Needed: Cardboard boxes and valium

I am spending the weekend packing boxes, because folks, I’m moving flat. I am leaving the posh Georgian West End of Edinburgh for the slightly more ‘colourful’ Leith. (Location of Trainspotting for the ill informed.) The flat is lovely – in the up and coming part I’ll have you know.

And if perchance I do need drugs, they'll be easy to come by.

It is a cliché that moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do, second only to divorce. I have no direct experience of divorce, but indirect experience is bad enough, and I would certainly not choose to go through it. I do, however, choose to move house from time to time. I admit that there is stress along the way.

So far in this house move episode, I have smashed a picture, sliced my finger on the broken glass and caused a cardboard cut nice and deep on the crease where my thumb is attached to my hand. I now have only one opposable thumb.

As Celine Dion once sang, ‘It’s all coming back to me now.’ When, 2 years ago I moved into this flat, I made a solemn vow that I would be leaving it in a box. But no, seems it’s me loading up the boxes once again.

2 years ago I moved from Durham to Edinburgh. When the removal man vomited in the afternoon, I wondered if there shouldn’t be a Government Health Warning on moving house. Throughout that long, exhausting day I’m convinced my blood pressure hit danger levels on a number of occasions.

Although it could have been worse, a friend recently moved house and the day didn’t start terribly well when the removal lorry arrived at her home and reversed clean into her car. Whoops.

When I moved, an Edinburgh parking warden (read evil Nazi ticket distributor) stalked around the van desperate for me to leave it even momentarily unattended.

Whilst I was guarding the van from our fluorescently -cladded friends, the removal men were busy tearing the leather of my flatmate's one thousand pound sofa, scratching my dressers and vomiting in the stairwell.

I knew I shouldn’t have booked through gumtree.

This move hasn’t started well with my string of injuries, but I’m optimistic for an easier move this time over.

Although I am thinking of setting up a removal firm that provides a counselling service to help repair the shattered nerves of homeowners. We’ll also leave a welcome pack containing spare keys, plasters, bandages, scotch and valium.

Interested? I’ll be taking bookings... as soon as I get through my own move of course.

Throw your money down the drain

I think I might have to change my tune. Money Saving Madam is in a mood. Month one of saving has ended and I can report that there is nothing in the pot. Zara’s profits have dropped by 10% but we’re still in the red. Perhaps I don’t care for the property ladder after all.

If it isn’t enough that my own bank account is against me, so are the statistics.

It costs approximately one arm and one leg to buy a home. The average property is 5 times the average salary. The proportion of first-time buyers able to buy a home without financial assistance has hit an all time low. Just 17%.

With rising rents, the cap on university fees removed, and a desperate employment market, it is hard to see how the next generation are ever going to conjure up the savings.

Actually, sod the next generation. How am I ever going to conjure up the savings?

Perhaps home ownership is overrated anyway. How often I hear people talk of their ‘cursed mortgage’. The mortgage is the reason they stay in a job they hate, why they cannot holiday at will, and why they endlessly wait for the day it is paid off and they are free.

Common wisdom (which is far removed from common sense) is that you should take on the largest mortgage that you can afford. By doing this you are able to trick people into thinking you have enough money to live in the smart part of town. And because your mortgage is just more than you can really afford, you have effectively made yourself poor.

Renters amongst you will be familiar with the phrase ‘throwing money down the drain.’

Let us examine the moral high-ground of our homeowner friends.

Say they have a £200,000 mortgage. On a 25 year term they will pay well over £240,000 in interest. So the idea that they own their house is a myth. The bank owns it, and is selling it back to them at a ludicrous mark up.

£440,000 for a £200,000 flat? I think wonga.com has better rates.

To me it seems that the mortgage system is just an organised method of throwing money down a different drain. I can’t deny that I’d still like my own front door, but for now, I’ll lease the one I’ve got and try and keep the usurers away from it for another month.