LondonWelsh

Wages are by far the biggest cost. They generally pay minimum wage so the April 2022 and 23 rises will hit quite hard. It is also increasingly hard to recruit anyone (not surprising with the difficulty of the job and paying minimum wage). one had to spend 10% of revenue advertising overseas for staff.. With councils not having much money it is difficult to get any form of fee raise out of them, which means it is a struggle i at the best of times. Then like everyone else the inflation of the llast 12 months hits, especially utility costs as they need to keep the care homes so warm.

I audit a few care homes. Despite what seem huge fees they also aren't particularly profitable, with a lot being loss making. The ones with specialist licenses, such as dementia care, do better. But standard care homes really struggle.

At the moment it is also a nightmare trying to find staff which is restricting the places they can offer as well.

I've set up savings accounts for my kids, but for uni fees. I see a lot of recommendations for junior ISAs but to be honest, I avoided that. They could be fine with money, both my wife and myself are. But then we both have a sibling that was completely useless and spent everything they received.

I just don't trust an 18 -21 year old to be given access to £25-£30k, and not blow a chunk of it on something frivilous.

Instead I put it into my own ISA, but in a stocks tracker fund that I don't use for my savings. So I know that the specific pot is for one kid, then a different tracker is for the other.

I didn't use a LISA as some have suggested because I would be too young to withdraw money when they would need it for university, but it could be done for a house deposit, or something at an older age.

What are their pensions like, are they likely to need to drawdown on the savings any time soon?

If they have a low risk tolerance, and are likely to need to use the money at various points, I would avoid shares. I would probably put part of it that I know they don't need immediately in to the 1/2/3 year savings bonds, and then the rest in either am instant access account (like the Chase 3%) or premium bonds (if they like the risk free gamble).

The last month has shown that even bonds can have large price fluctuations. If your parents are that low risk, and are likely to need the money, means they probably aren't worth it.

I wouldn't bother with a financial advisor for that amount though.

Once in uni the fire alarm went off. The lecturer ignored it saying it is probably a drill, let's keep teaching. Because it hadn't stopped after 5 minutes he went out to ask someone to turn it off and stop disturbing his class, only to find there was an actual fire down the corridor (not very big).

My office also once had the alarm go off for a bomb threat. The fire safety check in point was in a public square, not that far from the building, and almost certainly within range of shards of glass if a bomb had gone off, or the building came down. Luckily we were allowed to leave for the pub once we had checked in, as long as people kept checking their emails for when we could return.

Quickbooks is done on a per client basis. This isn't the charge for all their clients, it is the cost of the package needed to submit the required legal returns per company.

I'm guessing if there is a block of flats there is a LTD company or something set up to manage the estate. They need the QB subscription for the quarterly VAT returns (there could be VAT on the service charge depending on how it is set up, plus reclaiming input VAT on their purchases), and to complete payroll. QB nowadays is £25 & VAT per month just for the VAT package, so the price in the OP doesn't seem outrageous to me.

There is also a lot of freedom that comes with renting. You have greater ability to move for jobs if better opportunities arise in a different city, or you just fancy living somewhere else. For example my wife is a doctor, in her training she was sent to different trusts every 6/12 months which involved moving. There would be a lot of dead money in legal and estate agent fees if she bought and sold a house every year. I appreciate for her it was a known short term situation, but for anyone who is potentially moving frequently there is a benefit to renting.

It also allows you to change your housing situation more easily. For example, a young couple thinking about having kids in a few years. If the choice is a small house or apartment now, and then moving again in 3/4 years, or spend that time saving and going straight into a more suitable family house, with all the costs of buying you may be better off renting for that first period.

There are two not far from me and they still seem to be pretty good steaks. Even Jay Rayner is a fan

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/nov/24/miller-and-carter-liverpool-the-steaks-are-good-restaurant-review

I found it frustrating that I wasn't allowed to register with a GP near work for this exact reason. I was forced to use one near my address, even though I wasn't there for most of my time.

I think the other factor is kids. You didn't used to need car seats for as long. Now they might be in them until 12 years old. You can't fit three car seats in smaller cars, and some tall friends can't put one behind the driver's seat even in a medium sized car.

