to get first mortgage after 40?

[ivebeencalledworse]

Mortgages are not something I know about. I am totally ignorant of them. I've lived without one my whole life. I came from a broken home with no guidance on how to be an adult. I left home at 18 and made my own way, which included debt, poor relationship choices, alcoholism, recklessness, and finally an abusive relationship and had to start all over again with a baby.

Don't get me wrong, I managed well enough, worked, remained functional.

But now at 40 my life is totally turned around because I married a wonderful, responsible, and loving man who adopted my child and we've been happy for five years.

He's younger than me and ambitious. He's supporting us while I use my income to pay off debts, which is going well. I aim to be debt free in the next few years.

I have a council home but my family want a better life so we are talking about a mortgage together.

I have a lot of research to do but when I say I'm ignorant I mean I'm starting from scratch.

Any glaring things I need to know would be gratefully received.

Am I "too old" or anything? Will my bad credit history (even if I am debt-free) be a real issue?

Also, I'm a freelancer with a variable and small income. I will not be going back into full-time employment. My maximum earning will be £1,000/month.

I genuinely never thought I would even be thinking about a mortgage but life has never stopped surprising me.

I appreciate input.

Hi OP. Having read the entire thread I think you're putting yourself into a very vulnerable situation, especially as you have a child.
Please go and see an independent financial advisor on your own before agreeing to anything.
Please read up on mortgages and all the financial responsibilities that come with it. I know you think it's 'boring' but don't make more bad decisions because you can't be 'bothered'.
What level accountancy qualification is your DH doing? If he's still only training, it will take at least 10yrs to earn the higher level salaries.
Realistically you will need a 20% deposit- so much more than the 8k you wrote down. Can you save this in the short time frame that you mentioned?
Get help for your mental health- and increase your hours to become more independent. Be the role model for your daughter in that you should not have to rely on a spouse.

I do hope everything works out well, but it's better to prepare for when the worst hits the fan.
Good luck.

Inflation will always erode savings in cash and long term investments typically always outperform inflation. Hence why pensions are put into investments.

Investments are never guaranteed but you can protect yourself with reputable investment options and a level of risk depending on your savings period.

for a short period cash may be more safe in your position but only at a very good interest rate.

www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/savings/how-to-save/inflation-what-the-saver-needs-to-know

He has life insurance with us named.
I think a joint mortgage is possible from what I've gleaned here. I've got some valuable information on what to act on now, while we both get up to speed on the ins and outs.

I am focusing on increasing my earnings, but not to the detriment of my mental health, so it won't be full-time work, but it could get better. I'm good for state pension, I make my voluntary payments.

OP I also think you need to be a bit more sceptical about your partners aspirations.

is the idea of dinner parties and verity as a neighbour yours or his?

it all sounds like Poorly focused dreams not reality - and bit immature for a 28 year old man . I am not even clear from this thread if he is training to become a chartered accountant or a technician/assistant/book keeper. Is he maybe puffing himself up to impress you? That’s fine but don’t make financial decisions based on his mental picture of having a dinner party in a detached five bedroom house with him smoking a cigar and you wearing an apron. If he wants a business where he gives people financial advice he needs to be more realistic about his own finances.

and if he can’t explain the basics of a mortgage to you he won’t be able to set up his own accountancy firm.

there is a reason you turned to the internet and didn’t feel able to have a mature conversation with your husband about this.

I'm good for state pension, I make my voluntary payments.

Why? You don't need to if you have a child. Your NI conts are paid for you if you claim CB.

I owe class 2 national insurance contributions because I'm self-employed. I had a bill on my gateway account to pay them. I have 18 full years and 7 years that were not recorded properly, I have no idea why, but it can't be changed now.

Well, this isn't true - it is sometimes too late (not saying so necessarily to OP)

@ivebeencalledworse

I've read the full thread.

I've so many concerns.

Firstly. You seem swept up in a romantic haze with this 'white knight' if a DH. You keep talking about not wanting to be dependent on him - but you are at present? He is paying all living costs, while you pay off your debts.

Secondly. He's very young and you are a lot older. You really need to protect yourself in case it doesn't work out. For example, does he want DC? On the subject of DC, your DD is not 'our' child, however much he cares for her. She is your child. He sounds naive & has a long way to go reach the kind of financial success & security he is aspiring to.

The dynamic in your relationship is troubling. I get that you more than deserve to be looked after following a tough upbringing - and you seem to have done amazingly so all credit to you. This is an example of what I mean

He leaves dinner plates in the garden and goes back to work. I get taken on holiday. It's a deal, a symbiotic relationship of mutual appreciation.

