To have thought our lower income was enough?

Thanks OP, this is really helpful. There's me & DD5. I've recently separated from her Dad and we're selling the family home. My take home is ~£3000 and I get another ~£400 from cms & child benefit. I'm hoping that with equity i can get a mortgage of around £1000 a month. I own my (old) car outright, wraparound is £100 a month. Im looking for a newish build to avoid unexpected costs. Its more than I'd like but less than a similar rental.

I saw that thread, it was £47k and the OP was a SAHM. They were splitting, and she thought that he should easily be able to fund two separate households given his massive massive income. That’s why people were saying it wasn’t much.

@BraOffPjsOn - I think “enough” is a very relative term and unique to each person. For some people is enough and for others it isn’t. I think the best is not compare.

I suspect a lot of people here buy only the most expensive caviar when they're out shopping for caviar.

I think it will be tight so it’s all about your priorities. Do your kids have hobbies and clubs? Do you want to go on holiday? Have a car? Etc. The maths is fine if the answer is that the house is your priority, but it’s above the recommendations as most people want some leftover for other things (in a perfect world of course!)

We hadn’t entirely understood how much more expensive it is to have a larger house. First world problem of course but there’s always something that needs to be fixed, it’s much more expensive to heat, when we had to get new carpets it was a lot more than at our old house, council tax etc etc etc. We had a huge challenge when the mortgage rates went up. So just look at everything really carefully as you’ll definitely be sacrificing for the house.

There are plenty of people living in London on minimum wage as well

This is a very good suggestion.

I have overpaid our mortgage to that amount on a similar income.

I could manage fine month on month but I would worry about being committed to it for 25 years. There's not much wiggle room for big expenses like car repairs or maintenance costs.

I'd feel more comfortable in a newish house with lower energy costs and less likely to need major upkeep. Which ours is not!

I think for most people that is unrealistic. Property prices make that unattainable for many.

YANBU as life doesn't need a huge wage to be worth living and buying a home.

BUT.... it's only feasible to borrow at those limits on that salary IF you can fix a rate for a decent period of time, have fantastic income security, and forseeable ongoing low other ougoings. So probably best avoided.

Yes but that is like saying the average woman weighs 150kg (made that figure up, clearly) - it doesn’t make someone who is 120kg healthy nor does it make someone on £50k wealthy.
Given how much literally everything has shot up in price, except wages, £37.5k average annual income is not what it was 2 years ago and many would struggle, esp in certain parts of the country.

(quote fail!)

I find this bonkers!

We live in the SE. Our mortgage is 1650. We dont have any childcare bills and have a primary aged child. One international 5 day break a year and one UK week staycation. No car finance.

We bring home 4500 so our mortgage is 37% of our income. We pay this fine. And save 700 a month. TBF we rarely buy new clothes although we do have a massage each every month and hubby has therapy fortnightly which is pricey

Our mortgage is a similar amount but we take home a fair bit more. We have our own business so take out what we need, as and when, but it probably amounts to £5.5k a month. We are not extravagant and I shop in lidl. Kids do a fair amount of stuff and I like nice clothes plus holidays.

I should also say that going to your max borrowing limit is never a good idea. It doesn't allow for any wriggle room when life happens.

Our income is about £2000 a month take home. We don't have cars or childcare.

For the first time ever, we've started to feel the pinch. I've signed up to regular overtime now which I've never felt the need to do before.

The average for men in their 40s is around £46k though so £57k isn't a huge amount - not a low earner bit not massively high either.

That’s the same as we pay with an income of circa 150k pre tax and I couldn’t imagine having paid that as a mortgage years ago when our income was lower.

Our council tax and bills are really high too. I think I’d aim to up your joint income first as 35k after tax is really low - particularly with a larger house and as your children get older

Yeh never use mnet in terms of salaries

Youll see idiots on here saying they are earning 50k and strugging when they are just bad with money

I even saw one thread a while back saying struggling on 150k idiots.

If you are on over 50k and struggling you are bad with money.

Word of advice- never, ever, ever use Mumsnet as a way to guage the norm. Ever.

Totally depends how you live. For ua our outgoings are huge, we spend a lot on things such as holidays, cars, days out, takeaways, food bill is 800 a month alone. and have children who do clubs, need sports equipment etc. So we couldnt live on it in our current life. But definitely could if we didnt have kids and was careful with our money.
Are you also likely to increase earnings or decrease over the term of the mortgage.

its all about the percentage of your income. It was years ago but the highest percentage we paid was 16%. We went nowhere near the top of budget ever, the goal was always more time to do the things that we wanted which we have achieved by retiring early rather than a bigger house.

@greatyak Agree but what tickled me was you named my two least favourite UK places for vastly different reasons.

Yes, this. I've just checked on zoopla: round our way (South London, zone 3, decent postcode) the mortgage you can get with a £57k annual salary and £30k deposit will buy you a 1-bed, 1-bath flat, (probably leasehold) usually with the kitchen and sitting room as one open-plan space. In certain other parts of the country it'll get you a freehold 3-bed 2-bath house with parking and a bit of garden.

Personally it would be too high for me to take on.

We try to follow the 50:30:20 roughly, 50% of income being bills/food/essentials so on your income that would mean £1750 allocated. A £1300 mortgage would only leave 450 for every other household bill, transport costs, food shop etc which isn’t possible so would be a no from me.

Why don’t you try overpaying the amount of money your prepared to increase your bills to to overpay your mortgage for a few months and see how it goes or put it in a completely separate account you can’t touch or dip into