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

Apologies for random letters in title. Don't know how I did that.

I didn't read more than the first screen of the article, OP, but she is of course, bonkers.

Renting is so incredibly precarious and more should be done about that.

Well, she’s right that renting is very insecure and more needs to be done about that (not sure what though). However spending £59k doing up a house that you know you could get kicked out of at any point is utter madness (and to be fair she does admit in the article that she knows she was an idiot to do this!).

She is still as mad as ever

Who the hell thinks it's a good idea to spend so much on a property you don't own.

I mean come on.

Utterly ridiculous article. Owners are selling- it isn't a random eviction and you spending a decent house deposit on something you don't own is bonkers. And being suprised that it doesn't count for anything. Maybe instead of mentioning all the overpriced articles you've sold, save your money for a house that is within your means and stop trying to live the 'Islington lifestyle' on a shoe string budget.......

It was a sad read. Does she have some kind of mental health condition? I don't know anything about her but her decision making is so off the scale I wondered if she is vulnerable in some way?

She's a character who earns her money by doing articles like this, where she shows such utterly stupid and wasteful behaviour. That allows right wing readers of the paper to think there's actually no issue with insecure renting, and anyone with financial issues in their 60s has caused their own problems by wasting all their money.

That's all she is, I doubt a lot of what she writes is even true sometimes!

Wanting a new kitchen because yours is rubbish and spending a few grand is one thing, spending £59k on improving a house you don’t own is absolute madness. It’s not even like she lived there for all that long either.

Every time I read anything by her I’m . If that’s all true then I have no sympathy.
Would a LL really overlook bankruptcy and multiple dogs? 🤔

When we were renting we did a few upgrades to the kitchen, DP is a tradesman so put in some new cabinets and a new worktop. He got the bits cheap so wasn’t like we spent thousands, but the kitchen was awful before that.
However we knew it wasn’t our house and the time/money was worth it for the time we were there, I don’t think I could have coped looking at that old kitchen everyday!
Spending that much money on someone elses house is insanity!!

I have a vague memory that by the time she moved into the cottage her finances were back on the up because she'd landed a book deal. So even though she'd previously declared bankrupt she was actually a solid prospect again. But yes, spending your pension on a property you don't own is insane. She's known for making incredibly self-defeating decisions though.

She's batshit, always has been but 59k on upgrading a rental property?
I carpeted 2 rooms fot £300 in a rental and people said I was nuts!

£1700 a month for a property for a single person is bloody stupid. She should have taken the mortgage offer when she had it.

£12k on Neptune

Excuse me? I have bought 3 houses but lost them all due to feckless men (both of whom I was married to, 1 included DV and SV, are those my fault too?) and 15% interest rates. Being a full time working single mother in the days when there wasn't the support for childcare etc was not easy. We often struggled for the money for a bottle of milk, let alone save fir a deposit. Glad I don't know you IRL, you're so judgemental. Just hope nothing ever turns your perfect world upside down as you would then need to blame ourself, wouldn't you?

I had no idea she was still writing regular columns, I can remember years ago she was claiming to have a relationship with a hugely famous rock star.

I think she’s raised some quite important issues but I read half way and got bored with reading about her life.

Why do the Daily Mail print shite like this?

There are plenty of renters out there who haven’t made a series of stupid choices and whose situations are far more deserving of sympathy and understanding.

@GordonShakespearedoesChristmas

I think @wherethewildthingis is agreeing with you

She's saying that Liz Jones enables people who DO think people cause their own bad luck to use her as as example to support that their horrible views are correct.

She's insane. Why on earth would you put so much money into someone else's house?

Only herself to blame I'm afraid.

I also read this with total astonishment. I think she must have adhd or a mental health condition related to poor management of finances

This is totally reckless behaviour. Spending your sum total of savings which could have been a stepping stone to security on a b expensive kitchen in a rental !

I feel sorry for her as she has made very poor decisons. However it is also true that we need radical renting reform abd more government funded social/capped rent homes

We have a feckless landlord who doesn’t do anything to improve the house and doesn’t care at all what we do to it as long as we pay our rent on time. I must confess we have spent bits to improve various aspects of the house. But I’d estimate we’ve probably spent £400-500 in total over about 5 years. I don’t think it’s bad to spend bits like that in the full knowledge that you’re not getting it back, it was worth it for the enjoyment over the years and I won’t be sad to leave the house in a better shape than it was.

The Daily Mail has contributed to the housing crisis with their fixation on home ownership over secure (which should include social and privately rented) housing and the promotion of NIMBY attitudes meaning it is hard to get enough houses built anywhere. The Tories have overseen a rapid worsening of an already difficult housing situation.

What this individual has done is financially foolish, no doubt the Mail is using this story to subtly reassure its readership that anyone struggling with rent/eviction must be in some way to blame for poor choices.

Fuck off Daily Mail.

Its normal and healthy to keep somewhere looking nice. Spending even in the low thousands is not a bad idea. But huge investment is insane. She would have been better off finding a doer uper house somewhere in a cheap part of the uk