What’s the maximum mortgage you would pay in these circumstance?

[Mirrorxx]

I’m hoping for some advice from those who have experience of how much a child costs. DH and I are looking for a new house and I’m pregnant with our first. We haven’t found anything we like but I’m unsure about increasing our budget. We will have to pay full time childcare so I don’t want to overstretch but I have no idea how much a child costs apart from childcare.
So with a take home joint salary of around 5200 what’s the maximum you think we could afford for a mortgage each month?
Thank you

Do you need to move? Personally, if I didn't actually need to move I would probably stay put until I was back at work after maternity leave, then you will have a better idea of how much you can afford/what your prioritise are etc.

Our joint income is about the same (maybe very slightly more) and we currently spend £1350. But we are about to move and our mortgage costs go up to £1950. This is fine with us.

Our childcare costs are £450 a month and we own our car outright. We don't really do holidays as we don't enjoy them much, but we do the odd weekend away (in the UK as we don't fly).

I realise our mortgage is way higher than others mentioned on here but tbh I thought that was pretty normal - it certainly is where we are in London!

We take home about the same and are about to buy a new house with monthly payments of 1500. We currently pay 700 so it's a big step up but we feel comfortable that we can afford it. That's with around 800 in childcare and a few loan repayments too.

@afrikat that’s interesting. Are you able to go on holiday and save with those commitments?

We still save. About £500 a month. Some of that gets used on a holiday but it's mainly house maintenance. We have separate savings for our main holiday, weddings we attend, Christmas etc.

@Mirrorxx - that's holidays too but, tbf, most of our holidays are UK based kid centric. We're hoping to go abroad next year. Once DS is in school and a few debts have been paid off we can ramp up the savings to about £1500 a month. That'll be a combination of near term 'things' (holidays) and long term savings

@mirrorxx yes we tend to have one abroad and one UK holiday a year. We put money aside every month for holidays etc