h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This past month or two have been a bit stressful.

In my previous job I was comfortable, financially speaking. My rent was around one third of my income, I had savings, I didn't have to worry about paying the bills, I could indulge myself in small ways by buying things on a whim. Nothing extravagant, just a few things here and there, like a nice stand mixer, a good quality food processor, several bottles of limited release beer whenever they were released limitedly (to put away and age in my 'cellar'), a bottle of Talisker single malt whisky whenever I fancied one.

That was two years ago.

Since then my income has dropped somewhat, rents have skyrocketed (it's now more than half my income), and my savings are gone. On top of that, I thought I was going to have a big tax bill this year because I hadn't earned enough to qualify for the tax credits I was given this time last year from the Affordable Health Care Act, meaning I'd have to pay them back - around three grands-worth. I haven't got anything like that kind of wedge.

But somehow, I don't know how, that hasn't happened. In fact I'm getting a refund. On top of that there's suddenly a whole load of overtime on offer at work (for the next three weeks or so), plus we get three paycheques in May instead of the usual two

And I think I might be going to see Lee Scratch Perry next week

There's still one big dark cloud looming on the horizon though.

My lease ends in a little over two months so I should be getting the renewal notice any day now. The way property and rent rates have been increasing these past few years in Austin, I might have to vacate this apartment complex after almost 15 years, because it's likely to be increased to a point I simply can't afford. I'm not sure exactly what that's going to mean because with my current income I wouldn't be able to get a new lease from most of the apartment complexes around here since they routinely ask for a minimum of three times the rent in income, which put most of them, leastways the ones I'd prefer to live in, out of my reach. As for the ones I'd prefer not to live in... *shudder*. And as for the idea of moving again... no thanks.

If anyone ever asks you what's the worst kind of place to live, the answer's easy - a boom town.

Ugh...

Indeed. And that's putting it mildly.

But Lee Perry! That's two music legends in the space of three months!

Lee Scratch Perry!!!!! rent.... is just silly... as are house prices here... - I've kinda done rahter well out of the bonkers insane house price rises here, mines tripples in value, since I bought it, for circa £100K..... which, TBH, utterly disgusts me. it goes against all my principles, that I've 'made that on it... - mind, its not like its enough to afford the half a million pounds, for a 3 bed, Victorian, nothing special, terrace, on any of the streets round here; but, it may be cahsed in on soon, and move out of this rediculusly expensive, over-hip town/city, to somewhere.... more affordible, so I can have a reaonable quality house to live in... still disgusted by the idea of having profeted by it though... its just obscene....

It seems quite ludicrous now that even as late as the early 1980s you could buy a flat in a converted house in London for under 20 grand, let alone the opportunity our parents had after the war to put a £50.00 deposit down and get a mortgage for a house which might have cost around five grand, and is now worth somewhere between a quarter and half a million. But that's what happens when a government puts the emphasis on owning property, while at the same time prevents local authorities from building council houses, and compels them to sell off the ones they already own, and the media constantly harps on about how you must get on the property ladder Whatever happened to getting a place to live and spending years there raising a family? Sticking around? That's how communities build and thrive. Continuity and longevity, not constant change and moving around.

a-bluddy-men! damn torry - heck only gotta go back to 1992, 1993, you could still pick up a terrace 3 bed victorian place, back in me hometown, Lowestoft, for circa 30 K... now even them, there, wher ethere is sod all employment, are like 100 K?!- its... just no relationship whatsoever to people's actual earnings, tahts the bit I don't understand. my lodger clears like 50 K some years; can't afford and never can to buy... and rents, here... even more insane; I think, (guessing a bit), I could probalby rent my place out, for not much under 2K per month?! 0 what? - hence idea to rent mine, and go rent down the road, from Cambridge, somewhere like Norwich, which is a city I love anyhow... its not lie I've actual ties in Cambridge really; and could rent a gorgeous appartment type affiar there, really moden etc... which my place certainly ain't modern - true, I'd have to spend, maybe ten or twenty k, doing my place up, to a suitable standard, from where it is now, to rent, but... even soo.... its just... so not right ... t that woman has a lot to asnswer for