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.

Additional thoughts whether you are both at peak of career or if there more earning potential there. You don’t want to be stuck in a mortgage for that long so you’ll want to be making overpayments in near future.
Also, have a look at the interest you’ll pay in the first 5 years and think about whether it’s worth it for you. In those early years it feels like you’re renting when you are throwing so much at interest.

If it still feels worth it go for it - you can absolutely afford it right now. BUT it is an enormous mortgage and is a balancing act with future risk and worry.

Eh? My house is worth way over 300k (prob double) and we are band E @MaryGreenhill

Get a will ASAP. That really needs to be the priority, especially as you aren't married. Bloody hell.

Praying I don't work for whatever bit of education you manage.

I don’t see what the COL or others being worse off than OP is of any relevance.
She is not standing at the school gates talking at the top of her voice about it such that everyone is forced to listen to her financial situation.
If you open her thread and find the original post totally unrelatable then walk away.

There are plenty of threads on MN that are alien to me so I don’t both reading or just read and take in so I may have a minutiae of understanding of someone else’s situation plus learn a thing or two.

I get quite a bit with my job. The other top up policy we’ve had since we were 21 so it’s only £30 for us both (but only pays out £70k).

Earn 10k before or after tax

It’s not right - it depends on what it was worth in 1991, not what it is worth now.

Our former 2 bedroom Victorian conversion flat in Lambeth is worth £550k. It is council tax band B. Our current house in Southwark is worth about £1m, but is in band C (3 bed ex council house, prices have rocketed since 1991).

Totally irrelevant.
You can easily have a high earning career without ever having been told about or learnt about critical illness cover, income protection etc.
Just because people earn less than OP does not mean OP cannot ask questions a related to her finance.

This really.

Just a thought OP, if you plan on selling the house in your 60s, is it 'the dream house'? Would you be ok leaving? Could be reading it wrong though, to be fair.

We bought this house as older FTBs and now have no intention of upsizing or moving as it ticks most of our boxes. Close to school/tube - same line commute to central/shops etc. What we have is great and the next step up increases costs significantly so we plan to pay it off and make changes to what we have when we have the money. We are risk adverse though and the house works as a forever home (when we've made our improvements!).

Yes, this is definitely something to consider. We kept our mortgage manageable, overpaying when we could, eventually paying it off when I was in my early 50s and DH in his late 50's. Like@JaneEyre40I'm risk averse and we chose to stay in the London home we'd bought when the children were young - it was quite large enough and we were happy there but to keep the risk down we deliberately didn't move on to a more upmarket home.

DH was in an industry where redundancy was common, it happened to him three times, the last time when he was just over 60 and it would have been pretty difficult for him to get another job. I was relieved not to be having to carry the mortgage on one salary.

Can you lend us a fiver?

We did this, it helped get our DC away from home and into their own places. Once they'd gone we were able to buy a renovation project and spent some years renovating. Now we've downsized again and bought a smaller project, so we can help the DC move on.

I think lots of people these days earmark a lump sum from their pension to pay off any remaining mortgage debt at 57.

There's literally dozens of financial support groups online & money saving expert would be far more appropriate from Mumsnet for this sort of advice

Also if you hit £10k+ a month & genuinely struggle to know basic stuff like mortgages your best bet would be to call a financial advisor or hell even the bank who will be more then happy to break it down for you.

People are responding poorly to this thread (for obvious reasons) & OPs accusing them of being "jealous" hardly conjuring up imagines of a career women who deals with people day-to-day... If you want to picture her as being amazing then I think your one of the few here who do

Thanks, this makes sense. Assuming OP has a decent pension as she works in the public sector.

We plan to pay ours off over the next few years so this is not something we had considered.

If things get tough you just sell the house surely and buy something cheaper. You're hardly going to be living in a mould-ridden studio flat, renting from a slum landlord. You raised a £300k deposit and you've owned property before so your OP feels a bit disingenuous.

What’s wrong with using mumsnet for this sort of advice?

There must be twenty posts a day asking about ‘how does my budget sound’, ‘is this mortgage ok’ etc.

I’d say it’s probably quite a good place to find other people in a similar scenario - and has been, as amongst the vitriol have been tens of posters describing their similar situation and decision making.

Why should she care? Pretty safe to assume she was not responsible for the COL crisis. There is no upper limit on who can seek advice on financial issues - obviously - and if there was it would hardly be a fairly unremarkable 100k salary. MN isn’t just for poor people.

You and your partner need to sort out wills as a priority if you aren’t getting married. Go and see a solicitor. It may just be a lot easier and more effective to get married, or have a civil partnership, rather than deal with it via a variety of other paperwork.

Are you 12?

It’s ‘is’ too dim, couple is singular.

I’m sure the OP has basic maths (better than your grammar anyways) but she wants to hear from people in a similar situation for hidden pitfalls. That’s literally what this site it for.

I’m sure she appreciates she has a salary many would envy, that has nothing to do with the fact she wants a sounding board.

Except you've put your personal situation on here.