The conversation I had with the OH yesterday is that I am so peed off with the housing market in the UK that I am really not sure I want to buy here at all anymore.
Many people have extremely justifiable reasons for wanting to buy: they have children they want to pass inheritance onto, they have family nearby they will need to care for in future, they need the security of a home that's theirs whilst their kids are being schooled, they have had a slew of bad landlords and having to move home that makes it feel buying is the only option.
But the truth seems to be, home ownership in the UK seems to be an obsession of ours that's not nearly as prevalent in a lot of Europe where folks have a lot more rights in rentals. In Germany, it's normal for rentals not to have kitchens because people take them with them from one rental to another! And LLs can just terf you out. I mention Germany because the OH was out there working when we got together five years ago, and he was none too happy to have to come back (my mum was dying, he did it to support me).
Anyway, I am now thinking: move to Ireland for five years, get EU citizenship back, move somewhere else in Europe and either rent or find somewhere that has a reasonable standard of living and reasonable house prices. We are so sick of watching the poorest in our society get screwed by our government, and even if labour get in next time, it will take 15 years to undo the harm the Tories have done to our economy.
I was looking at ONS stats yesterday. House prices rose 31% in the two years because they gave stamp duty breaks to stimulate the housing market. They did that because so much of our GDP depends on it, not because they think people should be able to afford to buy homes. It was a political decision that's going to have a knock on effect for years. I am so tired of them treating homeowners like pawns that I am really not sure I want to be a part of it anymore.
We have no kids and we now have no family ties. The OH can WFH, and if we keep our money earning interest and decent savings, he could go consulting instead of being permanent tied to The Man. Maybe he could work 6 to 9 months of the year and we can travel the rest of it.
It seems any extra wealth you have when you retire these days just gets ploughed into absolutely exorbitant care homes, so what's the point? This is maybe a bit bonkers and radical, but I have told him that the first sign he sees of me having dementia or similar, take me to dignitas, save us both the misery and have a better standard of living for the rest of his life.
And yeah, perhaps we will still consider buying if prices drop 30% and what we can afford will no longer make my disability worse or significantly affect his autism (noise sensitivity), but right now, I am firmly on the fence of whether to bother anymore.
Re 6% plus BOE base rates - if they reach that high, we are likely to enter a recession anyway, because of all the medium sized businesses who have relied on cheap borrowing to prop up their growth - they won't be able to afford their borrowing without downsizing anymore. It feels like we will hit that by December.
It feels so fked up that people are penalised for spending their money (inflation) by being forced to pay more on their mortgages. I don't feel like this should be the way an economy should work.