To think we CAN live on the mortgage

[JaneEyre40]

Advice please -

Couple - Earn £10,500 a month
Mortgage - 3,700 a month
Nursery - 1,000 a month

Considering all other possible outgoings, do you think we can afford this and not feel pressured each month. What am I not considering? We've done the spreadsheet but I'm still unsure.

We will have about £65,000 in savings at the beginning of this venture.

Thanks in advance. House of a lifetime.

Instead of your own ability to budget?

Don't senior managers have to look after budgets?

This ^ stressful job, no concept of finances & a child in £1000 a month nursery while having no permanent home makes me think this "£10k a month" is a relatively recent bumper income that OP 'knows' won't last forever hence the nerves about spending it

So in that regard i 100% agree with her that she should be able to ask questions/get support but I also think her responses to people have been piss poor at best & she's living in delusion to think it's a risky amount to take a mortgage on if you earned it consistently over the years

Either buy the house (while things are good) or don't (incase things go bad) nobody knows exactly what you do for a living or how reliable your wages are on Mumsnet

London property prices are insane and it's really hard to buy unless you are bringing in a very high salary (and I mean genuinely high, 200k upwards). I caught the last affordable train in early 2010s and I'm eternally grateful that I did - totally recognise I was privileged). I think UK wage stagnation means we are really out of touch what is a "good" salary, particularly with the cost of childcare and housing.

I did a random search in Chingford and Highams Hill which are nice areas, commutable and leafy, but not particularly central, and a bog standard, decently-maintained 3-bed terrace is 650k. Even if you had 15-20% upfront as a deposit, you'd still be looking at £2800-3000 pcm in mortgage. And the third bed is tiny, so anyone with more kids you'd be looking at a further 100k.

I've seen so many threads recently about people on 100k+ household incomes being vilified for playing tiny violins, but really in London/SE it's just about necessary for day to day life.

Edited to say 1k a month for nursery is cheap in London. Am assuming it's not FT

I’m sorry but nothing is that much more expensive in London that £6K a month won’t cover utility bills, food, travel and sundries. It’s a hell of a lot of money. I’m in the north and my council tax is almost double yours! Not everywhere has tonnes of free museums and royal parks, etc to visit.

Anyone who thinks it isn’t massive must be a bit of a diva. Our income is half of yours after your mortgage and childcare. We live a very good life and appreciate how comfortable we are.

• OP doesn’t say they don’t own a home, and she has a £300k deposit so probably is upsizing
• She says the £10k/m is likely to be long term and secure
• Where has she demonstrated no concept of finances?
• What’s the relevance of the ‘£1,000 a month nursery while having no permanent home’? £1,000 a month for full time nursery is unbelievably cheap, so they’ve chosen an affordable nursery, even with the hours it’s very good.

Five years ago spending £3.7k a year on a mortgage would have seemed mental, now it’s becoming quite common in London if you want a house. So - lots of people will be finding themselves in this territory and not knowing it’s a mad decision or not.

Is this a joke?!?!?

tone deaf.

We have a similar mortgage (£3600 a month) and I’m not sure exactly what our combined net is but our combined gross is about £380k-£420k per annum. Honestly, we would struggle at your salary level but our expenses are higher than yours, we have 3 kids, higher nursery fees, our older two kids do lots of clubs, we save some per month and we both give our parents money each month (they struggle on low pensions)

Reading your other posts, we seem to have a similar attitude to you in terms of material things other than one aspect and that’s holidays. We probably spend about £30k per year on holidays and that is really important to us.

So if you are confident that you are sticking at one child and are happy not doing lots of fancy holidays then you will be fine.

Is there a chance your salaries will increase in the future and you can pay off more or reduce your mortgage term? That is a long mortgage term to be saddled with! Also what are your pensions like? We are (very) late 30s and have 18 years remaining so should be mortgage free with significant savings to help our kids and good pensions by our early 60s.

I'm a senior manager in education. My salary is not large where I live in London.

I'm loving this!

You see, OP, I did say it was half term! I was RIGHT!

