Earlier in the year, Skipton Building Society announced the release of a new mortgage product, a no-deposit (or 100% LTV) mortgage aimed at getting renters onto the property ladder. In principle it could sound like a great idea, but it's not a new one. Let me tell you a story.
The phrase "winning the lottery would solve all my problems" is the most throw-away of sentences. It's a statement that's nigh-on impossible to contest because to even test it out you'd need to win the lottery and see for yourself. It's also very easy for someone in the middle class to scream "money doesn't make you happy" from their ivory...
If there's two words that people looking to move house in the UK dread, they are 'onward chain', yet it's almost inevitable in today's property market. Understandably so, since most people buying a home will also be selling their old home in order to release the equity they need for at least part of their deposit, if not all of it. ...
I think we've all tried to buy ourselves some happiness before. Perhaps not in a flamboyant way, I've never put my credit card behind the bar like some of the hot shot executives I've worked for in the past, but I probably do pay more visits to dessert shops, off licenses and the Amazon checkout page more often than does...
Imagine for a moment that you're a kid again. Where do you see yourself? What do you wanna do? What are your hopes for the future? Maybe you want to be an astronaut, or an adventurer, or the next drag super-star! We love to see it. What you probably didn't picture was a life spent in crippling debt.
If you don't have one, get one.
It's Friday, March 20th 2015. I've perched myself on the edge of a needlessly deep tub-style chair in an Arnold Clark showroom. I had just taken a Ford Fiesta for a test drive and had decided it was the one for me. I was 18-years-old and had spent the past year of my life researching cars, seeing which car in...
It's commonplace to believe that renting a home in the 21st century is a financial dead-end. When you are renting your home, the money you part with each month is not accumulating to anything. Generally speaking, you will never own the home you are renting and so you will always have that payment to make each month, even after you...
I recently posted my plan for Financial Independence, Retire Early to showcase that there is another way to live your life besides working for most of it. But there's actually something I should add to that, if I may.
When we are in employment, our living expenses can be met using the money paid into our bank account each month by our employers. This is money which is given to us in exchange for time spent working for them - hence the phrase, 'time is money.' In order to stop working, you must have enough money coming in...