Originally Posted by cindyabs

Just out of curiosity, I was looking on UK estate agent websites and came up with houseboats. Well that's an angle I hadn't thought of.

For DH's sake, it would be nice, once we're OAPs to do six months here, six months UK. Likelihood not large but who knows?? Anyway, I could be a pirate on a houseboat. HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRR.

Originally Posted by cindyabs

Just out of curiosity, I was looking on UK estate agent websites and came up with houseboats. Well that's an angle I hadn't thought of.


For DH's sake, it would be nice, once we're OAPs to do six months here, six months UK. Likelihood not large but who knows?? Anyway, I could be a pirate on a houseboat. HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRR.

Originally Posted by Bob

bloomin' expensive, and boats leak...had a mate that lived in one when he got kicked off campus, his folks bought him a barge that he moored on the thames, well just off campus...was a soaking miserable wet pit though

Originally Posted by Bob

But with the low dollar, they are being used as a source of out sourcing from EU/UK companies...and that is rather amusing

Originally Posted by Roland Hulme

Getting new ideas and concepts into my head is kind of like teaching a suet pudding to do long division - i.e. pretty much impossible and very frustrating.

However, my stodgy old opinions do change from time to time and one of the things I'm realising you lot have been right about the whole time long is HOUSES.

I sat down with the missus to look very seriously into the question of buying a house in New Jersey and no matter how it adds up, it just doesn't make any financial sense whatsoever.

The house opposite - a nice little four bedroomed place in a pretty crappy state of repair - is going for $250,000. BARGIN, says I. But the property tax is about 6k a year. Roughly $500 a month.

So on top of the $2,000 mortgage a month (twice our current rent) you'd have to pay $500 in taxes. That's pretty much put us in a pasta-for-dinner-everynight-of-the-week and domestic-beer-only-and-not-during-the-week-even-as-a-treat kind of situation and after living like that in England for four years (although we were renting at the time - thanks Gordon Brown) methinks: Screw that.

Seriously. Let's just rent for 5 years and stick that $1,500 a month into a high interest account. At the end you'd have $75,000 saved up whereas if we'd bought the house we'd have paid $30,000 in taxes and sure-as-shite not paid off $75,000 of our mortgage.

I mean, am I missing something here? Is home ownership really so insane in America? In England $250,000 might have barely bought you a terraced shoebox with indoor plumbing, but at least property tax was only £1,200 a year instead of nearly three times that.

At least then, your hard earned wages would go towards paying off your mortgage instead of paying for garbage trucks to run down your mailbox every week.

I would LOVE to have any thoughts or opinions - I defer to your experience and knowledge.

Originally Posted by AmerLisa

Having that huge (astronomical in my book) amount of interest at the end of the year to claim on our income tax is pretty nice.......

Our property tax isn't as high, so I'd be having fits if I had to pay what you do. Yikes! You might be better off renting if income tax at the end of the year isn't an issue. And my knowledge on these things are very limited.....so I defer to someone (like Fatbrit) who probably knows better.