Month: March 2007

Time to update this thingie

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I hate changing from DST to EST (or GMT, as is currently the case). I always feel fucked up for a few days as my internal clock struggles to adjust.

So yeah. Been quiet for the last little while. A few interesting things happened, but mostly it was a day-to-day thing. I was a pseudo-bachelor for most of last week, as Katy was taking some R&R in Leicester to go walkies, do puzzles and generally harass her dad. The whole week I was alone, I did not kill the cat. This is, for me, a major accomplishment.

We went on a little day trip to Norwich this saturday, which was nice and we went to see 300 at the cinema this sunday, which was decently bloody and violent. We'll probably buy the DVD when it comes out.

I found out last week that my contract is being renewed for another 3 years. It was a touchy thing for a while. They were always going to offer me a renewal, as my boss fairly lavished praise on my work (which, you know, is always nice!) but since we're funded by public research grants, balancing the books is always tricky. Our main operating grant is running out next year and they haven't secured a replacement for it yet, so they weren't sure if they could offer me a 3 year contract or simply a 1 year bridging contract.

I was fairly blushing when my boss told me that, although they don't have enough money to renew all the contracts they want, mine is one of those they really want to keep. I think I really hit a home run with the OLS. I never expected it to be so popular. The thing I'm working on right now could potentially be bigger, if I can get it to work properly.

So yeah. Happy dancies at job security :)

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There go those plans straight out the window

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Not a happy bunny at the moment.

I got my passport and visa application back today. I have just pissed away 350 quid, as visa has been denied. Well, not so much denied as me being told that I don't qualify for it as I'm currently under a pseudo-diplomatic visa. Reading between the legalese, it means that as long as I work for the EBI, I need the clearance exception visa that I currently have. As long as I have that visa, I cannot qualify for a spousal visa. As long as I can't get the spousal visa, I can't start the citizenship process.

What's even worse though is that when my contract runs its course, I'll need to apply for a spousal visa to stay in the UK. I'll have been there 9 years, but none of those will count for anything, immigration-wise. I will not have a job anymore, but I won't be able to apply for any until I get the spousal visa. Having a job will go a long way to being able to get a spousal visa. Anybody see the nice catch-22 in the making?

On the plus side, a job is not really a requirement, as long as we can show that we have means to support ourselves. That's a strong incentive to start saving; and the golden handshake I get from the EBI should help with that as well.

Still, I do not need this aggravation now.

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That's a good workout!

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A coworker and I went into the office this weekend and made creative use of the meeting room facilities. Get your mind out of the gutter, pervs. We plugged my Nintendo Wii into a LCD projector and proceeded to play Wii Sports for the next 3 hours on a giant projection screen :)

In other news, the cat. It was a toss-up until recently to see if our cat only had one testicle or had one that was still undescended. Turns out, he had another one hidden away so has now been snipped for the second time.

Not that going under the knife has slowed him down one bit… I caught him climbing up the sitting room curtains this morning. So yeah. Here's hoping that finally being snipped will turn him into a fat blob soon. He's a handful at the moment.

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In the mood to save money

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Orange has pissed me off for the last time (I hope).

I hate Orange. They're fucking evil and this will be the last time I have to deal with them or give them money. The first year of my contract was fine. Then my phone broke 1 week after my contract was renewed and it would have cost more to fix it than to buy a new one. So I did. And it sucked. Then I started traveling to the continent for work and my phone bill tripled in roaming charges. And Orange was laughing all the way to the bank the whole time, because I was paying £40 for about 30 minutes of airtime and about the same number of SMS messages. Fuck Orange. I have now switched to a pay-as-you-go phone on T-Mobile. I'm in the process of moving my phone number over so there should be no disruption on my calls and contacts.

I'm also in the process for shopping for a new broadband and phone provider, as well as looking into 0% balance transfers for the credit card. I read a very interesting article recently on how businesses make money on the laziness and inertia of people. We can save £240 a year by switching to a package deal on Virgin media and probably just as much with a balance transfer for the visa.

