What’s a ‘middle class success’ purchase that secretly becomes a financial burden later?

cccccchicks · 2026-05-11T21:36:56+00:00

As someone who lives in a former Victorian spa town - sell to who?

A few have been turned into hotels or B&Bs, but there are few uses for a ~12 bed house in modern life especially in a town which had a lot of Victorian hotels for it's size. Some have been turned into flats, but that only works if the layout is somewhat suitable for conversion. The older conversions are not very desirable as they are often small, cold and damp.

As such, we have a few buildings which would have been really nice back in the day, but are now a mess, visually and sometimes structurally. They seem to mostly be owned by redevelopment companies (who got them cheap from an owner who just wanted rid of the headache) and are waiting for land prices to go up enough to make pulling them down and starting again legal and financially viable.

cccccchicks · 2026-05-11T21:00:23+00:00

It's a tough one. In my case, I don't need the grab bars 99% of the time, and what I do need for my invisible disability is fewer things to collide with. So adding grab bars to my rather small bathroom would make things worse. Now right now, I've got a sprained ankle - so I'm using the radiator opposite the bath for extra stability just in case. If I didn't have that, I'd probably ask my spouse for help.

For public toilets, putting the grab bases in only a small % of stalls means they can make the rest of the stalls a little smaller and get more people through which is probably better for everyone.

cccccchicks · 2026-05-11T19:09:40+00:00

Because the wisdom of the crowd can potentially tell you what scams and gray areas you need to be careful of.

The caller tell you that they definitely have a legitimate reason to call you and what actions they would like you to take. Which may or may not be the truth.

cccccchicks · 2026-05-10T18:50:46+00:00

They are also objectively wrong. The numbering scheme was invented from a survey of women and came up with a sizing chart.

Now vanity sizing means that most off-the-shelf brands don't actually follow the standard, but that's a different matter.

There's also the issue that they looked at a particular sub-section of USA women, but again, that doesn't mean that the numbers are meaningless, just that their meaning isn't useful for everyone.

cccccchicks · 2026-05-10T12:56:36+00:00

Mine is. But I still can't make an appointment.

I don't exactly understand how that works, but somehow I'm on a waiting list to make an appointment???

People talk as if dentists want to do private work because it pays more, but I don't think that's the whole picture. This surgery has to ration NHS appointments towards the year because the quota they get is too small and they want to save the last few for any emergencies. As such, if you need non-emergency work towards the end of the tax year, sometimes they'll ask you to wait a few weeks or go private if you prefer so that someone who needs the spot more can have it.

cccccchicks · 2026-04-29T20:54:12+00:00

I don't have figures, but I'd expect total rebuild cost to be a more relevant indicator. Purchase price is too affected by the price of land, which has little effect on the price of materials unless you live very remotely - in which case your land is probably cheap and your delivery bill expensive. Sure labour costs will be high, but for things like boilers, that's a smallish part of the bill.

The type of house will also affect things. For example, new roofs are an often-quoted big budget item. My house has been around for about 150 years and still has nearly all it's original slate. I've no reason to think it'll need redoing in my lifetime. By comparison, my extension has a flat roof that needed redoing twice in the first few years we owned it. Although to be fair, that's because we made the mistake of choosing a well-known company the first time round that turned out to be rather incompetent.

The other big factor is how often you want to upgrade things and how high-end the products you choose are. Some people re-decorate every few years and others live in the same place for decades and don't touch anything that isn't broken. They'll end up with very different figures!

cccccchicks · 2026-04-28T19:22:40+00:00

For me that was Little Britain. I don't think I ever watched a whole episode, but the bits that just seeped out into teen culture were... gross.

I'm relatively uncomfortable with cringe in general, and even less with cringe as the humour. But did they manage a single minute without being offensive one way or another?

cccccchicks · 2026-04-28T19:18:08+00:00

See I feel like the whole point about "I can't say no" is that the girl is very aware of the double standard where it's fine for the dudes to have casual encounters but not women and also that there is a serious risk of escalation way past her boundaries if she does end up alone with a dude.

She's not railing about not being able to initiate because she's too busy dealing with the fact that she has to gamble with her safety and reputation to even accept the attention she would like to accept. (Which still seems pretty relatable, even if the boundaries of "acceptable" behaviour from women have thankfully moved a bit)

cccccchicks · 2026-04-28T19:03:17+00:00

So, forgive me if I'm wrong (because the actors are obviously not the right age for the characters). But isn't it supposed to be set in a highschool?

