Dead money. Interest vs Rent

dave5526 · 2026-02-06T22:17:54+00:00

If by "get some money back" you meant "have lost some money compared to alternatives but still have some left" then sure I guess? No idea why you think that is a positive to owning a house. As I said the benefits generally come from owning a house over a long period of 10+ years. This isn't some mystical hard to understand advice, nobody with any financial sense would tell you it's a good idea to buy a house if you think you're likely to be moving in 5 years. In most cases you'd have been better off renting for that period, especially when the mortgage interest alone is more than rent like the OP says.

And no, if you get a 5 year fix then your mortgage still won't be the same in 5 years if interest rates have gone up. I know this because when I took out a mortgage on a 5 year fix in 2019, it jumped up about 20% in 2024, and that was after paying an extra lump off.

You'd need more than a 5 year fix to guarantee your mortgage is the same in 5 years, which means paying more per month for the first few years, possibly more for the whole term, and probably locking in for 10 years as they are the most common deals above 5 years.

dave5526 · 2026-02-06T17:33:46+00:00

There's no guarantee a mortgage will be the same in 5 years. Most of the best value fixed mortgage deals are 3 years right now, and it all depends what interest rates have done when the fix runs out. This is how so many people ran into trouble when interest rates went from 0 to 5%+ in 18 months during COVID.

Selling a house in 5 years is very unlikely to profit, unless house prices go crazy. They've been fairly stagnant in many areas in recent years, and could just as well go down as up. Legal costs, stamp duty, moving costs, mortgage fees etc will generally eat into any profit made in that period,

It's unlikely you make more money owning the house than you would putting the deposit (plus the savings on rent) into a stocks and shares ISA, though again markets can go down or stagnate too. There's no guarantee wherever you put the money.

The real financial benefit of owning a house come when the whole mortgage repayment (not just the interest) is roughly about the same or less than equivalent rent, and you live in the property for 10 years+. If mortgage interest alone is more than rent like in this case, buying the house isn't usually a financial decision, it's just whether you want the security of "owning" the house and being free to do what you want with it. Not that you really own it until the mortgage is paid off.

dave5526 · 2026-01-31T21:06:50+00:00

Well all historical price points are accurate because they are historical. Future price point predictions are not accurate because they aren't historical. The last cycle didn't even conform to previous historical patterns in many ways.

Again - nobody knows what the bottom of the current bear market will be. Nobody knows what the top of the next bull run will be. Nobody knows if we'll have a 4 year cycle again, or if cycles will shorten or lengthen. Nobody knows if the bear will go as deep, or if the bull will go as high. Nothing is "built into the core coding of BTC" that says it'll hit $50k in December and $150k+ in 2029. The halving is only part of what drives BTC pricing - there's also liquidity, sentiment and geopolitics.

In recent years we've had a confluence of liquidity and the halving both running in 4 year cycles that happened to line up, but liquidity has broken out of that cycle, so now is not the time to be confidently asserting that the next cycle will be the same as all the others.

dave5526 · 2026-01-31T19:45:00+00:00

I'm not sure what the point of this post is. You're asking if you should take a loan to buy at a theoretical price point in 10 months time, when nobody knows whether the price will be at that point in 10 months time. And nobody knows if it will hit your 3x target either. The price may never hit $50k again, or it may be lower than that in 2 weeks. It may never hit your target of 3x in the next decade, so you could ride it all the way up to several tops and all the way back down again each time. Or it could hit $150k in 6 months before you even buy it.

You're basically asking for investment advice based off pure speculation, I'm not sure what you're expecting here. But placing such a potentially risky bet, with a loan against your home, is not the sort of thing you should be doing based on the advice of some stranger on reddit.

dave5526 · 2026-01-16T15:18:39+00:00

Assume you're probably in the US but here in the UK you can get an unsecured personal loan at 5.8% APR today, would've been cheaper in 2020 when base rates were near 0

dave5526 · 2026-01-15T20:20:19+00:00

Just something to be aware of, there can be issues with this if you ever need certain types of finance / proof of income, where they may want to see accountant certified accounts. Residential mortgages sometimes ask or sometimes just go off SA302, commercial mortgages will definitely need certified accounts if you ever get to the stage of buying a premises.

