What's annoying me today

Away for work in Brighton currently. Woke up at 6am by the sound of rain. Seemed like it was in my room!

It was my in room. Water was coming through the light fittings and gushing onto my bed and clothes.

Suffice to say I'm now in a new room.

The interest rate. My mortgage has gone up by over £700 in 6 months.

Sorry to hear that, that's brutal.

I guess it's doing what it's meant to or something? It's sucked any spare money we had from our monthly income and then some.

Could really do with putting up the money we're charging the couple who are lodgers in our flat, but they only moved in a few months ago, and it seemed (to me) pretty expensive anyway. We'd preferably sell it, but the process of doing that is still complicated by the cladding issues. Hoping to do next year.

We have a lump sum in savings. I can't decide whether I should chuck it all at the mortgage to lower our monthly payments

I can't speak for anyone else's personal finances, but as long as you can cover the payments as they are today, even if it's tight, I would always prefer to keep liquidity. Long term cash is less useful than reducing debt, but I'm continuously fearful of the emergency I can't deal with or the opportunity I can't take advantage of because I don't have the cash on hand.

We have been putting money aside for emergencies for years but our house purchase which has seen a massive increase in interest rates since we began the process of buying (and still haven’t bought since we needed to sell) is biting hard.

Also, the house isn’t finished and we have to live day to day in Lincoln Park near my work plus do some renovations on the new house (don’t fucking ask) and that will all be costing us 70k out of pocket before we even get in the house. This is a massive massive shit show but we are in it now. So there goes the comic book transit money!

Chicago: Bleeding out.

You're living in the park? In a tent?

[tricky] We all will be soon. [/tricky]

No, Lincoln Park is a neighbourhood in a Chicago. It is where I work. It is very fru fru and expensive. Ironically there is a Lincoln Park in Lincoln Park so I can see how you came to that distinction. Although if the lady who is renting us the Air B N B doesn’t hurry up with the contract we may very well be joining the homeless hordes.

Chicago: Hoping to continue under a roof.

That is horrid. We’re 5yrs into a 7yr fixed rate. Hoping that in 2 yrs it’s calmed down somewhat. If not - fuck knows what we’d do. Sell up and downsize I guess.

That's what I did and got lucky. When I did it, I had no idea it was going to get like this.

Sorted out a 5 year fix Dec 2021 which started April 2022 at the extremely low rates. So about 4 years left, got lucky with timing.

Our fix expires next year. Really looking forward to it.

You know they are going up everywhere else too, right? It’s not about the tories, it’s about the system. There has been an ocean of cheap money flowing since the GFC. Most of it flowed to the wealthy and connected, but the only tool any western economy wants to use to suck some of it back up is interest rates.. that hit us all far more broadly. A different rosette in No10 would make precisely zero difference to interest rates.

Stimulus during Covid meant there were mortgages available at 2% here. Today the best rates are around 5.5% and that’s without a recent rise getting priced in.

The Tories have held power since the GFC and chosen to do nothing to head off the inevitability of what is happening now. But neither have the governments of all the other countries doing the same thing. Trying to pin this on Tories is exactly the sort of misdirection you’d be spitting blood about if it were them doing it. It is very much ‘look over here, not over there’.

It’s not the government. It’s the system.