To think renting is insecure but cashing in your pension to buy your landlord a new kitchen is insanity? sbnes

[DanteThunderstone]

Warning: contains Liz Jones

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11423261/LIZ-JONES-terrifying-insecurity-having-rent-60s.html

What a mug. Literally all there is to say.

That’s how I read it too.
Apology needed

That 's really awful, hope all is better for you now. However LJ is a completely different situation. She didn't go bankrupt or get into this situation due to feckless men.

A thousand times this. She could probably have bought a house outright at least twice in her lifetime.

What on earth? How is that relevant to the post you are quoting or the discussion of this article??

I've read her articles and diaries published in MoS every weekend for years and am convinced she's probably neurodiverse

We rented a house about 20 years ago. The rent was on the low side as the LL wanted the tenants to "do the place up". Absolute cfs. We took it on, did nothing, and moved out after 2 years. Why should we pay to do up the house when they could evict us at any time?

My old neighbour, who rented the place for 15 years, did loads to their house. Then the LL evicted them in order to sell.

I loved the freedom of renting when I was in my teens and twenties but now I love the security of owning my own house. It's wrong that LLs can evict people like this. Both sets of grandparents rented, same houses for decades. What's changed?

@love6421 totally.

@DanteThunderstone thanks for the warning.

Why can't she just buy the house? Her column must pay rather well (too well imho).

She seems to have made a series of poor financial decisions . I gave up reading her columns a while back now . I admire her deep love for animals,especially dogs.at one time she said she had a dog "husband " and turkey 'nephew " she seems profligate. Surely she would be able to afford a new rental .so unlike poorer folk who will literally be turfed out with having to go to a b and b 🙄

"Warning: contains Liz Jones" has really tickled me 🤣

Whilst I have every sympathy for private renters and think the government’s proposals are a good idea, there are a number of issues with this article…

If you have £59K available, that would be a substantial deposit on a small but nice house in many decent parts of the country, with a mortgage of less than the £1700/month she was paying in rentS

It seems she wanted to rent somewhere that was like the properties she was accustomed to living in.

We all have to cut our cloth accordingly, and one person doesn’t need such a huge house.

OK, just unpacking this...

A £4K bed from Selfridges when she could have bought a cheaper one (even got a free one from freecycle) and saved up the difference for a deposit for a place of her own? £3K per month on a flat in North London (2018) when she could have got a cheaper alternative and again saved the money towards her future security.

Obviously she was more concerned with living a certain lifestyle rather than prioritising how she spent her money.

She has an Aesop product (they are not cheap) in her kitchen when she could have bought a cheaper one from Poundland and again saved the difference.

She has Penguin clothbound books when she could have bought paperbacks from a charity shop... and again saved for a deposit.

It's not for me to say how she should spend her money but it's very clear she made the wrong choices!

The laws around renting.

This was done in the late 80s to make more private properties available for rent.

Ah. No one should read this and think whole story, her columns always miss crucial details , they are designed to get people talking. So something is missing, likely she renovated it in return for living rent free.for the time she’s been there, there is always something, becayde the true story would be much less interesting

It’s a shame because she’s right about the insecurity of renting and the fact there are lots of people for whom buying just isn’t a financial option who can’t find long term leases or stability - but because it’s Liz Jones who is famously ridiculous any sensible messaging is diluted by that. Buying a new kitchen and things like white goods for your rented property is of course madness.

Maybe it's a housing trust home? My sister lives in a flat owned by the council in a very expensive area and it's worth 1.2m
She has an assured tenancy for life and the rent is £890 pm

Jesus, the more I read about this, the more appalled I am! Cashing in a pension to fit a new kitchen in a RENTED property 😲
Mind boggling

Article in just a few years' time: My state pension isn't enough to live on and I have no private pension...

@GordonShakespearedoesChristmas go back and read what @wherethewildthingis wrote properly, then maybe apologise as you've got the wrong end of the stick completely.

Liz Jones is a fascinatingly awful character but I do wonder how much embellishment of the facts goes on.

That article is a mess of highly ridiculous contradictions designed to ruffle feathers on both sides of this “debate”

The cash she used to do up someone else's place could easily have been used as a deposit on the modest, ex council flat I have in Streatham or somewhere with a similar 300K price. I suspect that would just not have been acceptable to her.

She’s just an idiot.

It's many years since I had a new kitchen but that sounds a lot of money is it?

She doesn't live in a huge house PetraBP
It's a small cottage, one of several near Easby Abbey, all up for sale.