If you had no mortgage how much would you need to earn?

[NaymeChaynge]

Myself and DH are considering selling a tiny flat in London and moving to the north where my family are from. We currently have a mortgage on the flat but with the equity in it could buy a lovely four bedroom house with a garden outright and have no mortgage. Lovely.

The downside is the area we would be moving to would not be good at all for our jobs- we haven't even worked out what we could feasibly do, possibly a commute to a nearby city but even if we got jobs semi-related to what we do now we would not earn as much as we do in London.

In London we earn between us around £80k (not that it feels like that paying London prices for everything and living in a tiny place- housing costs are a lot). I'm trying to work out how much we would need to earn between us to live a comfortable lifestyle. By that I don't mean fancy cars and designer clothes, but enough to save a bit and go on holiday. How much would you need to earn if you didn't have a mortgage/ rent to cover everything and have a relatively nice lifestyle?

We'd need about £4,000 a month, so £80k would be about right to cover our expenses without the mortgage.

We send the DC to independent schools and run two cars, though. If we didn't have those, which are the biggest monthly expenses after the mortgage, our outgoings would be a lot less.

Probably about 30k

You might be surprised about what you can earn. When I lived in the north 10yrs ago I earned 40k, as did DH. Both in the engineering sector, me with no qualifications.

Where are you moving to from the north? I have colleagues that commute to birmingham, milton keynes and manchester from Sheffield/Manchester/Carlisle. You don't have to necessarily give up your jobs.

1000 a month being modest and 4-5k being honest.

We have no mortgage and live comfortably (south west england) on £27k per annum. Only run one car though!!!

Its a bit how long is a piece of string.

For a start I'd look at things that would be reasonably easy to calculate i.e. council tax. If you've got an idea of the sort of property you can calculate bills (higher in a four bed detached up North than a tiny London flat). Would you run two cars?

I think you could live comfortably and holiday on 30k in your pocket. 1.5k/ month overheads 6k savings (half shorter term, half pension/ longterm) 2k to roughly cover that annual big expense that always occurs i.e car, boiler, roof and 4k for holidays.

That should have been 2-3k not 4-5k

About a thousand a month, maybe 1500. We don't live an expensive life.

Think about what your mortgage costs are now.. .then just take that off!

How many children?

For just me I think I would want £2k after tax to live an OK life after housing costs.

£1500 to £2000

Remember you'll pay less tax if oyu both earn less, so the net impact of movoing from 2x£40k to 2x£20k is not the full £40k.

You'll probably both need a car - don't forget to factor that in if you don't have one in London.

Same as witsender I reckon. We've done the sums and work on 10k to 15k pa if no holidays beyond camping, and no theatre or other outings without thinking about it. That's three people, one car, rural but not frugal, no mortgage.

Also assumes a savings buffer in case of catastrophes needing capital sums, otherwise the reduced income with little to spare means no contingency funds and therefore risk being forced into debt.

If you only run one car 25-35k between you should be fine. Obviously depends how much you spend on eating out/groceries/clothes etc etc.

Do you have children? We have 2 kids, 2 cars, a couple of holidays a year and the kids do quite a few activities. Our bills are not too high. I'd say we need £3k a month which would be two 25k salaries.

about £1200 a month

I live on 1200 a month comfortably and rent comes out of that, too. There's only me and the dog, though.

i would say 2500 for bills food etc but you need to think about whether you could get jobs you would be happy doing.

We have no mortgage. It means that I can afford to work part time and as a supply teacher rather than get another teaching job. (Hurrah!)

My DP is a civil servant and earns approx £40,000pa.

This, combined with what I earn (very little!) is more than enough. We have a car each, and never have to think about purchases. We have also been able to build up several thousand in savings.

You need to work it the other way around - what MUST you have? What would be an acceptable lifestyle for you for the next 10 years?

If you realistically NEED a monthly theatre trip to be genuinely content then youll need to live somewhere where that is reachable, part of the appeal of London is that everything is reachable - its reachable outside of London as well if you live in the right places for it. And then cars - one each, one between? Takeaway, food? Public school? Holidays - how often, where?

Once you have all that, you can say "what will all that cost where we are looking at?"

We have no mortgage, live in the West, run 1 car and DH earns c.£50k, I work part time and earn about £7k - to be honest we feel quite "rich".

I'm amazed at some of the amounts! I guess you increase spending to what you have coming in.

We'd live comfortably on 30k if we didn't have a mortgage.

OP I understand you don't have children- expensive little blighters!

When we paid off our mortgage last year DH and I played around with some numbers and worked out that at our current level of expenditure (one DC at state school and another semi-independent at university) and barring serious expensive illness we could probably live on our savings for another 10 years before opting for voluntary euthanasia.

Very reassuring... NOT!

But two adults, running two cars and living comfortably in the North.... £3,000 a month?

I am at some of these responses!

I think we'd need 2.5k a month at the very most to live a very comfortable life. There are three of us. Maybe I am being unrealistic.

If you want your lifestyle to stay the same, just deduct your rent / mortgage payments from your net income. How much you need versus how much you'd like are two different things. I think also a lot is to do with how much disposable income you are used to having. You often basically live to your means. Some people less so, others live above their means.