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Boat and house ownership - a wealthy person's game?


Philip

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50 years ago we sold a house for £10000 and bought an old motorsailer to live on.   Today that house is worth 1.5 million and the boat will probably have rotted away, last heard of heading for the Caribbean.   If you plan on living for that long you would probably be better off in the end buying a house and planning to own a boat later on.

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On 10/02/2021 at 11:20, doratheexplorer said:

You've hit on a valid but rarely talked about point.

 

On balance, a liveaboard is likely to be poorer than average.

On balance, a boatowner who also owns a house is likely to be richer than average.

 

Before the forum starts attacking me for this, I realise this is a broad brush and there are many exceptions, but I stand by what I've said and I think it's at the root of a lot of the division between boaters on the cut. The discrimination towards both 'shiny boaters' and 'canal pikeys'.  Certainly there are forum regulars who are clearly wealthy and often make uninformed comments because they simply can't grasp how the 'other half' live.

I have observed it goes both ways... less well off boaters hate wealthy boat ownsers(usually with newer widebeam high spec boat), but being jealous of somebody better off than us is very british thing to do.

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Wealthy is when you just buy whatever it is you are after without having to think about where the money is coming from.

Wealthy is when you never take anything back to the shop, you just buy a replacement.

Wealthy is when when you have more than one of everything, hulls, engines, wives, etc

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30 minutes ago, system 4-50 said:

Wealthy is when when you have more than one of everything, hulls, engines, wives, etc

This must not be taken too literally, for example having two holes in your boat letting in water rather than one, is not a sign of wealth.

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"Wealth: an abundance of desirable things or money" it says here. Me, I've never had much money, but after a rough start I generally had what I needed and most of what I wanted. Most of us in the UK are wealthy relative to the bulk of the world.

I like my scruffy old boat, and I like looking at the shiny ones, so I don't feel the need to envy anyone. I don't mind people having lots more stuff than me, most of them worked a lot harder than I've ever done. I've been lucky in my farm moorings which have been weird but pleasant. And I got a house when houses were affordable and then kept finding odd little cheap ones that I liked. I think you just have to be sure of what it is you actually, deep down, want.

(I'm not sure that having a quantity of wives makes you wealthy, though. In my experience it works the other way.)

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On 10/02/2021 at 11:20, Athy said:

This is true for canals but not for rivers. Our front garden adjoins the Old River Nene, and we own the river bed up to the middle of the river. I think this is fairly common with riparian riverside properties.

did you miss the words "may .... never" ?

 

Edited by Murflynn
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36 minutes ago, Athy said:

No, because they aren't there.

Oh, fibber, they are, look "although you may own the boat you may never own the space that it occupies on the water".

 

Murflynn said "never" not not as you "quoted".

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36 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

That's me, but still hope one day to have a big Premium Bond win

Well yes, I wouldn't turn down a lottery win!  

 

Meantime I wait to fully round off my contentment with travel on the boat. Im still working until June 2022 in order to pay for those who retired already.... still content with that, the money has to come from somewhere, but woe betide any pensioner that complains to me on this forum that they dont have enough or try to insist on further entitlement when they have a boat and full freedom to use it!  

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15 hours ago, LadyG said:

These descriptions are 'comfortably off', wealth is a different thing, you really need look at folks like Elton John, Richard Branston, and quite a few in the House of Lords. James Dyson, Duke of Buccleuch. 

You'll be in a pickle for saying that!

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22 minutes ago, frahkn said:

Oh, fibber, they are, look "although you may own the boat you may never own the space that it occupies on the water".

 

Murflynn said "never" not not as you "quoted".

No he didn't.

Be careful with the word "fibber", as some people might take it in the sense of "liar", which I'm sure isn't what you meant.

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7 minutes ago, Athy said:

No he didn't.

Be careful with the word "fibber", as some people might take it in the sense of "liar", which I'm sure isn't what you meant.

I think a little checking will show that I am correct and you are not.

 

Just in the interest of clarity, By "fibber" I meant fibber. 

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9 minutes ago, frahkn said:

I think a little checking will show that I am correct and you are not.

 

Just in the interest of clarity, By "fibber" I meant fibber. 

Perhaps before Murflyn edited he may have written "not' realised his error and changed it to 'never'   Athy may then have quoted the original?

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42 minutes ago, Chagall said:

Well yes, I wouldn't turn down a lottery win!  

 

Meantime I wait to fully round off my contentment with travel on the boat. Im still working until June 2022 in order to pay for those who retired already.... still content with that, the money has to come from somewhere, but woe betide any pensioner that complains to me on this forum that they dont have enough or try to insist on further entitlement when they have a boat and full freedom to use it!  

Even us poor old pensioners can't complain  of poverty if we can live in a house and run a boat. It's just a choice what to spend the pittance on. I'm lucky in that musicians in my field get their entertainment for free and their instruments paid for by the punters, so the rest of what a grateful country provides me can go on boats and a Sky subscription so I can watch the cricket (usually)!

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2 hours ago, Chagall said:

Well yes, I wouldn't turn down a lottery win!  

 

Meantime I wait to fully round off my contentment with travel on the boat. Im still working until June 2022 in order to pay for those who retired already.... still content with that, the money has to come from somewhere, but woe betide any pensioner that complains to me on this forum that they dont have enough or try to insist on further entitlement when they have a boat and full freedom to use it!  

So glad to see that you are paying for my pension.

Got nothing to do with both my wife and I having worked since we were 16 worked long hours scrimped and saved paid into a private pension paid tax and NI.

We have a house and at long last a narrowboat not with the pittance state pension (you say provided by you) but what we did with our lives before retirement.

Don’t get onto pensioners cos you have to work until 2022 take it up with government.

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