I think purchasing your current house is the best option.

I am surprised at your very derogatory comments about where you live & your desire to move. Weren't you happy there until recently, when your DH started talking aspirationally?

Firstly, I was a SAHM when DH and I bought this house. I had been working full time before DS came along, I gave up work and we rented to move to a better area - we put the equity from that sale down as a deposit on this house.

I'm on both the mortgage and the deeds despite no income at the time (I work part time now and have my own small craft business).

Secondly, if you both agree a mortgage is the way to be able to move up and out, I agree about using your Right To Buy. It's been explained in depth up thread but to do a quick side by side comparison. And this is just a very rough thing to give you an idea.

a) You put £10K down on a £200K house and borrow £190K in a mortgage. Which means borrowing 4.75 times his salary if he's on £40K. That, on Barclays, works out between £990 and £1000 per month. Again, on Barclays, looking for a 95% repayment mortgage only gives 2 to choose from. Bear that in mind as you read on.

b) You find out that your current council home is valued at £150K. You've been in your property as a tenant for five years (you get more discount the longer you've been there but let's assume 5 years to start with). So that's a 35% discount in most places (but you'd need to check with the council and work out how many years discount you can get). But 35% discount is is £52,500. Which means your mortgage is £97,500. Which, if he's on £40K, is just under 2.5 times his salary. A very quick and dirty calculation on Barclays makes that just under £500 per month or thereabouts in mortgage repayments. And the number of different repayment mortgages Barclays could offer you? 18

Five years pass and you're now out of the sliding scale of paying any of the discount back if you decide to sell. Let's assume house prices have stayed where they are just for the sake of argument. So you now want that £200K house in a nicer area. You sell for £150K which is what your house was originally worth. You don't have to pay back the discount of £52,500. You can use that as the deposit on the £200K house. Which means you now need a mortgage of £147,500. And that means him borrowing around 3.75 times his salary. And, again putting that into Barclays mortgage calculator on line shows a monthly payment of £670 - £750. And, again, you'd be offered from 18 different repayment mortgages with them.

And, of course, Barclays aren't the only mortgage lenders - I just chose them as they came up with the first on line calculator when I searched!

Of course, you also have to factor in legal fees, stamp duty and all the rest but that would be the same if you bought the £200K house now or later.

And, as others have said, you can always go on a council exchange list to see if you can do a house swap. There are always people needing to move for all sorts of reasons. My parents swapped twice when I was growing up and mum swapped two more times when my dad died as she didn't need such a large house and then wanted to move closer to us.

I would check with the council what discounts they offer. Do a bit of general playing with figures on line to see what you could borrow. Find out what that mortgage amount would cost. Find out what fees you have to pay on top, like solicitors, stamp duty etc., That will give you a figure to look at which will either make you go 'oh, doable!' or 'oh God, no life!' It'll help you and your DH narrow it all down a bit.

I'm not getting into the relationship between you and DH. I do wonder, though, if when he said about getting a mortgage on your council house then moving you all into rented, he was thinking you could get a tenant. Which, for example, in our current house, we could. But in RTB until the discounted period (usually five years) is over, I don't think you can. So you'd have to stump up mortgage on an empty house for five years and rent on the one you're living in. He may not have even looked into it enough to know that yet.

AAT isn't a qualified accountant. It's an Accounting Technician. It's like claiming a child doing GCSE's has finished University and has a degree. £21k v £80k-£100k in the ACA Accountancy Practices near me.

I know. that's why I never said he was an accountant but was training from the bottom up to be one.

No. You didn't. That's a total lie.

"He's ten years younger and training to be an accountant."

He's not training to be an Accountant. He's not an ACA or ACCA Trainee. Please don't lie.

Accepting a job as an AAT Trainee is a totally totally different job to accepting a job as an ACA Trainee. One becomes an Accounting Technician. One becomes a Qualified Accountant. 2 very different things. Do you think a nurse who takes out your stitches at the GP surgery is the same as an Head Consultant at the Hospital?

OP if your husbands ultimate goal it to qualify as an accountant and open his own practice then he is decades away from that.

he talks about being a business man, having and office and travelling for business. He hasn’t even properly started his accountancy training yet.

he is a fantasist. These are all moonshots.

your must sensible line of attach is to buy your council house and see where he is career wise in five years.

please don’t assume this wealthy lifestyle is just around the corner. The lifestyle he is describing requires well over £100k salary, seeing you aren’t earning much.

there is nothing wrong with dreaming big - but you also need to accept this may never happen. Performing at that very high level and earning. Those salaries requires a lot of talent and experience. Only a few make it.

