Categories: uncategorized
Date: 26 January 2005 20:08:33
I thought I'd see whether I could do anything to reduce my mortgage payments just to help out now that my salary is reduced so I launched myself into the great mortgage morass where everyone is vying to outbid the other in attractive yet incomprehensible deals which lure you in and then slam the door shut behind you while laughing malevolently at your foolishness.
When I first bought, I took out a fixed rate mortgage at.. believe it or not... 13.7% ... just months before a slump in the market took interest rates down to around 7%. Then when the time came that I needed to move home, the value of my flat had dropped by £10,000 leaving me in negative equity (and that was 1/3 of the total value of the flat!!!). Now, apparently, the endowment mortgage I was advised to take out is looking likely to have a shortfall of about £20,000 which means that my planned early retirement at 55 is completely out of the window, and my hopes of lowering my mortgage right now is non-existant. Great! The additional payments I put in to increase my pension are also, apparently, now worthless - enough for me to retire about five minutes early! I love playing with finances. So now the decision remains - fixed rate or variable rate? My sister put her finger on the answer - that I already knew which was going to prove financially most profitable (or least disasterous)...... whichever one I don't choose! Maybe I could make my millions selling this foolproof method of judging the future market :D
Another rather unsettling piece of news has broken this weekend which has rather made it clear how difficult it is to plan ahead. The recommendation has been made (and first we heard of it was reading it on the front page of the local paper, of course!) that the Island should change from the 3 tier to the 2 tier school system. The Island's poor results in the SAT tests are blamed on our middle school system - no mention of the Island mentality towards learning, of course, and a populace who are primarily unmotivated by education per se. So apparently within the next four years the Middle school - a system which I wholeheartedly support as a really good one for the all-round development of children - is probably to be phased out. And with it my job as a part time special needs Maths teacher. Hmmm... would I rather work with the extremely rewarding but less challenging (and harder work) primary age range or the differently rewarding and more challenging secondary age range which would let me specialise and work part time, but would involve less of the building of relationships which makes primary teaching so special? Or do I give it all up and go for something else? Massage? Could do, though would it cover my increasing mortgage and would I cope with the lack of security? Or... oh no, no, no, God ... that little thought just isn't even remotely funny.....
I'll keep you posted on my decision regarding the mortgage, just in case you want to make an investment and need to know which way the market is going to go!