If you are a homeowner with young kids in your mid 30s....

[bakeitup]

What proportion of your household monthly income goes on your mortgage?

We are a family of 4 (DCs are 6 and 3) and 20% of our monthly (net) income goes on our mortgage, we have 23 years left on it. DH and I are both 35 have pretty well paid jobs (although both freelance) and a decent house.

We are considering moving and I am wondering on average what people normally pay out in terms of mortgage compared to monthly income for a family at this sort of life stage. I think we could pay out a lot more but not sure if that is a sensible thing to do when we don't 'really need' to.

I'm Not sure I've worked it out right. £45k per annum and mortgage is £152 a month - is that about 5% of take home pay??

36, dh 39 though - 2 kids aged 10 and 7, 4 bed new build detached in central Scotland.

35%! It has to be less but then I went part time. We have three kids and live in London.

20% for us.

It sounds like your are moving because it's a nice to have rather than out of necessity. £200k extra is a lot of money. Also I'm not sure how old your kids are but if you move to a remote area it could take up a lot of time ferrying them everywhere (plus extra costs of fuel etc).

Haudyer Yep looks correct based on the take home pay calculated by www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/

Some of these low % do make me cry a bit inside! We live in an expensive part of the country and both work in the public sector so our salaries are lower compared to probably most people in our area. However, being civil servants means we have more job security, good sick pay, redundancy payments etc so I guess we feel relatively safe stretching ourselves a bit more. Plus we will never need to move for more space, so no future moving costs to account for. If we moved for location it couldn't be anywhere more expensive!

I think about 35% for us and childcare costs have been similar until very recently (30 hours childcare trial has been introduced locally). It's been a tough few years. DH works full time and I work four days (about 35 hours), DC are 2 and 4.

At the moment it is 9% but we are in the process of moving, getting a much bigger house in a much nicer area and it will jump up to 22%.

With everything budgeted for, car repairs, insurances, presents, holidays, new car, emergency fund, spends etc etc we have about £350 spare which will go towards decorating/furniture etc. The amounts to be set aside for hols is quite generous and could always be diverted to DIY if needed. Once we pay back my mum for the extra 5% deposit that she lent us we will have £1,100 spare so very doable in the long term short term we will continue to watch the pennies.

Before we cleared it due to an inheritance, it was 20% of DH's take home wage (I'm a SAHP).

When we were a dual income household, it was 13%. Our childcare bill was 40%.

38% of our take home pay - butbwe have recently moved to a bigger place. I'd say decide on private secondary - larger mortgage and private secondary then help with university may impact your retirement age or mean you're gambling or putting pressure on yourselves for pay rises.

2dc, Dh is sahp. I earn good money with mortgage being 25% of my take home pay.

If I've worked it out right it's about 20% of my incoming Money per month.
I'm a single parent with three kids, and my income is made up of wages, tax credits, child benefit and maintenance.
My mortgage itself is about half my actual earnings a month.

25% of DH's take home (I'm currently a SAHP). We have overpaid using some savings to get it down a bit as interest rates on savings are so low. It seemed better to reduce the mortgage payments than have savings sitting in an account getting 0.5% interest.

Just under a third. We are 36... two kids. We will have paid off our mortgage in about 9 years. Property is worth around 200k. We are pushing to pay the mortgage off so we can relax! We could upgrade but we are in a nice 3 bed with sizeable garden. I miss having a spare room but not enough to add the 50-60k it would cost to move up too the next size.

Very interesting.

To answer some of the Q's, we are both freelance but are in quite stable areas of industry (high demand) especially so for what DH does, less so for me however it is likely I will go back to a permanent role at some point in the near ish future.

We earn approx 125k combined (gross), which equates to about £6500 per month take home as we leave some in our business. I have no idea as to what our earning potential is if we both continue freelance...as permanent employees I would imagine we could each get to 65k ish in the next 5 years or so.