You're right, he needs bringing down. I know what AAT is, I was going to do one myself, but he's leading up to it. I didn't know it took that long.

Leading up to the stuff above it, not the AAT itself, which he is already doing via work.

OP this gets odder and odder.

if you knew he was training to be an accountant technician rather than an accountant why were you talking about him being a business man, opening his own practice, living in a neighbourhood with dinner parties and verity as a neighbour?

surely you knew there was a long road ahead - he needs to become an actual accountant - he then needs to build his experience, if he opens a company I would say he needs to be at least five years post qualification, he then needs a year or maybe more until the business turns a profit.

surely you know that?

what age is your daughter - I assume by the timelines she is at least ten? She will be away at university before the big house in the fancy neighbourhood is affordable.

AAT - 3 years. Then trying to actually gain an ACA training contract. Then ACA - 3 years. Then working for 10 years. Then opening your own practice. 20 years. Plus.

OP is in cloud cuckoo land.

Jobs on Reed. AAT Trainee. £18k-£25k.

A lot closer to 25 then 18 at the moment a lot of those job adverts and specs would’ve been written back in January and still not filled. We had trainees start on £30 in the last two months

Yeah he's 20 years away from the big job/own business.

I don't know anything about accountancy but I have good friends who are accountants. They're mid 40s/early 50s earning good money 80/90k in the Midlands. But they've been doing it for 20-25 years.

Your chap is decades away from his big house aspiration. It's good to have dreams but equally you need to stay realistic and not go all in on what is currently a pipe dream & put your DD's security at risk.

What worries me about your situation is that you want to be a passenger. I do get how nice it would feel to be properly taken care of....but please do make sure you and your DD are safe and secure. You dont want to make your own money, you dont want to work, you want to be a housewife to a much younger man who doesnt have the best money management skills. Can you see how that has the potential to go terribly wrong for you?

Also, can i just ask, why don't you want a joint account? Its a very sensible way to pay household costs. You both pay into the joint account according to your share of earnings. My DP and I earn in a ratio of 55:45, so thats how much we pay into the joint account. If I earned 80% of the household income, I would be paying 80% of the total bills. Its a really fair way to do it and it means you both have a bit of money left for fun things as well.

You have dreams OP and maybe you’re being a bit more optimistic than the facts really support. But it doesn’t not put your dreams out of reach. Especially if you use right to buy.

I see in your OP you say you are married and your DH has adopted your DD. So you have protection in the sense of a right to a share of the equity in any house, whether or not you are on the deeds. It could still mean that a break up would leave you worse off because you’d only have a bit of equity at first and that probably wouldn’t be financially equivalent to a secure council house tenancy, but there is potential to get into a much better position. And you’re still a few years away if the plan is to pay off your debt then save for a deposit first.

If you pay off your debt in the next couple of years and then save for a deposit for a couple of years, you’ll have a better idea of how well DH’s career is going. And you may have found a way to make more money without challenging your mental health more. You but you council house with a big discount (as will have been there for at least 9 years at that point?) and stay there for 5 years paying as much into the house or savings as you can (not just the mortgage amount if you can manage to do more without scrimping). By that point your joint income may well have increased significantly and with the profit on the council house and the extra you’ve been saving, you could be well placed to buy something bigger. That’s not unachievable even if your optimistic view of DH’s earning power isn’t quite met.

What you need to do is take it step by step. Clear your debt, save for a decent deposit, sort out your credit record. All of that is going to be great for you as a family anyway. When it gets to the point of buying, make sure you aren’t papering over any cracks in your relationship before you agree and go ahead. Because, I think, the first 5 - 10 years after you give up your tenancy and buy are the ones where there is the potential for it to be financially disastrous for you. You won’t be able to get that tenancy back and you won’t have enough equity to compensate for that loss.

It would be sensible to continue to look for ways to increase your own earning power. It increases your family’s financial resilience and makes it easier to weather economic ups and downs, and it makes you and your DD’s situation less vulnerable. You’ve started to sort your financial situation with your DH. Don’t let it stop where he’s holding things up. Make it a partnership. I don’t mean you have to work more hours if that hurts your mental health or destroys your family’s quality of life, but if you can develop more lucrative work, that would be a good investment.