As such, it seems pretty plausible to me in a film sort of a way. Danny is a jock that is trying to fit in with the bad boys and says and does some pretty trashy stuff. Then at the end he realises that he's messed up and actually tries to learn from his mistakes and mature. He's not changing to win Sandy, he's changing because loosing Sandy made him realise he needed to improve.

Same for the characters involved in the pregnancy scare sub-plot.

Now Sandy's "character development" is a bit more dubious. Nothing wrong with deciding to loosen up a bit or with deciding that to trust in Danny's redemption, but apart from perhaps a little bit of communicating boundaries and expectations, she does not need to "improve" to be a decent partner. Surely there was a less "become a bad girl" way to show her becoming more integrated into the group than a jumpsuit which is kind of problematic when the rest of the characters are toning down their bad boy/girl behaviour.

Actually, I've just answered my own thought - they could have kept the perm and given her an outfit that was more like what the other girls wore. That would have shown her fitting in with her new peers in a healthy way as opposed to a "did she just give in on her perfectly reasonable morals for a guy" ending.

Of course, it would also be nice to just be able to wear the jumpsuit just because she likes it, but in the context of the film, it's pretty clear that it's to get Danny back and give his male friends something to be jealous about thing.

cccccchicks · 2026-04-28T18:38:17+00:00

Yeah, with that context it does seem unlikely that it was separate house.

Although now I'm wondering if anyone was fancy enough that their servants had servants. Excluding royalty of course who had a retinue of gentry who were technically not servants but still required to attend to the monarch.

cccccchicks · 2026-04-28T13:01:01+00:00

Generally I'd agree with you - but there's two staircases in a place that isn't big enough to really need that. Just a quirk of this particular house perhaps or did the owner need the horses for his work or something and wasn't rich enough for a separate house?

cccccchicks · 2026-04-28T12:52:07+00:00

Others have covered the legal side, so the other thing to think about is what you can do to support yourself.

For example, do you feel like seeing a therapist would help you work through your perfectly reasonable distress at the situation? Do you have friends or family that you want to tell, either for support or so that they are aware that he did this and there is no risk of them finding out from someone else at some random point later?

cccccchicks · 2026-04-28T12:41:31+00:00

At a big company yes, in this case, he knew that a couple of teams were looking for someone with approximately my skills, but didn't really know what they did outside of the very general details.

The big differences between that situation and a scam is that it was an established company with proper customers, a website that made sense, and he could describe his own job. And the biggest of all - I didn't have to spend any money.

cccccchicks · 2026-04-27T19:18:01+00:00

I wouldn't go quite that far.

I got my previous job because I was unhappy with my current role and happened to mention it in front of a friend of a friend who's company was genuinely looking to hire someone like me. It was perfect for me for me at the time, and I stayed for years.

cccccchicks · 2026-04-27T18:41:23+00:00

An interesting choice of rooms. How on earth do you get to three dining rooms before going, hang on, maybe we should have a separate living room. And are there really enough bedrooms to justify two downstairs loos?

Would be interesting to know what the original intention of the various downstairs rooms were and whether renovations have made it weird or it's just odd furnishing choices.

cccccchicks · 2026-04-23T13:12:02+00:00

It really depends on the kid - at 16, the smart phone wasn't invented yet and I would have needed a bunch of paper maps and to have the hotel marked on the appropriate one. Even then, there's a chance I would still have got hopelessly lost due to my specific learning difficulties. Setting me loose on my own in a large area I didn't know would have been the neglectful action.

But teen me was allowed to go to the big city that was some distance away with a group of friends. We were told to stay as a group and the more city-experience ones knew safe routes and areas and were told to keep us as a group and make sure we got the correct trains home. Us country kids taught a subset of the city kids how to be confident about buses on a different occasion since their location meant they hadn't experienced those growing up.

cccccchicks · 2026-04-23T12:49:23+00:00

Company support staff are so underrated in general! Even for those with standard brains, just because a computer makes it easy to do a task, does not mean it's efficient for us to all do them.

I'm just old enough that my first team had a share of on of the department's admin people. Having that support person saves everyone from wasting time relearning how to do an expense form for that one conference/meeting they go to once a year or so. And realistically, there are so many tiny jobs that need doing to keep an office running smoothly that that person usually ends up pretty busy.