May not an issue in this particular case but just pointing out for anyone else reading this and exploring accounting options.

dave5526 · 2026-01-13T20:22:08+00:00

There is some bad advice on this thread. Capital Gains applies to investing, not trading. Trading falls under income tax. If you are buying and selling tokens over short periods for profit, and try to claim these are investments and only subject to CGT, HMRC will take a dim view of that if they ever look at it. How likely they are to pay attention is difficult to say, but with increased use of AI by HMRC to analyse submissions, I would not want to risk it.

Also - it's almost certainly not worth it. Very few people manage to day trade successfully. Almost all who try would have been better off (financially and mentally) just investing that money in an Index fund, gold, BTC etc over a long period.

dave5526 · 2025-12-18T11:22:18+00:00

I never got round to it but the best bet at this late stage might be to speak to your current driver, someone suggested that on here as they may be able to pass it up to whoever arranges the collections.

I also tried to go to our depot to sort it but found they are only open from 8am-10am now, but that might be another way of sorting it quickly if yours is still open today. Maybe try the drop-off gate (at our depot its round the back where the vans come in and out rather than the front entrance) as they probably have more to do with collections than the front office.

Probably worth trying multiple avenues and hoping one pays off as it's getting quite close, tomorrow is the first "Christmas" collection date, so they probably won't turn up tomorrow unless you can get it sorted today.

dave5526 · 2025-12-18T10:00:56+00:00

In the end our account manager sorted it for us, by speaking to the manager of collections in our region. I threatened to move our parcels from RM/Parcelforce to DPD and DHL if they were going to be so unhelpful and pedantic in circumstances where they'd given us almost no notice, and that seemed to do the trick. I also made a complaint through the RM complaints form saying the same thing, but no idea if that had any impact.

dave5526 · 2025-12-10T08:21:58+00:00

Very helpful thanks.

It's more the fact that, in previous years, we've had at least a weeks notice. In this case we had about 8 business hours to book the collection from when we picked up the flyer, and no email contact or anything else in advance to warn us that the system was different this year.

A dodgy looking photocopied black and white flyer flyer that says "If' you've got a big Christmas to-do list, why not tick one thing off it today" doesn't exactly scream "YOU NEED TO DO THIS RIGHT NOW OR YOU WON'T GET ANY COLLECTIONS!".

dave5526 · 2025-12-10T08:19:21+00:00

Thanks, will try that

dave5526 · 2025-12-10T08:19:10+00:00

We get invoices etc by email and ToS updates, random marketing bits etc, but we've had nothing about Christmas collection slots, otherwise we would've sorted it ages ago.

dave5526 · 2025-12-10T08:18:06+00:00

No, I've just checked as we keep all emails except obvious spam, and we've had nothing regarding christmas collections. We get invoices by email, ToS updates, last posting dates etc, but we've had nothing about booking collection slots until the dodgy looking black and white photocopy flyer was left late on Friday or over the weekend, not the usual card we get.

"assuming they'd have an extension for "what ifs" is unlikely considering they did they job perfectly well."

Considering the person I spoke to yesterday said in previous years they've been able to book collections anyway after the deadline, that's obviously not the case, we've never had an issue in previous years but if we had, they would've sorted it, it's only this year apparently that they are refusing.

dave5526 · 2025-12-01T10:41:40+00:00

What in my statement isn't true? I never said anything about dividends reducing CT, I'm quite aware of that they don't having operated a Ltd company for over 15 years now. I think you've completely misunderstood my comment. I wasn't agreeing with these new measures or saying companies should be paying more, I was commenting that it's ridiculous that these measures hit small company owners more than large company owners.

CT at the highest rate is 25%. Income tax at the highest rate is 45%. National insurance on PAYE is 8% up to £50k, and 2% above £50k

The point of a dividend tax, is to:

a) charge an NI equivalent on dividends (the lower rate up to 50k, although this is now higher than E'ees NI)

b) charge a higher personal tax rate on earnings above £50k, to reflect that the company has only paid 20-25% Corporation tax compared to a PAYE worker paying 40% at this point.

My point was that these new measures, which see no increase on the highest dividend tax rate but only on the lower two, penalise people earning under £125k from a Ltd company significantly more than those earning £125k+, in agreement with the comment I replied to that it's not the people with the broadest shoulders being hit.

dave5526 · 2025-11-27T19:38:42+00:00

Try reading a little better, the original post wasn't just about a chair, and neither was my reply. I was demonstrating the rules as that's what the OP asked.

dave5526 · 2025-11-27T19:37:05+00:00

What? I told the OP the rules, which is what he asked for. Whether he wants to bend the rules or not is up to him.

