LG John

How the hell did you manage that!! So if your house is worth a quarter of a million you are paying just £520 a month in rent! Most rentals seek to achieve 5% as a bottom line. My mortgage is currently around 6.2% of the value of my house! Mapping God, financial God and Dr. God. Are you just the holly man himself

john banks

How do you get away with only giving 2 months to HMRC?

I'm not sure how building a BTL portfolio helps grow wealth within the community except for the landlord (whilst things go his way)?

Moses example of the 4 bed property is at 10 times a typical Glasgow income.

51st state

flats, sorry apartments are in overkill in manchester
in the city centre ther still building hundreds but someone i know went to rent a penthouse one and was told by agent that monthly rent could haggled over as there were that many to let!!!!!
and its the same story 10miles out in the suburbs !!
moses idea does work but its a stack of cards, one slight change in the market and you lose the lot
the thing with buying now is everyone wants to make a quick fortune and won't happen again probably for another decade or so ,when income goes up enough to pay the money borrowed,
if you have noticed since the houseing market has slowed in the last year or so the stock market has gone up over a thousand points
the big investors showing they've moved there money into it.

john banks

Kenny, the house is 3000 sqft, 6 bed (although one is a locked store for the landlord), country views, a few miles from the home of golf, and the rent is £850 a month, gardener included. I don't have to pay for repairs or buildings insurance being a scabby tenant

The rent is about the same as our 90% mortgage initially on our 1000 sqft first house we bought at the end of 1998.

Now do you see what I mean about value?

There are some amazing country properties to rent at bargain prices, or there were last autumn, this time of year is quiet for new adverts around here.

KiwiGTI

Corporation tax, minimal PAYE, split dividends with wife etc. Plus reasonable expenses put through the company (Office rental for room in flat etc)

moses

nice one mate, well said , i swear if it wasnt what we did in the past by investing we would have been oot on the streets, i thank God for saving us




john mate, but even if it levels aff , everyone knows the house prices arent gonna be the same in a few yrs time, its gonna go up

u know when we bought oor house, well my dad did when i woz wee, it woz a 4 bedroom massive 100 yr old sandstone house at 48k, now standing at 350k within 20 yrs or so, in england the same house will be near a million

these kind of investments helped us alot, see when my dad had a single shop instead of wasting money on material stuff, he worked 7 days a week in the shop and also as a bus driver before he made it big, we hardly saw him, he woz only sleeping for 4 tae 6 hrs max a day, it woz sad lol, may he rest in peace

all he did woz invest it and it turned oot tae be millions when he woz older, glory be tae God, that investment went a long way and helped us so many times and when he died all he invested , saved us business wise and also he bought alot of land in pakistan tae help his younger siblings and my grandmother coz she woz a widow and that land he bought so his siblings can toil it grew intae loads tae

so land always goes up even if it balances for a few yrs, it goes up

i suggest either buy a fully paid property or brand new homes or nice flats, their value goes up quicker

moses

just go oot of glasgow, new houses in chatelherault and airdrie 4 bedrooms for 140k


people even wae some average wages can still afford a 100k house john, what do they dae, either spend it on booze, **** and holidays when they can save thousands a yr and then put it doon as a deposit and buy a house, 450 to 550rent for a 2 bedroom flat is a mortgage for a 80k tae 100k house



my dad used tae say, struggle for a few yrs and u will reap the benefits afterwards

its like a farmland a farmer works hard and toils his land and plants the seeds of veg and fruit and grains and waits for it tae sprout and then gets the benefit

same is the everyday life

Dazza's-STi

£359Exactly what line of IT are you in? I know 4 CCIE's along with me and all with several years experience and MCSE's too, who average around the 55-70k mark... and some security pro's who pull about the same... i know contracting can be lucrative but IT saleries now are about the 60-70k mark not the 120k+ mark... just an observation, not saying i'm sceptical. When i was looking at contracing and i think this is the case now the going rate was £350-£450 per day, although obviously you have to be busy every day... and thats not always possible,,, I chose to stay employed and toke the lower garenteed salery and Bupa\car pension... and work from home
Just interested if you've found a nice line that i didn't know about that may be worth persuiing... if your commanding £550+ a day mate then well done....