I just hope your snr role doesn't involve budgeting. 😂

Let's assume your other half is an investment banker or trader because you won't have anything like £10K net a month from 2 teachers.

This is just boasting, isn't it?

@Inan Honestly, we would struggle at your salary level

You wouldn’t. You just wouldn’t spend £30K a year on holidays. That is NOT struggling.

Where has she demonstrated no concept of finances?

Asking for financial advice and not stating whether she was talking about net or gross salary.
Not knowing (or thinking to Google) what stoppages meant.

Maybe no concept it a bit harsh, but to have that amount of money and to be discussing such a massive purchase/commitment, wouldn't you want to have a better grasp of what's what.

we would struggle at your salary level but our expenses are higher than yours

That's a pretty obvious statement.

I'd have more money if I didn't spend it.

This salary is achievable on very very many jobs including professional services, NHS, management in education, sales, IT, etc etc

Ok I phrased that wrong - we would not struggle but I wouldn’t want to spend that proportion of my salary on a mortgage at the level of income because other things like saving some money, helping our parents and being able to travel are more important to me.

I always just assume it’s the net figure unless told otherwise on threads like this, otherwise the number would be meaningless. I work in finance and wouldn’t think to say ‘net salary’, I’d just assume that was a given.

So asking for financial advice means you have ‘no concept of finances’ does it?

So every poster who ever asks for financial advice must be hopeless then!

I have no idea what stoppages means either, it’s not a commonly used term IMO.

Unless she’s a financial advisor or mortgage broker, it’s unlikely she’s going to have much insight into what is typical for mortgage borrowing - so it’s completely reasonable to ask.

No one loses their mind when someone says they earn £35k and is a £900 mortgage manageable.

People earning any amount of money can make an appointment and see a financial advisor? You don't have to have one on retainer? And as I said in an earlier post - if a person is getting a mortgage, then they've at the least spoken to a mortgage advisor. They'll have also been subjected to the lender's income stress test...and presumably passed it?

The rest of your points are boring and not relevant. £6k of money after paying mortgage and nursery, esp when the lender has agreed to it, is by definition affordable.

Im late to this party but has anyone mentioned avocados?

. I'm minted me. 😎

London is the real world. In fact, the income generated there props up the rest of the country via tax. (And no, I don’t live in London).

Our income is slightly less at €7000
Here’s how ours is not taking into account the child benefit of €280
I sorted everything into categories.
i know we earn euros (as we’re in Ireland l, but these days it’s much of a muchness to be honest)
We have slightly more savings at about 90k

Housing
Mortgage: €1900
Utilities
Electricity €200
Waste collection: €30
Broadband & TV: €70
Mobile phones x3: €60
Total Utilities: €360
Food & Groceries
Groceries & household food: €600
Dining out / takeaways: €200
Transportation
Fuel: €250
Car insurance & tax: €150
Maintenance & NCT: €100
Public transport / Parking: €20
Total Transport: €520
Education & Kids
School books, uniforms, fees: €50
Activities, sports, clubs: €50
Pocket money / treats: €50
Total Kids & Education: €150
Entertainment & Lifestyle
Family outings, hobbies, gifts: €200
Subscriptions, books, etc.: €60
Total Entertainment: €260
Savings & Miscellaneous
Emergency fund / Savings: €1,400
Holidays (monthly allocation): €300
Clothing: €130
Miscellaneous buffer: €180
Total Savings & Misc.: €2,010
TOTAL MONTHLY SPENDING: €7,000

‘The rest of your points are boring and not relevant’ is the response of a ten year old.

Mortgage advisors don’t know the answer to this question, as they aren’t the ones living on this income. All they might be able to add is ‘I have / have not seen other people do this’. They find mortgages for you, they don’t provide budgeting advice.

As for the bank approving it… again, that doesn’t mean much. Plenty of people end up defaulting, losing their job etc.

OP is looking for people in a similar situation to her, to know how they find living with a mortgage of X size, compared to Y income, in Z location.

You wouldn’t lose your rag at someone on an average wage asking the question, so why OP? Where do we draw the line at which people may no longer seek financial advice from their peers?