Do I need to be worried I can’t afford my house?

[Str3ssed]

So on the surface of things, all should be ok.
dh earns 55k and I 40k (no real possibility of moving up quite yet) but we do get bonuses of around 10-15% (performance related)
current mortgage is 800. Childcare (2 dcs one of 30 funded hrs and one full paying) no options to reduce childcare costs either. We do 9/10 and alternate lieu days. One will have to stop when dc1 is of school age for pick ups and drop offs.

mortgage is likely to be 12-1300 pcm when we got to renew, we have a v low rate currently hence low monthly payments.

on paper after all expenses we have 2k left as disposable income however we just don’t… I can’t even explain it, some months there’s just bam some sort of urgent issue that needs fixing. Always and we end up at the end of the month coming pretty close to the limits and I cannot understand what is happening. DH is constantly breaking things as well that need to be replaced. He won’t mow the lawn or do weeding (I have chronic health problems) so we have a gardener in the summer. He always orders fucking takeaways too, at least once a week (maybe £15 a pop).

we’ve been over our budget with a fine tooth comb and as I said we should have 2k left. But we don’t. I’m getting worried that we won’t be able to afford a mortgage hike even though on paper we actually should and we’re super fortunate.

can someone reach through my phone and give my head a wobble please?!

He does have a credit card, but we used it for groceries as we get some cash back or for booking hols.

im worried there’s something he’s not telling me, I’m genuinely worried if the BR goes to like 5 or so % we’re going to be living paycheque to paycheque

I stopped work for a while having been taking home over £2k a month. DH earned considerably less than me. It was a very useful exercise in working out what exactly my £2k got spent on. A lot of it was childcare. But a lot was also frittered. I started menu planning and sticking to a shopping list and never taking the kids into the supermarket with me - that helped a lot!

We menu plan but food is a killer, especially with 2 young kids who won’t really eat things like lentils. We don’t even buy fresh veg anymore, all frozen, aside from a cucumber and maybe some carrots

You need joint finances coz you need to be able to see EVERYTHING to work out where all your problems lie.
The only way you can work out what to cut back on is to look at all your spending and I suspect your partner isn't honest with his.
You also need to work out priorities. You mention holiday vaccines - where are you going? To need vaccines probably means it's not somewhere cheap.
Between you the wages should be more the enough.

How much cash frittering on is happening?

The additional mortgage cost needs to be transferred into a savings account on payday and then live off the remainder.

Maybe your DH will cut his cloth better when his account has less in it?

You both need to be writing down EVERY expenditure.

Transfer food money to another account and use this only when you are buying supermarket shopping. You will soon see if you go over this per month.

Put the £2k you should have in another account after you both get paid.

Then question everything that is extra. Do you need it? Can you afford it? Can you buy it cheaper?

Be strict and you will manage.

Cut out the takeaways and make fakeaways instead b

What is your food budget and how much are you going over it?

@Defiantlynot41 the flow chart you posted does look interesting and I’d also be grateful for a link.

turkey so quite cheap but was advised by GP hep a and something else but they don’t do nhs travel vaccine anymore

exactly it should be enough but it’s not… I’ve spent £200 on extra things this month. Makeup and skincare ran out (drug store) nursery lost dc2 shoes and huge rip on coat and best part of £200

You say you have been over it with a fine toothcomb.....have you been over each others bank accounts together to see where spending is happening??

When is your renewal?

We do the similar with split of costs (65/35) I worked out what the additional cost would be per month and we changed what we were putting in each month to our joint account.
I then move that additional money to a savings account with good interest (tandem or chase is pretty good) as we come off our fix in February next year. That way we are building up a pot to pay extra off the mortgage when renewing and we are both used to the extra cost.

Agree re Joint Accounts. We struggled on with separate accounts for 6 years and could never understand exactly where the money was going to. Every 6 months or so DH would sub me in order to pay off all the things I had to put on the credit card. Now it’s a hundred times clearer what’s happening!

Must be a lot, I’d honestly screenshot my spending and post it here but obviously not wise lol

after all bills and paying hols I had £590 left and then each weekly shop is at least £100 sometimes more if ran out of cleaning stuff and we always nearly run out during the week

Also agree on meal planning - I cook a roast chicken we have it on Sunday then strip it down and make meals for the next 3 days.
So we have chicken noodles one night, chicken and pea risotto, chicken pasta or a non spicy chicken jollaf type. My children are fussy too we don't argue or pressure and 1 safe thing goes on the plate. If they try it great if they don't nevermind. My 4 year old has gone from beige only to trying radishes in 6 months!