On subject £2.5k per month after bills
Daz

KiwiGTI

I guess I'm reasonably senior, but in London those rates are probably average to good for most Technical or Infrastructure Architects. It can vary but I wouldn't even turn up for an interview for under £400.

Not to be rude but CCIEs aren't paid that much anymore and MCSE's - well that means nothing.

My CV for the last 3 years has the following

-Design and development of an Identity Management system (29,000 employees) (AD, SAP Portal, Sun One Directory)
-Various Weblogic projects on Solaris, backended with Oracle on HP-UX on EMC/HDS SANs
-IT Strategy documents
-Oracle Grid
-Large scale consolidation/virtualisation projects

I only work from design to delivery, no support work at all.

Been in current contract 6 months, programme of works is 8 years more. Last contract I was in for 3 1/2 years - £475 per day.

The money is definitely out there if you want it.

I know 2 IT security managers that are on £650pd, EMC storage specialists should be able to get that too.

I considered myself one of the best Microsoft specialists out there - clustering, AD, Exchange, IIS, SQL etc. But I got sick of having to compete with people that had just bought their MCSE's or cowboys. That's why i decided to move into the Solaris/Unix world.

Alsoo don't forget, at £450pd that's £108,000 a year if you take off public holidays and 3 weeks vacation.

106rallye

Sorry to hijack the original thread but I have just taken a perm IT role as a juniorish Net Admin role. As part of my package I can do some formal training and I was wondering what you might think will be useful in the future. I was considering the Cisco qualifications but is there any you rate more valuble. I am aware that in the industry a lot is to do with experience however if the offer is there I want to choose the best one and hopefully get enough knowledge to charge the rates you are talking about!

Thanks

Andy

sti-04!!

Moses,

Point me in the direction of these new 4 bed detached's for 140k & no bull**** i will buy 5.

The cheapest new 4 bed detached in North & South Lanarkshire is 189k & thats a barrett box. Wimpy & Manorlane are upwards of 200k.

Scotland is no longer a cheap economy. I have a friend that has just purchased a new mid terraced 3 bed for 140k in Bellshill. Now thats just false economy. 7 years ago roughly the same house was 60k.

Madness. Lets just hope the bubble does burst as its becoming a joke.

john banks

moses, I believe that all asset classes are cyclical. I'm deliberately holding no UK property at present, and I'm not increasing holdings in UK equities either. I await new buying opportunities, but see few at present as most things seem to be in a bubble at this point in the cycle, so now I am holding cash having taken my gains already. That is my assessment of the economic cycle. It may be wrong, but it is based on more thought than a simple notion that houses always go up.

AudiLover

kiwi wheres the porsche then?

Spending all that dough on high class hookers instead I bet

I.T, I did it for a while but it bored the **** out of me

sti-04!!

In the last year i have increased my portfolio with the following,

Flat - Hamilton Area - Rented at £600 a month, purchased 3 months later for 185k. Now worth 7 months later 210k. Will be BTL at £650 a month
Farm - Same Area - Purchased for 220k, spent around 200k including buying surrounding land & buildings, will spend another 150k over the next year to complete. Will be worth in excess 900k. Will hopefully never need to sell.
Flat x 2 Both together 100k, needs 15k spent on both. Will be BTL hopefully will be achieving 1k a month. Will pay for each other in 10yrs

In my opinion if the bubble goes, i can afford to ride the storm for a few years until i would have to sell something to cover my costs.

KiwiGTI

Well Cisco isn't as major as they used to be, so their is a bit of saturation with certified people, bit like Microsoft people.

If I was studying I'd be looking at the following :

VOIP
Any product that blurs the perimeters of the network
Network security (Remote and Mobile access technologies)
Hardware devices such as CMS, Firewalls, VPN, load balancers etc
Virtualisation
SAN/NAS technologies


I'd rate SAN and VMWare qualifications more valuable than Cisco at the moment.

