Be Excellent To Each Other

"I like"

No rude shurts, sex toys or morally reprehensible behaviour allowed in Newquay.

Good. I used to make sure I visited "dry towns" when I lived in the USA.

Great explanations in sales forecasting #3765 in a continuing series by MaliA:

"Sum bleddy 'ot, innit?"

Well, the bike ride home is going to be pleasant
It's pissing it down.

Bloody Christmas. Roll 0n 19th Dec!

#4257

"Phasing, mate, phasing".

Uuurghh. It all sounds offal

Today I learned the most useful Excel function ever:



EDIT: although it only goes up to MMMCMXCIX, ruining my plan to run it through all my spreadsheets.

If you use it with row numbers, and get up to =ROMAN(441144) it calls you a taxi and berates you for not spending any time with the driver.

Brilliant.

On the tube. Need a piss more than I've ever needed a piss.

Get off the Tube.

Tie a knot in the tube.

Oh, it's only me that can do that.

*smiley hat smiley*

I made it home. FYI.

Bloody hell, mortgage applications are even more of a pain in the arse than they used to be.Fuck you, poor feckless people. You owe me an evening.

Yes. Yes they are. So MrsA told me

Skipton Sheep Day!

The Top 40 is going to be announced on a Friday from now on.

It better not clash with the Mashup.

Mortgages are for scrubbers.

..........................................

BT roaming thinks it's tomorrow in Tenerife.

Just driven past Grim... *waves*

As if you didn't drop in for shots.

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Oh no, really? Why? I need to go through this in the next couple of months, what's involved now?

I believe the forms include, which they didn't so much before, a full review if your financial circumstances to see whether you can meet the payments.

To the extent of "cost of commuting"

Aye, it's all about 'affordability' now rather than the old way of just checking your top line salary against whatever you're looking to borrow. I'd be quite interested in exactly what kind of stuff they're asking about as I might need to go through it all soon and although I'm aware it's different now I don't know anything about what level of detail they go into. Someone told me they just look at all your direct debits and whatnot--which would be fine--but if they want to actually trawl through everything you spend money on that's going to be a fucking pain.

Spurred on by this I just tried to apply for an offer in principle from Halifax because it looks like they'd be asking detailed enough questions to let me know where I currently stands but their website's a fucking disgrace. The first time through it wouldn't even recognise the postcode for my last flat (and if I entered the address manually it fell over) and the second time through that part worked but it just hung when trying to load the next page of the application. Brilliant stuff there and certainly guaranteed to inspire people to trust you with their money.

Sounds like you need a little extra help.

Last time I did one, which was admittedly something like 8 years ago, they go into detail on your /committed/ outgoings. So things you can't avoid spending each month - bills, debt repayments, etc. They didn't give a toss what you spent out of your disposable income, and I can't really see why they would.

They do give a toss now apparently, certainly the criteria is much more stringent as of last year so your experience is well out of date.

I may have mentioned this before but my re-mortgage went through earlier this year and despite only having one income (the vast majority of which went on childcare, then bills) they still didn't seem to pay that much attention to "other" outgoings. It was lucky really, because for the 3 months of statements they wanted my outgoings were higher than incoming £££.

It seems to be quite inconsistent how these new rules are implemented. I've seen reports of people getting a really hard time because they spend a lot on eating out, gym memberships and so on, and if interest rates rise then their finances would be tight, but the building society not accepting that if that did happen they'd cut back on non-essentials.

Early warning: I am in Holborn on 7th August if anyone wants lunch after I have gotten my stuff done (assuming my colleagues will go elsewhere.)

Was running late so had to jog to the station (left car at work as M62 was shut). Then got on packed train. As a result, I need to buy a new shirt as this one is sodden. Yucky yuck yuck.

I might try and arrange a mortgage in principle this week then to see what I need to do. I went through a bunch of questions on Santander last night and was offered £100,000 more than I need so it shouldn't be a problem

After failing with BoS yesterday I tried Santander and their online thing doesn't ask many detailed questions so I'm not convinced it's representative of the process they'd actually put you through. I meant to try with BoS again when I got home but forgot (i.e. was too busy Batmanning); I'll try and remember to give it another shot tonight.

When MrsA looked, our bank's website said it would give us £x (I cannot recall the figure) but after the phone call, it dropped by c £40k I think unless the term was increased.

Sounds like I should probably give the bank a call then and try to get a firmer idea of what the situation will be.

As if all this shit wasn't already complicated and stressful enough. Everyone involved in buying and selling houses--from lawyers to mortgage companies to estate agents--needs a fucking punch in the tits.

Isn-t it meant to be easier in Scotland? In England, you put an offer in but it is not binding until exchange of contracts. That can take a while and in the meantime you spend hundreds of pounds on something that isn't a cetainty.

The lawyer we have used for the past couple of transactions is superbly grumpy about his lot in life and that is worth every penny.

Yeah, first time I looked to buy I spend a good £1500 on a full survey and all the searches, then the seller pulled out. I wrapped up a copy of the survey in pink wrapping paper and sent it to them with a deeply sarcastic note.

(I'm hardcore, me)

We have a man to do the hard work for us.

His name is Terry. Cougar Brent Finance.

My understanding is it's swings and roundabouts; there's horrible things about both versions of the process.

The big one that annoys me in Scotland is the 'offers over' thing. So almost all property goes on sale with a price 'offers over', which means that the expected price will be some arbitrary and variable % on top of the advertised one. If you offer below that expected number then you're totally wasting your time, but it's impossible to tell what the expectation is so it's quite the crapshoot. When I was initially looking for my flat I was adding 10% on top of the offers over price and never got anywhere. Only after I happened to speak to an estate agent who mentioned the current average % for my area was 15% and I adjusted accordingly did I get something.

How I was supposed to fucking know that thought is anyone's guess; and it's a fucking mystery how a system has evolved where you advertise something at a price you'd never in a million years actually accept for it.

But, if I do have an offer accepted I won't get gazumped so, swings and roundabouts.

I had three hours on the phone with HSBC on Friday, going through our outoings in great detail (even the 7 quid on Netflix was in there), and we still won't hear for 2 weeks whether they'll actually give us the fricking mortgage.

As with Cras, when we last did this the banks really didn't give much of a toss.

That's a pretty awesome name.

Were they only interested in your committed outgoings (i.e. bills, direct debits) or did they deep dive into even individual purchases?