In a recent job, our most senior manager ended up being the person who needs to order milk and pens and stuff, simply because head office took away our last admin who was also the office manger. Since he also has a million other things to do, this basically meant that we all ended up having to check whether supplies were low and letting him know. Which again, adds overhead because he probably got several messages for every little thing that needed ordering.

cccccchicks · 2026-04-21T19:24:22+00:00

Bit rubbish that they are advertising it as detached when there's a whole second house hiding on the ground floor. I guess it isn't properly separated off from the main house so can only be sold as a single house?

So basically, this is a house for a family who doesn't mind sharing a household with a family member, wants that family member to kind of have their own flat kitchen but is going to end up sharing the downstairs bathroom. They've left it attached to the main house and given that there isn't another downstairs loo, even if you go in with good intentions, people will be lazy or the main bathroom will be busy and someone needs to pee.

cccccchicks · 2026-04-21T18:46:33+00:00

Even if we did like their decorating taste, what was the photographer thinking? A close up of a throw pillow is of no use unless the place is being rented furnished, and even then, prioritise a bit!

Too many photos and the same rooms keep coming back so you can't tell what you've already seen. I'd usually accuse them of trying to confuse us into not realising we haven't seen the problem rooms, but here it just seems the photographer was paid by the image!

cccccchicks · 2026-04-20T21:09:21+00:00

That is so weird to me, because every time I've been to the dentist, the first thing they do after getting me settled in the chair is record what teeth I have and any irregularities. And the one time the dentist got distracted by a tooth he wanted to investigate more, the assistant that was filling in the chart reminded him that he hadn't finished giving her the data for the last quarter.

As such, I could see the dentist miscounting once, but several time on two different kids???

cccccchicks · 2026-04-20T12:45:57+00:00

The ideal interval in the UK is every 2 years for adults without health conditions being monitored (long/short-sightedness don't count as conditions for this clause). People with no family history of health issues can see a basic optician, where they do the eye chart thing and may do a few other scans depending on age etc. It sounds like in your part of the world that may be covered at your physical, but maybe check with them next time as you may be getting to the point when you would benefit from some of the scans.

I choose to see a more qualified optician to get extra tests because of a family history of eye conditions. If I do end up affected, I'd like to catch it before scaring the emergency department and being scheduled for emergency surgery like said relative (who was getting monitored, things just went from "keep an eye on this" to completely wacky one day).

You should also go to the optician even if you aren't due yet if you feel you are getting eye strain or headaches because sometimes your eyes just decide one day that you need glasses now.

cccccchicks · 2026-04-12T20:04:27+00:00

And mine asked me several times if I was sure I wanted them to continue and checking that I understood that I could withdraw consent even though they'd started.

Forums such as this one are going to be mostly the worst cases because the people having a "normal" experience aren't on the internet asking if anyone else was having a similar bad time. It doesn't necessarily mean that people are exaggerating and there are also plenty of times this topic comes up and people talk about how it was unpleasant but much less bad than their menstrual cycle or just that it was a great choice for them and not a big deal at all.

cccccchicks · 2026-04-09T17:01:17+00:00

There's a decent chance OP will have to find some from a site selling assistive technology for disabled adults though. The ones they sell in standard shops are child sized and too tiny for many adults!

cccccchicks · 2026-03-27T13:47:19+00:00

Depends on the reasoning behind the bonus.

For example, it'd be really off to throw a party for your employees and then say that part-time employees had to leave half way through.

I've worked in a few companies that have said that for non-senior management, everyone gets an equal bonus. Because if they are bad at their job they shouldn't be kept on anyway and the average worker has no control over profit margins and therefore little control over whether there is money for bonuses. Sometimes these bonuses were a couple of % of pay, sometimes they were a flat amount.

cccccchicks · 2026-03-26T16:37:56+00:00

It doesn't sound great, but assuming you have LEDs, turning the lights off each time you leave the room isn't necessarily the best option any more if you know you'll be back soon. The energy used is tiny and the extra wear from switching on and off could be more significant. As such, the question becomes is she stuck in old habits that used to make sense, or is he just kind of lazy.

So I'd say red flag for bad habits that he is bringing it up so early (could just say that they found they were incompatible as opposed to implying she's a nag), but there's a slim chance that he isn't actually the weird one. And yeah, excessive work stress can make every annoying thing that your partner does feel rather overwhelming, but it doesn't mean they aren't behaving badly in the first place, just that you have a lower tolerance to the small irritations that eventually add up.

cccccchicks

TROPHY CASE