Taking in a lodger

All my life I have lived with others, from being a student to sharing houses all over the country as a contractor, I didn't think it would be too bad taking in a lodger after we bought our own house. And in reality it hasn't been - its been interesting though...

First problem is that in the months after purchasing the house, we have filled it - with all of our own stuff, it seems that if you have more space you expand! And so the second room became an office, a stuff room and a dressing room all in a very short period.

The finances

We don't have too much to worry too much about tax, as living out of London we can't get too much for our spare room - especially as its a single, so we are happy take less than £354 a month which keeps us within the "Rent a Room" scheme (you can earn through renting out a room upto 4,250 a year before tax is needed to be paid).

Logisitics

Getting beds, and wardrobes we picked them up from IKEA which did involve a bit of fighting through the crowds... but the prices overall weren't too bad and it didn't look too bad...

Advertising

That was the easy part http://UK.easyRoomMate.com made that part easier ... although I think if we hadn't been lucky we would probably have advertised in the local paper too!

All in all - its going ok, the gentleman we have living in our room is ok - relatively easy going but I would like my office back but An extra £4000 a year is going to help us cover a large part of the mortgage, do some bits around the house, give us a "buffer" or pay for a good holiday so it will hopefully be worth it ...

British Gas

Yesterday I got a call saying that my bill was being set at over £60 a month, slightly confused and assuming that there is a mistake I called them up. Thats nearly DOUBLE the national average! The woman was verging on being rude and said "you have been reassessed, thats what its set at and its none changable."

I explained that the two of us live alone in a relatively new property, so good efficient heating and insulation, we are out most of the day so the heating is off, just for a couple of hours in the evening is it on!!!

"nonchangable.."
"Ah but it is ... I am going to change my supplier!!!"

I am just dissapointed that Energy Watch (like Uswitch) had said they were the cheapest (of course it often seems the less you pay the less, service, you get). I wasn't surprised this morning to hear on the news that the number of complaints from British Gas customers hit over 14,00 last month.

If you get poor customer service, vote with your feet, my personal feeling is that even if it costs you a pound or two more, in the long run customer service is worth a lot more! Thats why I changed this morning...

http://www.financeextra.net/energy/

Unlimited Broadband Petition

Uswitch dropped us an email to encourage people to sign the petition for unlimited broadband to be as it says on the tin - unlimited...

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Unlimited-ADSL/

For those of you with unlimited broadband packages, did you know that most of them come with an invisible limit - often reffered to as the Fair Usage Policy, this means that if they think you use too much of your unlimited broadband they have the right to restrict it (either by speed or in some cases by switching it off). More and more we appreciate the Internet for media and use of our computers for watching high quality (better than DVD) movies, streaming radio stations and more you could quickly download a sizable chunk.

Thats why I support this, I am all for limiting peoples downloads - but you need to tell them, allow them to buy more or less according to each individuals needs (40gb is what we get through Sky at the moment, I don't think I need more at yet, but if I do ...)

Sorry, two posts so far and they have both been about broadband - I will try and make sure my next post is more financial, or at least interesting and off the broadband subject!

Sky Vs Virgin Media - broadband ... Or should it be Virgin Vs BT?

Ignoring the battle over the channels (major fan of a couple of the shows on it) all I really want is the Internet, but the packages looked better value than just internet packages. My wife needs to phone Mexico (VOIP) and I need to be able to do a little work at home.

So I compared the costs (and even wrote a free broadband comparison table for the site) simply to work out what I wanted and as it turned out, Sky seemed to be the best one for me... Well, that was over a month ago and whilst the maths hasn't changed the lack of broadband for me has changed my opinion somewhat.

I can't really blame Sky, but the 16mb I wanted wouldn't be available as I am too far from the exchange, though 8mb will be great, and after BT came around to 're-fit' the telephone line (not an immaculate job in a newish house) it turned out that a problem at the exchange meant that I wouldn't have broadband for a further month...

Had I known, the maths for Virgin would have looked better. I spoke at length to Sky who (without actually saying it) implied that fighting with BT seemed to be a daily job for the Easynet team who actually manage Sky Broadband.

Despite all this, I think a break from the Internet is probably doing me good ... and I can still MSN on my mobile (through Three)