'd bought my first house) and I was bricking it as well.

1992 when then Chancellor Norman Lamont hiked rates to 15% to try and even out fluctuations in the pound's value in the then Exchange Rate Mechanism. Thanks Norman.

[Banker]

7 hours ago, Andy Onchan said:

In much the same as those of us had to contend with high interest rates (up to 15%) and low incomes in the late 70's and through virtually all the 1980's? 

But in those days average mortgages were only 3, 3.5 times salary so if was more manageable as mortgages weren’t so high. Even so I was workingin the credit department of a major bank & we were facing a number of potential defaults/house repossessions for some time 

[finlo]

8 minutes ago, Banker said:

 mortgages were only 3, 3.5 times salary 

That has only been increased because of market manipulation thanks to the likes of Dandara et el.

[Max Power]

37 minutes ago, Gladys said:

Even higher if you were on an endowment mortgage because all the repayments were interest.  I know because I was that soldier.  

Me too, and prices fell through the floor in the South East where I was living at the time. There was no way out but to hang on!

[Roger Mexico]

1 hour ago, Roxanne said:

Didn't one day it go up an incredible amount? I seem to remember my husband ringing me at work (no mobile phones) to say it had shot up to 25% or was it 35% or even higher? We'd just bought our first house and the value of it had dropped by a quarter in a year and we were up to our ears in high interest rates and negative equity. It took about ten years to equalise. But yes - did Imagine that huge interest rate at one time? My husband was at his wit's end and I just remember laughing maniacally down the phone at the absurdity of it all. Surely I couldn't have imagined it?

You're thinking of Black Wednesday:

At 10:30 am on 16 September [1992], the British government announced an increase in the base interest rate, from an already high 10%, to 12% to tempt speculators to buy pounds. Despite this and a promise later the same day to raise base rates again to 15%, dealers kept selling pounds, convinced that the government would not keep its promise. By 7:00 pm that evening, Lamont announced Britain would leave the ERM and rates would remain at the new level of 12%; however, on the next day the interest rate was back to 10%.

I seem to remember there being talk of 20%, though it was never announced.  But the reality after all that panic was that the cost of mortgages were effectively unchanged, if still very high.   Obviously this is base rate, so what people were paying on their mortgages would be higher.

(The whole thing was the fault of the already-departed Thatcher who insisted on joining the ERM at a ridiculous 2.95 DM to show what a 'strong' currency the UK had).

You remembered right about house prices too as seen in this graph:

But even at the worst in the previous house price boom people were only paying 5 times salary to buy a house and you probably paid 3-4 times.  People have been currently paying 7 times.  So all those saying how much harder they had things - you're wrong.