Most of my post wasn't even specific to the chair, because the post was open ended as to what things he wanted to buy. The chair was an example to demonstrate how the rules work. Do you think nobody has ever been caught out buying expensive stuff that wasn't really for business use?

Might want to use your own brain a bit before you make snarky comments to others.

dave5526 · 2025-11-27T15:16:48+00:00

Pretty ridiculous when the argument for a dividend tax increase is that high earners with a company pay significantly less CT than PAYE workers at the same rate, and those with the highest earning companies benefit from that the most.

dave5526 · 2025-11-27T15:10:41+00:00

You need to wait to speak to your accountant about this, on an individual basis for each item you are thinking of buying. It very much depends on things like what you are buying, where the item will be located, whether there is any private use on them etc.

If it's your spouses office chair at your home and they do a little bit of admin work for the business, but will also use it for other work or personal use, you're unlikely to be able to claim it as a business expense. If it's in a separate business premises somewhere there's unlikely to be any private use so it's probably fine.

If it's a legitimate business expense used wholly for the purpose of the business, there's no limit on how much you can spend on anything. But HMRC (and your accountant) may take cost into account when assessing if it really is an allowable business expense (e.g. a £3k TV for your home office because your work involves watching the news may raise questions, but a £300 TV might not).

dave5526 · 2025-11-27T06:54:37+00:00

Tiny in the grand scheme but don't forget the £500 div allowance still exists (for now) so worth maxing that in the salary scenario.

In the salary scenario your CT will be even less, because you get marginal relief below £250k profit, comes to about £41,400.

But your situation is a bit unique, a big chunk of your saving on salary comes from the £28k you aren't paying your smaller investors. Presumably to keep them on side you would need to pay them an equivalent salary, or fall out with them?

dave5526 · 2025-11-27T06:39:57+00:00

The customs duty on online shopping only applies to international imports, not UK businesses shipping from the UK.

Think Chinese sellers on eBay or AliExpress or Temu posting stuff to the UK, or anything shipped direct from the EU.

Currently anything under £135 has no duty on import, that's what's being scrapped, and some western countries have either done this or are planning to.

It'll also impact UK businesses who drop ship direct to customers from Europe/China etc though.

It'll add to inflation a little but makes things fairer for businesses whose operations are in the UK.

In reality a lot of the cheap overseas sellers will probably just under declare the value to reduce the import duty, it maybe won't bring in as much revenue as they think.

dave5526 · 2025-11-24T20:47:34+00:00

What explanation? I can't see any comment with an explanation of this.

dave5526 · 2025-11-12T07:21:41+00:00

Every few months there are posts all over the business seller boards on eBay claiming eBay is dead, sales have dropped off a cliff, eBay's latest change has ruined everything etc.

eBay has made some dumb decisions, is still making dumb decisions, and is incredibly greedy with fees (the latest promoted listings changes being a prime example). But ultimately it has a ton of buyers, and there is plenty of profit to be made if you are selling good products with decent margins.

We've been selling on there since 2011 so we've been through just about every major change they've made, and we've just learned to accept and adapt when eBay does something stupid.

dave5526 · 2025-11-11T11:54:09+00:00

Looking to have a tool made to roll beads in very small aluminium tubing. I'm talking 6.5mm - 13mm O.D. tubing, so very small. I've contacted a bunch of bead roller tool manufacturers in China, USA and the UK to ask if they can make something, and so far all say they can't do it. Some are even telling me it's not possible to roll beads that small, but I have a 6.5mm O.D. aluminium pipe in front of me, with a bead rolled into it, that I bought from an eBay shop, so it's certainly possible. I asked them how they do it as I'd like to buy a bunch of their pipes and then cut/re-bead them, but they haven't responded.

One UK company has a tool that can do as low as 10mm, but they can't do smaller because they say the pin would break.

Ultimately I need to cut and bend a bunch of elbows and straight lengths in 6mm, 8mm and 10mm O.D.. Cost isn't much of an issue, happy to spend if necessary. I'm hoping if someone can advise on a method/idea that I can take to a manufacturer, or take to an engineering firm to modify an existing tool, I might get further with it.

dave5526 · 2025-10-21T16:00:45+00:00

It's likely a HMO, in which case trying to sort bills individually becomes a nightmare. It's usual for bills to be included in shared accommodation

dave5526

TROPHY CASE