To think my daughter is taking a crazy financial risk?

[daufhtercrusus]

Unfortunately my daughter has separated from her partner with a 2 year old. She saved to buy the house they both lived in and both paid half the mortgage after they got together. He is not making any claim on the house as it was a short lived relationship which is fortunate in the circumstances. He has however said he wants not part in my granddaughter’s life which has left my daughter deciding to go part time to four days a week which will obviously reduce her income drastically. I know she will be able to claim maintenance but we don’t know what that looks like and I wouldn’t like her to rely on that. Me and DH both think she now needs to move to find somewhere with lesser mortgage payments, daughter is saying 1,100 for a four bed house is a good deal and it would be pointless moving now. She’s never told us her finances before but I am shocked she is now left paying this, surely this is far too much to pay especially as a single parent? Am I unreasonable to encourage her to downsize and get somewhere which much lesser payments? Her current rate is fixed until 2027 but it is portable. I am very worried for her.

My parents inherited my dad’s uncle’s (crappy, tiny) house, which they have lived in all their adult lives ( it was also my dad’s home from the age of 12) so have never had a mortgage, and don’t understand anything about house buying.

Unfortunately, during lockdown when I was between moves and living temporarily somewhere, I needed to have a mortgage statement sent to my parents’ house and to ask them to open and photograph it so I could email it to to provide documentation for a house sale. We’d only lived in the house a few years, so it was a huge outstanding amount (comfortably covered by the sale, with some profit). My father still hasn’t recovered.😀

I think we're on the same page, OP is keen for her daughter to downsize and port her mortgage; I was pointing out to OP that porting may not be the answer using the obvious change in circumstances that OPs daughter has had (a small child who it seems came along after the daughter bought the home) that would affect supposed affordability.

OP needs to back off and let her daughter deal with her own finances because she clearly knows sod all about her daughters finances or the current state of things. £500 mortgage as an example but also all the costs associated with moving, we're purchasing a family members home and not doing everything we'd do with an unknown purchase and it's still costing a lot up front, money that isn't easy to pull out of nowhere if its unexpected.

When I sold my last home there were a few first time buyers bidding for it. It was a nightmare.

three buyers pulled out because their parents got involved and said it was too expensive!!

one adult women had actually go quite far into the process when her dad said no - she should never have bid over asking price and said I was ripping her off😂😂. It went back on the market and I got an extra £30k!

at that time houses in my area where all bidding up - I had thirty viewers. I often wonder if this woman ever managed to buy a house with that halfwit in her ear!

My DS is looking for a room to rent. As well as the local paper (which actually doens't exist any more in paper form) my parents suggested he should look at cards up in shop windows. I'm not sure DS even knew what they were talking about.

I think it's very normal, and where I live you couldn't rent a 2-bed flat for that. My friend's rent is now over £1,250 a month, and although she gets some help from UC, the max they will include for housing in her area is just shy of £1k a month, so she still struggles.

Having 2 spare bedrooms means that your DD could rent one or both of them out should she find it difficult to manage, OP.

I also don't think it's any of your business, tbh. I'd have been livid if my mother had tried to tell me to sell my house!

It may be that the saving in child care costs is greater than the drop in net pay, so she could be better off.

A friend was far better off dropping from 5 days to 3, because it took her salary below the threshold for student loan deductions, she paid proportionately less tax and NI, and she saved 40% of her commuting costs as well as 2 days nursery fees.

It's a four bedroom house so she could let out two rooms to students or a couple or even B & B or AirB&B some days per week..
Is the house in a useful position - close to university, offices, hospital or parks?

What is the worst that can happen?
She is having a go.
She could try to rent out a room or rent out the whole place and move in with you or rent a small bed sit.
Selling and purchasing something else would possibly be the worst that could happen.

Me too!

I can just see the thread title now: "AIBU to think my DM is totally out of touch and is infantilising me?"

Yea - the I earn over £Xxk a year and can easily afford my mortgage but my mum is guessing my salary on the internet and random strangers are talking about what benefits I can receive and how many rooms in my house I should rent out to other random strangers.

my mum seems to think I am
financially incompetent!!!

OP, it sounds like you are out of touch with today's realities and out of your depth and lack the skills or finances to help your dd.

You are only worried for yourself having to bail your dd out. I think your dd has enough to worry about than about than soothing your concerns and explaining to you how her finances work in the present day so you can feel reassured.

I think you need to step out of this.

I'm so confused by at lot of what you're saying OP.

