Love Thy Neighbour?
We know we should all try to get on with our neighbours, give them a quick wave or a friendly “hello” in the morning, but lets be fair its not always that easy is it?. The neighbours we ‘inherit’ tend not to be like the ones we hope for. Yes, it would be lovely to have an old lady next door who is slightly hard of hearing so that you don’t get complaints about your music or the television being on too loud. She would bake for you once a week and bring your washing in when it rained and you were out. Now back to reality with a bump, yes realistacly we have the following-
‘Mr Keeping Up With The Jones’s’ Yes Im sure you have encounered this species at some point. He makes sure he has caught our eye as you discreetly try to sneek back home from the shops. Then he tells you what he’s just had from the shops (ususally something very expensive and rare), he may then go on to tell you how much he has spent on the garden, car, house this year and finishes with the question “why dont you knock this wall down and build a garage/summerhouse/patio blah blah blah??, yes you’ve heard it all before. A good way to deal with this sort of neighbour is to mention you are going to build something very extravagant which will take alot of time and resources. This will hopefully make them want to do the same and in turn means they will be too busy to bother you for a while.
‘The Nosey Parker’ Aah yes, the nosey so and so who knows your every move. In fact they even know more about you then your nearest and dearest, which take-away you had over the weekend, which day you washed your smalls and what time your post was delivered. It is a love-hate relationship, you love to hate them, however, they are extremely handy to have around to take in parcels or keep an eye out when you are away. Don’t be too harsh on them, afterall isn’t there a little bit of a nosey neighbour in us all?
The Snotty One Finally we finish with the snotty, look down your nose type. Everyone on the street knows they don’t want to be there and the house is a stop gap until they can move to somewhere with a better postcode. You will be lucky if you get any verbal communication from them, if you are really lucky maybe a Christmas card from a posh retailer. Advice? Pretend they dont exist, the same way they pretend you don’t!!!
The author writes about personal finance topics, specially mortgages and insurance. You can read a guide on types of joint ownership in UK and Wales in his blog.