Where's all the money? Is it even real?

You've done the right thing there Dave. The protection is relevant to you and your family. You need to put items that you have used back to replace the former protection.

In my new loft there is a box with all the family's old stuff; new protection.

 

Where is it that she was brought up?

 

But here in East London more or less it is like Calcutta...if you know the right places:D

Anyway, I am low maintenance...I am not into money, although I find it fun to make it, and occasionally to do some shopping.
Having said that, what I really cannot digest is rough people, which would be a good reason to move a little bit more to the outskirts of where I am now...

 

I must admit I've borrowed when not really necessary, but never to an unmanageable level.

Until a couple of years ago, I rented my house. At first because I couldn't afford a deposit for a mortgage, and then because house prices went mental.

"But renting is dead money", my friends would say, to which I would reply "I'm waiting for the bubble to burst, when house prices will crash". "But property will NEVER decrease in value, it will only INCREASE, you must buy now while you still stand a chance of affording it" they'd say.

I saw friends run themselves into the ground as they worked every hour of overtime they could get, just to pay their crazy mortgage repayments for their modest little houses and flats. All the while they were all convinced they were right and I was wrong.

Then, chaos. The news showed the queues of panicking people outside Northern Rock waiting to draw out every penny they had before the bank collapsed (thus causing it to collapse) and the recession really bit.

Almost overnight, houses lost about 50% of their artificial value. I got made redundant (as I knew I ultimately would, and I'd been waiting for that too, because I had an excellent redundancy package), and my years of anticipation came to fruition.

I took my redundancy payout and used it as the deposit for my spacious semi with good sized back garden, and decent front garden, within walking distance of where I grew up. I'm paying less on my mortgage than anyone I know (who all bought in the panic time when prices were rising at silly rates), and I've got a lot more house for my money than they did.

I knew the bubble had to burst, it did, and I seized the opportunity.

 

You know what they say ... when you buy a house, you don't just pay for the bricks and mortar, you pay for the neighbours as well. Once I would have dismissed this as snobbish nonsense. Now I can see that, unfortunately, it happens to be true.