1. She is moving from working 5 days a week to 4 days a week - I don't see that as a "drastic reduction" in her income.
2. She bought the house on her own, so presumably earns enough to get the mortgage for it. She was paying this before her (short term) partner moved in, so can presumably pay it again.
3. You don't actually know how much she earns, but assume it's not enough. She does know her own finances, and is happy to drop a day working.
4. You say you'd never take out a mortgage of more than 500 in repayments, but as you have an adult daughter I would imagine your first mortgage was many years ago so you don't actually have a realistic idea of what mortgages are like these days.

I say, best of luck to her!! If you can't help her financially, be there for her emotionally and take your DGD on occasion to grow your bond with her and give your daughter a break.

You put it much more succinctly than I did 🤣

Dd sounds like a young woman who has her head screwed on to me.
At the very least there is no need to rush
into a decision to move. As PP have said there is always the option of a lodger although, to
those specifying female, remember that women have boyfriends, brothers, fathers, guys they pick up on a night out that they have never met
before so I’d lay down some clear ground rules.

OP, look at it this way...

• Moving is expensive - she'd likely be paying out thousands in costs to sell and buy somewhere cheaper
• If you port your mortgage you'd have to pay early repayment charges on any drop in the loan amount, so that's more thousands.
• Porting your mortgage generally triggers new affordability checks which she might not pass with childcare costs taken into account. So she might lose her current mortgage rate, which is presumably lower than rates on offer now - meaning moving to a cheaper property could well end in higher mortgage payments anyway

So even assuming she could sell, can you see how this isn't actually a financially sensible plan? She could easily shell out more than a year's worth of mortgage payments in fees and charges, only to end up paying more than she currently is for less house.

I get that monthly payments over £1000 seem high - they are high! It's not like everyone is excited to be paying that much! - but they're normal nowadays, and no amount of wanting them to be lower is going to make it a good idea to bin off a perfectly good house at vast expense just to have the same (or higher) mortgage anyway.

Her finances are non of your business - you need to keep your nose our of them.

£1100 pcm on a mortgage is on the low side
If she moved she'd have to find £20k or more for stamps duty, fees solicitors etc - that would be far better spent on her current mortgage.

It sounds to me that you are out of date on how much everything actually costs and over involved in her life.

Gosh rent on my 2 bed house is £1100.
I manage as a single parent, no maintenance and average wage as a nurse and UC too up.
It's tight but I make it work.

If you are really worried that she won't be able to manage, you could consider offering to have the child for one (or more, if you like) day a week so that she could have the option to stay working five days a week if she wanted and save on nursery fees into the bargain.
But maybe she wouldn't want that option. And maybe it wouldn't suit you either. It's just an idea that might be worth thinking about.

My dm is convinced she is an employment law expert as she once worked at an employment agency in 1955

If she can afford it for the time being, and given it's not a good time to try to sell, she'll be better off staying put. Less disruptive for her and importantly, the kids. Encourage her to see a financial adviser in due course, well before 2027 but not yet. Assume she has done her sums with respect to maintenance (that may have been agreed - some men do pay the right amount without fuss), pay, and benefits. Just support her the way she is being asked to be supported for now and don't push.

If she’s in a fix until 2027, downsizing right now probably isn’t an option.

Exactly! If she took out a mortgage now on a house two thirds of the price of the one she lives in, her mortgage payments will be higher than she's paying now! If she's on a fixed rate now, she'd be insane to move at this point. Quite apart from the estate agent fees, the stamp duty, the legal fees and the removal costs eating into any monies released by downsizing.

Seriously, it seems as though you don't have a clue about this stuff.

She bought this house before he moved in. Why do you feel any more stressed now than you did when she bought it on her own?

You interfering so much is probably the EXACT reason you were never given even the slightest whiff of how much her mortgage is. Its non of your business whatsoever.

I think it's a shame that now we've got to the crux of the matter your main concern that she might approach you for money. She's finding her feet as sole parent to a small child, she's living as the only adult in the house so no-one else to share mental load with, she might be feeling rejected, lonely and shit about her life currently, and now she's got you pushing her too. Leave her be. Perhaps focus on supporting her emotionally and keep your nose out of her financial circumstances. Such a shame your prime concern is how this might affect you.

Ps. £1,100 for 4 bedroomed detached is a great deal in current market.

I would consider asking if she should move but for an extra reason.....who's name is on the house/mortgage.....her and her ex relations could change when maintenance is brought up.
Self protection....but obviously if it's not an issue and she wants to stay it's her decision.

The estimated child maintenance calculation for £32,000 considering that he is not going to be having his child and doesn't have other children to support is £73.64 a week or £318.87 a month. If he gets any benefits such as UC then he'll only have to pay a flat rate of £7 a week though.

OP should not ask this. The house is in the daughters name - she bought it before the relationship began and he ex isn’t claiming any of it.

Unlike OP, her daughter seems to have her head screwed on