Ever dreamed of buying a house? Well you’re a crazy fool and you should lower your ambitions. Houses are for people with huge sums of cash in reserve. If you don’t own a house now then you probably never will so just deal with it.

Image via alexliivet

It turns out the banks, those lovely awesome banks – whom, sustained by taxes and are very possibly the reason everyone is experiencing really high inflation at the moment and are therefore unable to save – are rationing mortgages even further.

The Bank of England’s study shows that fewer people are meeting lenders criteria for borrowing. It’s all down to falling house prices, the economic climate and fear the fact that the future is even less secure. Banks are just so pessimistic. Whatever happened to that starry-eyed optimism that make them think the boom bubble would never burst?

In reality it may be bad news for those looking to get one, but it’s probably a reasonable position given that handing-out mortgages to people who had little or no means to pay them back in the first place was one of the big reasons the world got into this mess in the first place.

Even those paying mortgages at the moment are struggling to repay them and are living month-to-month, relying on their credit cards as well as those fantastic pay day loans. You know those companies that give you a short term loan with huge rates of interest. Now there’s a healthy way to run your finances.

So, saying the banks should be giving out mortgages to anyone who wants them is of course ludicrous and even hypocritical. However it’s not fair. Nothing about any of this is fair. It’s perhaps a peculiarly British dream but those earning a decent wage should be able to afford there own home.

Anyone trying to sell their house will also be suffering as there will be fewer buyers on the market and the value of their property will more than likely have decreased. It all amounts to a market stagnation.

It seems though, that most will be forced to rent for their own lives while others will take advantage of their parent’s property for longer than is reasonably expected.

So who knows some nice places to rent?

Are you struggling to get a mortgage? Tell us about it in the comments section below.

Image by Images of Money

It has just been revealed by the Bank of England that inflation has risen to 5.2% – its highest level in three years. The figure is up from 4.5% in August, and rising energy costs seem to be the main culprit to blame for the hike.

These figures are bad news for the British public, who will have to tighten their purse strings even further to deal with the rising cost of living. Last week it was revealed that earnings only grew by 1.8% last year, so wages are struggling to keep up with the rapid rise in prices.

In addition to spiralling commodity prices, the weak pound and higher VAT rate of 20% has led to the high inflation figure. However, the Bank of England are hoping that this is as bad as it will get, and that inflation rates will begin to fall in the new year.

Still, it isn’t all that bad. Even though we are at our highest level of inflation in three years, there have been other times where we have been much worse off. For example, in 1800 inflation rose to 36% to help the government pay for an on-going conflict with France. Inflation came close to that rate again in the 1970s, when prices rose by 25%.

However, those figures pale in comparison to other countries around the world. In 1923, Germany had an inflation rate of 85,000,000,000%. Wallets were replaced with wheelbarrows as people had to carry around large piles of paper cash.

In more recent history, Zimbabwe made the news with an inflation rate of 66,212% in 2007. The situation got so bad that the Zimbabwean dollar was suspended, and the country now uses a mix of South African rand, Botswana Pula, American dollars, British pounds and Euros to make cash transactions.

Hmm… 5.2% doesn’t seem so bad now, does it?

Are you starting to feel the increased cost of living? Tell us about it in the comments section below.

Image via The BBC

The Bank of England has announced that a new £50 note will be released on the 2nd November.

The design was revealed in 2009 and features two promenent figures from the textiles industry – entrepreneur Matthew Boulton and engineer James Watt. It will be the first time ever that two portraits will feature on the reverse site of a banknote.

The new banknote will also have a whole new host of security features which will make forgery even harder, but these are being kept secret until the note goes into circulation.

There are 210 million £50 notes in circulation, worth £10.5 billion in total. The £50 note was first introduced in 1725, and was white in colour for around 200 years until 1943.

The current Houblon note was introduced in 1994 and will continue to be in circulation for some time yet. However, it will be withdrawn eventually and the Bank of England will come out with a withdrawal date nearer the time.

Are you excited about the new £50 note? Do you think the new security features will deter counterfeiters? Let you know what you think in the comments section below!

Plans outlined by the party has revealed that one casualty of their proposed financial shakeup would be the Financial Services Authority (FSA) with their power being transferred to the Bank of England.

Under the Conservative’s proposals, the BoE would also have the power to regulate city pay structures, risk complexity and size of financial institutions; including requirements on those which put financial stability at risk to hold large amounts of capital to act as insurance to protect the taxpayer. Meanwhile, the Financial Services Authority would be amalgamated into a new consumer protection body.

Currently the UK financial system is controlled by a triumvirate involving the Bank of England, the FSA and the Treasury and it is this model which David Cameron, the Conservative party leader, believes is inadequate and failed to protect the country’s economy during the recession.

Launching the reform plans, Mr Cameron said: “The decisions that led to this crisis represent a policy failure of historic proportions. We now need deep, wide-ranging reform that matches both the magnitude of the crisis and the scale of the hardship inflicted on the British people.

“That reform must be based on a clear understanding of what went wrong in the first place and a clear determination to put it right.

“I’m afraid the government’s proposals that all we need are a few more tweaks and a little bureaucratic tinkering are totally inadequate and risk preventing a recovery,” he said.

Interesting times ahead in the city should the Tories sweep to power…