redsturgeon wrote:If it wasn't for these people spending all their money then where would the profits for Apple and Vodafone come from to provide your dividends?
John
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)
so true. Regarding feeling sorry for people not being able these days on their salary to ever get on the housing ladder. Well I remember when paying £4.50 rent for a week in a poxy room in Tufnell Park. Think my salary was about £20.00 per week. So nothing has changed, its inline with today, about 25% going on rent. I didn't like the horrible room where I froze my ass off in winter and the 5 pence coins (for the heater machine) or whatever they were then lasted for all of 5 minutes and I then ran out of coins. Didn't like this kind of life and was told then that I would never afford my own place, so got an evening job, got an early morning paper round, cleaned cars, mowed the lawn at weekends and saved like crazy. November the 5th, squatted on the floor with my teddy(still have him) dressed up and had a sign around him saying Penny for the Guy(or something like that). And selling encylopedias was horrible, a story all on its own!
Over about 3 years, with better jobs, tip and good money from working in a nightclub and god knows what else, brought our first place,three story townhouse, (parts of Luton, didn't look like a war zone then) for 8K in Luton. Had to go to Bedfordshire as London was unaffordable for the size of place we wanted which was 4 bedrooms. I had saved 4K and walked into the Nat West in Great Portland St. W.1 and there was a lovely bank Manager there who congratulated me on my savings and loaned me the rest to purchase our new place in Luto, it was lovely, private garden, overlooking a park. Had 7 great years there, got a well paid job in London(or rather sold a lot for them on basic plus commission) and the train commute was real quick. Went through the three day working week saga but my company never laid me off and brought my wife in to the Company and that sure helped.
Anyway, sold in around 1981 for 30K. Had savings of around 40K plus and went to the same Bank Manager and asked for a loan of 30K to purchase a rambling run down country estate in Bedfordshire(family thought we were mad) for 100K....a lot of money then. Showed the manager the house, land and potential that we thought we could pull off and he immediately said we needed at least 50K in a mortgage, which we accepted and it was tough I recall when mortgage rates were about 8-9% around the early 80's(the interest rates were wonderful 14% I think, had no money though as fixed the place up and started taking some expensive holidays).
My wife and I both worked two jobs as needed to save and to cut a long story short, around 1986/7 put the property but mostly the land (8 acres) on the market and had a terrible time with the local Parishioners there who turned us down for planning permission for 20-30 homes. Paid this top Barrister in London £1000.00 a day for him to go to Court and fight our case. We won. The rest is history and like everyone else, be it health, wealth or whatever, we all have our ups and downs in life.
Not in any way trying to say.."look at me". No iphones then, no computers, etc, etc....just pencil and paper and hard work. It can be done by those that want it done. The trouble with kids today, they really are not interested in tomorrow.