Moving house is an inevitability which most people will have to endure perhaps at the very least 3 times during their entire life. I’m currently on 3 and I have not yet hit the mid 20′s so obviously I’m slightly ‘Au Fait’ with the process of finding somewhere new to live and the hassles of trying to move your possessions in the back of a car (generally a small one).
As a former owner of a white van, I can definitively tell you that the easiest way of moving all of your possessions is through the use of a massive van (colour doesn’t really matter). For some however its hard to do this unless you own an actual van or even a car. For these people the solution comes with cheap van hire and perhaps the fairly omnipresent ‘Man and a Van’, perhaps if your lucky you might even be insured on his probably dodgy ‘insurance’.
What struck me today was that if you do choose to you use a van rental service: “What is the best way to pack your goods?”
I found this great little article on how to pack and generally a kinda of ‘how to’ service for using a van hire firm.
Loading It is much better if you will put first larger objects on the van. Why? Because putting smaller things is easier to put inside the van than the bigger ones. Using padding, pillows, clothes, and other soft materials in covering your household things is a good idea. These materials can be wrap around your furniture and sealed them with specialized adhesive tapes. It helps to avoid scratches and other unwanted marks on your furniture. You can buy a protection for your furniture and other household items from the company where you rent the vehicle but this means extra charges on the total renting fees. You can also use the pages of newspapers as alternatives to cover your smaller things to prevent fragments. Using boxes is a good idea, because you can maximize the space on the van by putting smaller things in it.
Driving After your load your things on the van carefully, you also have to be very careful on driving so you can reach your destination safely.
Unloading The first thing you need to unload are the smaller things followed by larger furniture. Just be cautious on doing it in order to prevent scratches on your items.
As a friend found out whilst having to move his possessions to London very quickly the majority of van hire vehicles can only drive a certain speed in his case it was 80mph, which apparently just wasn’t fast enough…
David Prosser at the Independent has written this interesting article on how people with savings are constantly being let down by interest rates
Back in the good old days, before the credit crunch and the recession, the occasional announcement of an interest rate cut would prompt mortgage borrowers to turn to their calculators with glee as they worked out by how much their repayments would come down. Meanwhile, Britain’s savers who comfortably outnumber the borrowers looked on ruefully. What those savers never imagined, however, was that there would come a time when almost all of them were losing money on their accounts. Yet that is the situation we now find ourselves in with the Bank of England base rate at 0.5 per cent and inflation, on yesterday’s figures, at 1.9 per cent. Assuming you are a basic-rate taxpayer, your money now needs to be in an account paying 2.375 per cent a year before tax in order for the real value of your savings not to be falling. Just one in 10 accounts clear that bar. If you’re a higher rate taxpayer, the rate you need is 3.75 per cent only one in 100 accounts is good enough to qualify. Nor is there a compelling reason to expect this situation to improve any time soon. Though there is likely to be a spike in inflation in January when VAT goes back up to 17.5 per cent, this will be a one-off statistical oddity. For most of 2010, the downside risk is pitched towards growth rather than inflation, and interest rates will stay low. Savers might once have hoped for political intervention in such a situation. After all, encouraging long-term saving is a key public policy for any government that wants to keep welfare spending down. Sadly, in the current environment, government is more interested in persuading the banks to lend at affordable rates savers, as usual, are on their own.
I guess in many ways saving is fairly vital if someone wishes to have a first time buyer mortgage however by the way things look now even the largest of savings accounts are not to be expected to earn any extra.
A Slight “Catch 22″ situation I reckon here: You save with a certain bank hoping for the best interest rate and then benefit only slightly from doing so…
There is something I simply love about this picture of a man and Pikachu and the horrible feeling it evokes of childhoods gone by and wasting money on the incredible “investment” of Pokemon cards.
As with all kids I spend lots of my parents hard earned cash on these cards. This bloke also and perhaps still does.
Pocket Monsters YO!
