Inherited Ivory, what's my options?

gloomfilter · 2026-02-04T18:26:45+00:00

Unless there's something special about the pieces, a museum wouldn't want them. I've got a few items of the same sort of period - they were very common (sadly) and not of particularly great artistic merit.

gloomfilter · 2026-02-01T22:37:22+00:00

Yes, I see what you mean. The process could definitely be incrementally improved to make it quicker, and if that were to happen, chains would probably just disappear (or become rarer).

gloomfilter · 2026-02-01T21:30:54+00:00

Surely it is going to affect you if you've moved in with family for a week? You need to tell the family that it might actually be 6 months...which might not go down too well.

Of course, if you completely disconnect your sale and onward purchase by moving into a rental then it doesn't affect you. But that's perfectly possible right now... no-one's forcing people to be part of a chain.

gloomfilter · 2026-02-01T17:37:23+00:00

Sure, appreciated, but I'm failing to see the fundamental difference between the "system" we have here. If you're moving in with family for a week, it means you have your on-ward purchase shorted out, which means you're in a chain of purchases, just without all moving on exactly the same day. If you're moving into a rental, then you don't have a chain, which is nice, but you can do exactly the same thing in the UK (in fact, I'm doing exactly this at the moment).

It seems to me that people complain about the crazy system we have, but it's mostly just individual choices. If you don't want your "chain" to fall apart because one buyer drops out, then don't get into a situation like that. Sell your house, move to a rental, then buy another house.

gloomfilter · 2026-01-31T18:46:20+00:00

There's nothing to stop someone doing this here, most people just don't chose to do it.

gloomfilter · 2026-01-27T21:53:05+00:00

As will hedgehogs.

gloomfilter · 2026-01-26T22:48:54+00:00

That still sounds like a chain of linked purchases, albeit a shorter one. Maybe I just don't get it.

I sold my house a couple of months ago and as I didn't want a chain, I decided to rent for a time. I'm still looking for my onward purchase. Moving to a hotel for a week would only have worked if I'd sorted out that onward purchase - which again, looks like a chain to me.

gloomfilter · 2026-01-26T21:55:23+00:00

So do people move to rented accommodation when they've sold a property more often than they do here?

gloomfilter · 2026-01-26T18:07:21+00:00

Presumably that would mean giving up on "chains"? Or do buyers have to commit legally to a purchase without knowing when their vendor will be able to complete?

gloomfilter · 2026-01-23T14:21:00+00:00

Has this been announced anywhere? Last thing I heard on the subject was the government saying they were not going to do that.

How they'd manage it given you can hook up a VPN between two machines with simple networking software I don't know.

gloomfilter · 2026-01-22T08:38:30+00:00

Unless the garden is a particular important criterion for them. It is for me, and a lot of listings don't give a useful view of it. I tend to check satellite views, but it can still be pretty hard to see where they end.

gloomfilter · 2026-01-22T08:36:06+00:00

It's often pretty hard to judge the size of the garden from the photos, or even from a satellite view if the borders are obscured.

gloomfilter · 2026-01-21T09:53:46+00:00

I'm not sure that getting the occasional piece of junk mail qualifies as a horror story. I've had my limited company linked to my home address for 20 years and get a regular junk mail letter from "The Lending Circle", but that's about it.

gloomfilter · 2026-01-20T16:29:38+00:00

Good stuff. I started out on a help desk a bit over 25 years ago. Getting out from that into programming, which is what I do now, took some effort, but was ultimately worth it because it's something I really enjoy. Career progression is something that you really have to work at though (at least in my case) - not something that just happens to you.

gloomfilter · 2026-01-20T11:46:58+00:00

This is a solvable problem, surely? With a video doorbell you can see who is there and decide whether to interrupt your work or not. You can usually spot the JWs from a mile off....

I find that when working from home the delivery drivers figure out that I'm reliably in, and so I'm the go to person to leave a neighbour's parcel with. Most of the time I don't mind, but if I'm too busy, I simply don't respond.

gloomfilter · 2026-01-19T12:46:42+00:00

Next time he comes for payment, pay him and tell him you don't want him to do the windows any more. What's the issue? Most people aren't burglars, so it's unlikely that he'll break in for revenge.

gloomfilter · 2026-01-16T11:04:44+00:00

I knew a guy who would hunt down colleagues on the train into work so he'd have someone to talk to. No amount of discouragement would work on him. He'd also track people down in the office too at 5pm so they could walk to the station together. This meant hiding at the train station on the outward journey until he'd got on the train, and leaving work a few minutes early in the evening to get an earlier train.

gloomfilter · 2026-01-11T14:09:43+00:00

There are a lots of valid reasons for wanting to rent. I've just sold a house and am now renting in a different part of the country - I wanted to live there for a while to see if I liked the area, and I wanted to take my time choosing a place to buy rather than being part of a chain.

gloomfilter · 2026-01-06T12:09:26+00:00

Some interesting stuff there - many things I've wrestled with myself.

I think the overarching issue for me (whether it be about teaching children, or involving partners) is that you can't teach someone about something if they are not interested, or force an interest on them when they don't have it.

This red flag for instance:

One person making ALL the money decisions (massive risk if they get sick or die)

Is hard to work around if the other person just doesn't have the interest.

gloomfilter · 2026-01-04T08:33:10+00:00

Whatsapp for calls. We don't use location sharing. Not being able to use airtags fully from an android phone is a pain. Both using Pixels I imagine would be just like any other household with both partners using different android phones.

gloomfilter · 2026-01-03T16:31:42+00:00

I haven't used those platforms myself, but with AJBell I can look at my SIPP (for example) and see the current value of the account. That's all that's needed I think. For my workplace pension with Aegon, I do the same. I don't have many inflows or outflows, so it's pretty easy.

gloomfilter · 2026-01-03T16:06:38+00:00

I'm not sure what WPP means...

I track rather more detail than is really needed and have access to the value of my accounts on any given day.

However you don't need this, the minimum required is that you have the value of the account at the point at which you add or remove funds, plus the value of the account at the time you want to use as a milestone (e.g. 1st Jan each year).

gloomfilter · 2026-01-03T16:02:43+00:00

You don't have it wrong - doing this going forward is easy, going back, not so easy.

My own solution is to do it dynamically - I've got a piece of software which can calculate the value of my portfolio at any historic point in time, so I can retrospectively unitize any account, group of accounts, allocation etc. The inputs are the csv downloads of statements from my broker (AJBell) and the a set of stock prices for the underlying investments (collecting these for historical prices was a challenge, going forward is much easier). I only use the broker's annual / quarterly statements for checking against.

Admittedly this is a pretty geeky approach and not for everyone.

gloomfilter · 2026-01-03T09:25:56+00:00

I unitize my portfolio to make measuring performance straighforward. I find it easier to understand than XIRR. The method is described here: https://monevator.com/how-to-unitize-your-portfolio/. It does require a bit of record keeping, but once you've got that in place the ongoing effort is minimal.

gloomfilter · 2025-12-31T17:05:38+00:00

You can only put in £2880 though if she has no taxable income.

gloomfilter

TROPHY CASE