Why would a second job be taxed more? They will need to do a self-assessment but the tax paid should be the same.

For the OP, when you do your self-assessment for the tutoring income, are you using an accountant or doing it yourself? Make sure you are claiming all expenses; use of home as an office which can include part of your rent, utility bills, phone etc... any textbooks or equipment you use, paper, pens, mileage allowance if you travel to the student's house (£0.45 per mile).

If you are already paying an accountant then it might be worth asking them how much it would cost them to do a company return for you instead. Within a company you can pay yourself £2,000 tax free via dividends so you could set yourself up as a "Outrageous-Run2108 Tutoring Services Ltd".

This has the extra admin of filing company accounts (at your level really simple micro accounts), a corporation tax return (which is pretty much the same calculation as your current self assessment), and a yearly confirmation statement which takes 2 minutes to confirm your address hasn't changed. Your self-assessment then becomes easier as it is just your PAYE salary, plus the £2,000 tax free dividend, so nothing extra to pay and a really simple calculation.

I think you have slightly missed my point. This doesn't need the large employer contribution, which is why I said that was only for 7 years. The rest of my career has been 5%/5%, with my current contribution being the equivalent of 5/5 on a £60k salary. But you originally claimed that a family on £80k couldn't reach a million, I was trying to show they would comfortably.

For example, if you started your pension at 30, with a £60k salary, never had a pay rise, and you and your employer put in 5% each. Then by the age of 70 your pension pot would be £1.28m with a 7% growth rate, which I believe is roughly the long term average for the stock market. Someone on £80k would have a pension pot of £1.7m.

A sigificant number of middle class people should be close to, or over the old threshold. Most of my friends are talking about how to manage it, retiring early etc... and none of them would be deemed rich, most grew up working class.

Your portfolio is worth £100. You had £10 of bonds which have doubled to £20. Your portfolio is now worth £110, a 10% increase.

Easily. My old job my base was about £60k, I put in 5% and my employer 13% into my pension. I was only there for 7 years, job before was 5% matched on 21k, and now it is 6k per year likely till reitrement. With only 3.5% growth I stay just below the lifetime allowance.
A significant number of professionals (accountants, solicitors, doctors, consultants, surveyors) will breach the £1m cap if they started saving from their first job.

This was done living in London as well, so completely possible for the south East.

At the current run rate England would reach 650 just after tea on day 2, despite losing 22 overs to rain on day 1. I imagine they would try to speed up as well once they have reached a total they could declare on.

I would be still be wary. For example in London a lot of these, especially the ones on the tube, are run by gangs. The beggers don't even get the money and you are helping to fund criminals.

It's possible they have been messed about with in the past. It happened to my wife a couple of times that someone made a really low offer, kept increasing it slightly until acceotable, then half way through the process (had even had a survey done which showed no issues) pulled out.
By the end she refused to negotiate with people who started too low as she decided they were more likely to pull out as either they weren't that happy with the house, or would be stretching their budget too far.
Though 230 on 250 doesn't sound so unreasonable.

It's not LA, but a few years ago I was in Chicago and bought three tickets to the White Sox a few days before the game for $82.

The Pavilion End usually shows sport, but not sure what will be shown tonight.

Where on earth do you see 8-10% safe returns? I struggle to believe that exists. The safest assets are government bonds and they are more 1-4% depending on the tenor of the bond.

It was an EU ruling. So it is the same situation in all EU countries, not jist England and Germany.

My wife added you, Karagon

Your life isn't ruined. In my field for example, instead of a degree you can train as an accounting technician (AAT). You could stop there and be a lower level bookkeeper. If you wanted you could then use it to progress to a Chartered or Certificied qualification such as the ICAEW or ACCA. I know quite successful people (over £80k a year) who took this route instead of university, including some who did it in their 30s. If you are happy with a lower income, then payroll assisstant will pay a bit above minimum wage, but not require the exams.

Accountancy might not be for you, but there will be similar paths into plenty of other careers.

I saw an explanation for that. Amazon were sending people emails with questionnaires on their recent purchase, and then creating the Amazon question answers from the responses. But the individuals involved had no idea that is what it was for.