We live in a relatively expensive area of North Yorkshire but nowhere near the price of SE, we would be looking at approx £650-700k for our dream 'forever' home. School fees obviously need to be factored in but my parents are planning to leave a property in trust for each of my DCs, i just discovered this the other day, they aren't especially valuable houses but it means they will not need to worry about paying off uni debt so I think if they decide to go to uni I would just let them take out the debt knowing at some point they will be able to pay it off. Would this be really foolish?

Until recently I have not considered upscaling our house but my parents mentioned to me about their plans to pass property down in trust / what I will inherit, it's awful to think about that obviously but made me realise at some point (sadly!) we will be able to pay it all off unless they somehow live forever.

Thank you for the tip of living on the money we would have available if we were to move, this is a really good idea and we can definitely try it for a year and see how it is. Thinking about that combined with school fees makes me think both would be impossible but that's still 5 years away.

PS - does anyone use any good websites / apps to help plan their budget and finances that they would recommend?

25% of our net including overpayment, 4.5 years until it is repaid. No childcare costs as DH a sahd. Wanted it paid off before our youngest started school but we are a bit behind schedule.

Check out money saving expert about paying off student debt, it's often not worth it. I wouldn't tell them they had a house in trust - let them live cheap and work at uni.

Write down what you think you spend, off the top of your head, on all your bills (council tax, gas, food, to, mobiles, petrol insurance, mot etc). What is meant to be left each month? Grab your last 12 months statements and Write down everything you spend to the penny. Work out what you can reduce. It's usually food that you underestimate the most, then car costs, then mobiles. Oh and gifts!

If you both do the first stage separate it's even more interesting!

Money saving expert has a budget planner.

We have recently got a new 5 year fix deal - its about 11% of our take home pay now which I was delighted with as it means we are savings nearly 200 quid a month in pure interest compared to the last deal we were on. The value has gone up 30% in 4 years which really helped with the LTV ratio. We always wanted a place we could afford if we went down to one wage. We live in a 5 bed house but in NI where the prices are much more affordable - our place was 100k and has large garden etc. Where we used to live in london Im pretty sure that wouldnt even buy you a bedsit. Its all relative based on your other costs of living I guess

Shared income about £3500, mortgage is £500. Childcare from September is minimal thanks to the new 30 hours being bought in, which have meant I can up my hours at work as they are shared across the year at 22 a week. Still got 22 years on the mortgage so hoping to overpay once a home improvement loan is paid off. We borrowed a lot less than we could of as we wanted to be able to afford the mortgage on one wage if we needed too.

Just turned 30 so can join in. Take home pay £2600 and mortgage is £830/mth. We don't feel like it's too much and feel quite flush now we are no longer paying childcare.

Early 30s, a 2yo and a 5yo. We bring home 2400 after tax. Our mortgage is 430, so just under 20%.

bakeitup I use YNAB (You need a budget) for budgeting. You budget at the start of each month (or whenever you get a paycheque) and then through the month, enter in all transactions and assign them to a category. It does cost $30 a year and is an online site rather than a program, it has brilliant mobile apps too so you can do it on the go too. It's really helped us work out where our money is going and that we don't have as much disposable income as we used to think we did.

Collective income is about £3700.

Mortgage is £550

We are 32 and one child. Childcare bill is £460 a month.

We do have other outgoings, car finance etc.

The max we would be happy paying each month would be £750. We are cautious as although my husband earns great money, he is self employed.

When we first bought the current house three years ago it was 25% but now it is 16%. It has dropped due to salary increases and a lower interest rate. We took it over the maximum term we could with a view to making extra payments after we have paid for an extension which we are saving for.

it's just me and i have 2 dc 6 and an 8 year old. mine is 15%, at £300 but i over pay slightly as i'm on a 1.4% so if the rates increase i won't feel it as much (after my 2 year fixed deal ends)

i'm only in this position due to selling the family home (i was able to put down 65% as a deposit)

i could have stretched myself but i always think i want the reassurance of being able to pay my mortgage no matter what.

you have to also consider rates rising, renovation, repairs, council tax, cars etc