What proportion of your income is taken up with a mortgage

[lazycow]

If you have recently taken out a mortgage (say in the last 4 years)

We are considering me being a SAHM but we also need to move to a bigger place ( we live in a tiny flat right now which is very easy to afford but is miles too small)

If we move I have to stop work as we can't afford to stay locally so would move nearer dh's work who currently has a really long commute.

Even by moving nearer to dh's work which is a cheaoer area than here we would be doubling our mortgage and cutting our monthly income by a third.

This would make our mortgage over 40% of our monthly income - This seems high to me but dh says it is fairly average but that we are currently well off in that respect.

Is this a normal ratio of mortgage to income on a recent mortgage?

ours is about 50%, but I thnk it's all relative. If depends how much you earn, what you spend on other stuff, food, treats, socialising etc etc etc. As long as you can afford it shouldn't be a problem imo

don't think this %age matters as it depends much more on yr disposal income left after yr mortgage - does it cut you any slack? can you afford to save etc etc? also what type of mortage - repaymt/interest-free - are you going to build in a safety net to allow for any future interest rate rises etc etc. have a look at moneynet or similar and play around with different paymt scenarios and see if you cd get it to work.

ours is about 15% We live in a very cheap house though! Property is cheap here - our 3 bed semi with garden in village is only worth £60,000 which is a lot more than we paid for it. We still don't have a lot of disposable income though because DH is paying off other loans and finance.

ours is about 40% (we're in London) because I'm a SAHM

it's manageable but you have to budget to get used to it

(when I worked it used to be about 18% of our joint salaries .. boy you never know when you're well off do you)

I think personally when considering whether you can afford you have to calcualate the mortgage based on a couple of percentage points above current rate (just in case of rises) and based on how much disposable income after mortgage and fixed costs (rates, utilities) you will need

and I am a SAHM ( well I work 4 hours per week which doesnt count!)

ours is about 40% of our 'Joint' take home income and that is with us only having a mortgage for half the value of the house, the rest is equity. Its vry expensive in sussex! Then we take another £360 off for childcare, we look at it like one of us basically works to pay the mortgage and childcare and the other works to pay the general bills and living/leisure etc. We have a repayment mortagage and atleast every year you get a statement and you can actually see the mortgage going down, would never risk an endowerment in this unbstable time

Hi there we took our mortgage out about 5 years ago, it is around 20% of our income. However we also pay the same amouunt in school fees. So main 2 costs are around 40%.

our is 25% of joint income. We are in London and bought current house 3 years ago

Bout a third of our joint income is mortgage alone

ours is about 50% but that's largely because we are on a variable rate at the mo while I sort out funds for building work that needs to be done.

Once we're back on a fixed rate, I imagine it will be more like 37.5%

we just got ours, we're on 1 income, the mortgage is 33% of our take home income
tbh I guess it depends what your take home pay is as to how comfortably off you'll be. after mortgage,we have £1200 per month to fritter away on bills and food and repairing stupid car that always breaks down.

ours is about 55% which leaves us about £400 for food/entertainment and £200 for bills and direct debits. we chose to pay off more on the mortgage so that the length of time we were paying was shorter. it will be paid off within the next 9 years.
its tight but i haven't worked since adopting dd.
when i did work all my income was saved for holidays travel treats and clothes at first, but ended up spending it on home improvements-It will be worth it in the end as the house is now worth twice what we bought it for.

We've only had our current mortgage since May. Our mortgage is around 20% of our joint income at the moment.

I don't think 40% is unreasonable if the amount you have left is enough for you to live on. It depends what 60% of your income is. If you bring home £5K a month then having £3K a month left over is probably not going to be an issue (I don't know what your spending habits are!). If you bring hom £1K a month then £600 is not quite as comfortable!!

before my husband does overtime, our mortgage takes 50%.

Mine is around 40% of my monthly wage but I also get tax credits so it works out less than that

Thanks for all the answers I guess it is a pretty average percentage.

After the mortgage/life insurance etc and basic bills (gas elec,phone), I think we will have about 1,300 for food entertainment, clothes, travel/car etc so I think we should be OK from what most people are saying and a lot luckier than some people I know. I suppose it is just getting used to the change. In my 30's I somehow imagined than in my 40's I's be better off financially not worse - still money isn't everything as I realise everytime I see DS's smile or hear him laugh.

I would just have to get used to budgeting again and I'm not used to it after several years of dh and I being in well paid employment with no ds around or with ds around but paying a very small mortgage and me working PT.

Now it is just a case of working out if I really want to give up work to be a SAHM but that is another thread

Thanks again for the answers

i'm a life-long renter.