All things you should all be looking into :)

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Today is Pi day

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Happy 3.14 to everybody.

In other news, Katy and I have decided that we're out of the housing market for the foreseeable future. We've been talking/thinking about it for a while now and finally came to a decision today.

We currently pay £780 a month in rent. If we were to get a mortgage, we'd be paying £1600. That's how crazy the housing market is in Cambridge. We could afford it, but we would have no leeway in case interest rates went up, and things would be tight if/when we had kids and we'd be down to one income for a while.

We've decided to do something a bit different. We're going to stick to the budget we decided on and worked out while we were crunching the numbers. If we put away £600 month in an ISA at 5.5%, we have £7500 saved in a year. If we do that the 7 years I have left on my contract, we come out of it with something close to 50K. That's not bad at all.

Now, people will say that if we did get a mortgage, we could probably make double that in the profits of selling our hose in a rising housing market. Maybe. Yes, it is tempting to think of it that way. The housing market in Cambridge is insane and will probably only get worse. The EBI AGM this morning informed us that staff levels will probably go from 250 to 400 in the next 5 years. Then there's London commuters that are forever going further out of town in the attempts to get more bang for their housing buck (and piss off everybody else in the process). So yes, chances are good that we'd make money if we bought a house now and sold it in 7 years. The thing is that we're not sure if we could afford it now. Interest rates are set to rise. People keep saying that the housing market needs a big correction or else it'll self-implode. You have experts arguing both sides of the same situation. So yeah….

We could make more money, we could make the same amount. In the end, I think we'll go the ISA route. We might not make more, but we'll make some and I'll probably end up sleeping better at night.

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sadly, we didn't get it :(

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We didn't get the house. We offered 225K for a property that was listed at 235K, in the hopes of possibly getting it for 230K. As is usual with good plans, it went totally out the window when somebody else offered the full asking price right off the bat and the buyers said yes. So yeah, sucks, but what can you do. We did everything we thought was right and right for us. We can't afford to go higher than 240K at the max of the max, and even then I'm not comfortable with that situation because although we can afford the repayments at that price, it leaves us with zero breathing room.

So better to have no deal than a bad one, I say.

Still, that was a nice house.

So, dang.

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An update on the life of Richard

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Things are brewing, they are.

Katy and I are hemming and hawing about possibly buying a house. We found something really, really nice in Great Chesterford. There's tons of reasons why it's tempting. It's a well-proportioned 3 bedroom semi-detached that's less than 15 years old. It's pretty much ready to move into. The area is nice. It's on the shuttle bus route to work, it's close to a train station so we can jaunt to London (not that we'll be able to afford going anymore, but that's another matter entirely).

The downside is, of course, money. It's a big chunk o' cash. It's on offer for £235,000. That would mean a montly mortgage of £1500. For you canadians out there, that figures to about 3400$CAD… That's a looooot of money. Even when you're being paid in pounds. A third of our gross salary will go straight to the bank, and that's hoping interest rates stay as they are (or hopefully go lower).

We've been crunching the numbers for the past week. We can get the mortgage in principle. My contract is safe for the next two years, in principle. Our budget would be tight, but doable, in principle. We'd have to reign in some of our more colourful spending, but we probably need to do that anyway.

It would mean we'd be on the property ladder in the UK, which is probably not a bad thing considering that house prices have doubled in the last 10 years (and even more, really). The people who bought that exact house paid £140,000 in 2002. The one thing that scares me is that the market is ripe for a correction, which means that prices will drop. Having said that, they've been saying that for the last few years. It will happen. The question is when.

Moving house seems to be the national sport here these days. When we move, I'd like to think we'll stay there until we need to move elsewhere in the UK or Canada for work reasons… Anyway. As a workmate just said, it'll probably be the biggest financial investment we ever make.

So yeah. Watch this space. We're going for a second visit this weekend. Who knows what'll happen by monday…

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