'Property is better bet' than a pension says Bank of England economist | Business | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/ ... -economist

I get points on my credit card, fool!

He lives in London, of course he sodding thinks that. The rest of the country don't really have the same options.

Update



*Spits tea all over screen*

Very few people would consider themselves wealthy. Wealth is a subjective thing and people judge their own usually against their peers and people they know. If he's a banker most of the people he knows are probably also bankers and/or have a similar level of income so what he has wont seem extravagant to him even though that sort of money puts him well into the top 10% (probably higher) of earners in the UK.

Spending tends to expand to fill the available funds and people don't judge their wealth in terms of the absolute money the bring in but the amount they have 'free' after they've dealt with all of the things they consider essential so while his income is substantial I would expect a lot of its accounted for. Now what he considers essential and what you or I would are probably going to have some significant differences.

You also won't find too many people that think they are overpaid for what they do.

But yeah that's a whole heap of money.

Apparently it puts him in about the top 1% of the population in income terms. Again, that's a pretty good objective definition of 'wealthy' in my book.


Up to a certain level this is true, but fundamentally we're all similar human beings, so our needs are similar. You can buy food at Waitrose rather than Aldi, but that won't raise your food bills 1000%. A 55 inch TV needs more electricity than a 28 inch TV, but again not by an order of magnitude and you're not buying a new TV every week. You can realistically double your expenditure over the national average by buying higher quality goods for your daily needs but after that point you're pretty much spending for the sake of it. The amount of money you need to be paid where you literally have more money than you know what to do with is surprisingly small.

I do quite well and I'm rarely short of cash but he's earning six times what I am a year. OK, say his monthly bills are roughly double mine. That still means he'll have roughly 3 grand a month to spend on whatever he likes. How many months in a row can you do that before you run out of things to spend it on? That's when you end up buying things like a second house somewhere nice - it's literally something to sink the money you can't find any other use for into.


it would be a very honest man indeed who stood up and said they were overpaid, that's entirely fair enough. He didn't say he was, and that's fair enough, and I for one wouldn't want to say what his rate of pay 'should be'. The fact thought that someone who is earning over 700 quid a day (assuming christmas and holidays off) doesn't think he's wealthy because he spends most of his time with people much richer than him speaks to how lopsided the distribution of wealth in this country has actually become. And it also doesn't bode well that someone as apparently detached from he wider population as this is advising the government on economic policy.

1. There's not enough properties for everyone to buy to live in, let alone invest
2. Pension is rubbish because of the Govt
3. As others have stated, this guy lives in his own world.