And my hot tip : Unix and/or mainframe technologies - lot of aging Unix geeks out there that started back in the 70' - they have to retire sometime and a lot are approaching 60+ now.

106rallye

Thanks for this I have found it hard to find impartial people who are not blinkered in some way (usually towards MCSE's!). My new job should hopefully give me some exposure to VoIP and remote security, so this is where I may start looking.

Cheers

Andy

POC

KiwiGTI, my computer takes ages to boot up, whats wrong with it?

fast bloke

Its crap?

KiwiGTI

Have you recently upgraded to Vista?

fast bloke

Fekkin vista - just bought a new PC for the kids. (I like my elderly Pentium II running w2k - its like slippers you have broken in properly) - Everything on the new computer is sh1thot, until you try to surf the web. It loads google pages and searches quicker than the blink of an eye, downloads stuff at 2 megabits per second and takes nearly three minutes to open Scoobynet. Same with loads of other sites - some are instant and others are like using a 9600 modem. I should have asked them to install WFWG on it...... easier to fix

speye91

Agree with Kiwi,i have 2 mates who do IT for BT.

One works in Leeds and earns £400 a day.

The other works in the big smoke,and earns £550 a day.

Both self employed and on 6 months contract.

After the contract expires,they are free for aslong as the want ,they can spend the next 6 months traveling the world.

Then they go back to the same job,and it all begins again.

fatherpierre

^^^


Only beaten by being a mercenary, it would appear.

2 of my mates that I worked with in the forces are getting (so they claim) £4000 - £6000 per day in S Iraq doing security stuff.

One was back the other day for a month off and was dripping in cash. He was tanned but unable to relax - even after he'd bought the 10th consecutive round.

No way was I dipping into my skinny walet

GCollier

Software development in the financial services sector is worth considering. Currently there is a real shortage of decent people.

Skills I would recommend - Java, J2EE, C#, .NET, C++, Unix, Oracle, Sybase etc.

In terms of salary for developers, £60-90k+Bonus is probably the going rate in the city. Land a job with a decent firm, work hard and a total comp well into 6 figures is easily achievable. Go into management and ascend that ladder, and bonuses can be even more lucrative.

Gary.

Dazza's-STi

VoIP's my thing so yep that and security are a good starter

Daz

Deep Singh

I'm a little confused. If you make £108000 pa, that works out to £9k/month gross before tax and expenses. How can you then have £9k/month disposable income?

Deep Singh

Just some quick maths. Your 1st BTL gives a return of 4.2% before buying costs, tax and running costs. So perhaps ?3% net.

KiwiGTI

I don't earn that, I get £550pd.

Deep Singh

Even so, if you had 6 weeks annual leave (which is minimum for a decent lifestyle and your multiple trips abroad you mentioned) and assume you don't work weekends then that leaves 221 days worked ( I've not included public holidays or sick/emergency leave).

221 X £550 = £121550 = £10129 per month. How does that equate to £9k disposable income after tax?

Not trying to be an **** mate but just can't understand the maths.

Petem95

The industry is massively to do with experience. I'm involved with networking, mostly Cisco stuff, and there seems to be loads of collage leavers with CCNA's now, but without real-world experience nobody wants them. We've taken on 6 new network engineers, but those without 2-3yrs experience on top of some decent qualifications dont even get a look in.

The problem with IT is the in-demand areas change fairly quickly. You always hear about the big money being earnt by those who have right skills and experince at the right time, but it doesnt usually last.

Software development in the Financial district does seem to be a good bet currently. Mate of mine has recently been getting interviews with all the major banks for a front office C++ development role and hes landed one with a 100k package (salary £65k + bonus + 10% non-contrib pension + car & living allowances etc)

My advice would be dont bother with Cisco now - go for Avaya. We're taking on some Avaya engineers and the basic rate is £45k (probably nearer £60k once you inc overtime + car allowance etc) as theres a fair bit of demand for them, and not that many about.

Moses I think a lot of BTL'ers will be getting their fingers burnt with these new-build flats! You've obviously not been reading business news recently.