Not each others no,

we’ve got some savings (largely my inheritance that we’ll use for the htb on the house, well half of the htb) but I can’t bring it down any further. Downsizing isn’t even an option because a smaller house would cost now what we bought ours for

That’s what’s happening! You think that’s the issue?

We meal plan, but my eldest is the weirdest fussiest eater, the type of kid that loves all veg, it’s things like meat and carbs she doesn’t want to eat and she was faltering growth for ages so she will actually starve herself

Save first
If only someone hold told me that 20 years ago!

I don't think so.

I'm sure you'll be just fine once you start to prioritise.

You need to get super organised. My oh and I bunk all our money in together. We have spreadsheet for outgoings so we know what we have left over. We move a portion straight to savings and keep a portion for fun money and have a set limit for what we will put on the credit card for the month. We worked out what out weekly spend is for food/diesel etc and put that in a separate acc and move the across every Thursday. We've been together a long time and I used to be soooo bad with money but if you can see it all in front of you and have a plan its easy to see where you go wrong

With home projects/repairs why not do a spreadsheet of all the things you want to do including coatings and a priority level 1,2 or 3. Do t spend anything more than necessary till the end of the month then see what is available, prioritising the number 1s.
We have a separate holidays/projects account which is helpful as we try not to transfer money over from savings unless it's really urgent.

So sit down and go over each others accounts.....see where the spending is. Do it with a spreadsheet which has everything including top up shops etc. Put the money in that you will need to ahead of the mortgage fix ending.
It's not necessarily about reducing to the next bracket if thats a way off it's about getting used to the payments. You can decide what to do with that pot, be it keep it for emergencies or pay some off. Any overpayment will reduce the number of years.

Would also suggest going to see a mortgage broker and playing around with the numbers maybe look at extending the number of years on the mortgage to reduce the cost if it really is unaffordable. But I have a feeling that money can be found if spending is reigned in.
My DH had regular excess spending just because he was honestly buying crap! It's only when we sat down and did the spreadsheets that he realised just how much he was clicking on amazon!

As for those unexpected costs....if its clothes/shoes related go on vinted!

Also agree on meal planning - I cook a roast chicken we have it on Sunday then strip it down and make meals for the next 3 days.
I don't know how people manage this! With our hungry teens the whole thing is gone in one meal (occasionally some left for a
Risotto or something for lunch for the two of us next day).

You need to prioritise. Can you afford the holidays you are taking? The gardener, what is getting broken that needs replacing every month? Maybe you don't need to replace everything? Or do it cheaper?

Stop the takeaways, there's just no need. 2k a month is just "disappearing"?? Madness

Get the budgeting app YNAB. It's not cheap but on your salaries, you could save the yearly subscription fee within a month (me and DH did, him on 60k, me on 24k). You wouldn't believe the amount of money he was throwing away buying things before it. Putting his spending into a budget made him self conscious and in the first month he saved £800 while declaring he had no idea why he had so much left over.

I meal plan too. The most important thing I learned was to have a few days of cheap, low effort and store cupboard meals planned. Otherwise I'd be tempted to order a takeaway because the effort of cooking the meals I planned was too much. That being said, our food costs are still rising at an alarming rate. For cheap easy meals, we do veggie chow mein with frozen stir fry veg, noodles and a sauce using a recipe from kwoklynn Wan's Chinese takeaway book. Homepride pasta bake with frozen veg, usually just peas. Chilli and rice using a mix of 2 canned beans plus a squeeze of lime and a few tortilla chips on the side. Egg fried rice with lots of peas and a diced carrot. Pea and leek risotto using frozen veg and no wine (a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar mimics the acidity of wine). Cheesy Quesadilla with either pepper and onion in a Mexican spice mix or microwaved sweet potato and a drained can of blackbeans.

We're a family of 4, two adults, one teen, one greedy 10 year old. I can make a large chicken do 3 meals.

1. Lots and lots of veg with the roast dinner to fill up on.

Pick the chicken to the bone, under carriage and all. Make stock with the bones.

1. Chicken risotto made with the stock and half the left over meat or chicken noodle soup made with half the chicken, stock, rice noodles, peas, sweetcorn and pak choi with Tom yum paste.

1. Leek, chicken and cheese pie. Use the last half of the chicken left overs in a cheese and leek sauce with puff pastry top. It's more leek than chicken. Serve with lots of veg.