Should we move??

[pocketpairs]

Appreciate your thoughts. In two minds whether to move house. Considering properties around £500k (dream house).

Key Facts:

• Mid 40s. 2 DCs (teens)
• Live in 3 bed semi - no mortgage, worth £340k
• My salary £60k, DW £19k (recently started working after years out)
• CB - 2 DCs
• Savings & ISAs : £175k
• Pensions (me: £102k & DW: £5k)

My key concern is that we'll likely to to borrow £35ish from family (aiming to pay back in 3 yrs) , and it'll decimate our savings. So life which, is relatively comfortable, becomes less so.

Also conscious that we have tiny pensions, so without moving we could possibly grow current investments to £400k+ in next 20 or so years to give us semi-decent retirements.

What would you do??

In your current circumstances, I absolutely would not move. I would focus on putting money into pensions I’m getting your DH increase his income.

Look at a pension calculator, work out how much you need to retire at the age you want to retire, calculate whether you can get to that figure AND buy the house

Why do you need to borrow from family? Can’t you just get a mortgage?

Why aren’t you getting a mortgage?

Stay where you are. Great position on which to build. Happy stress free, nice life, and making and saving more for the future.

Why are you borrowing money from family when you have £175K in savings? Do they know you have this or are you pleading poverty? I would be livid if I found out my relative borrowed 35K from me and wouldn’t pay it back for 3 years and they had that amount of money in savings, I hope you are being honest with these relatives.

Presumably you're suggesting that even though we have cash / investments, it's better to get a mortgage, as the rate of return of the investments will exceed the mortgage interest rate?

Probably just easier and save us a little to just borrow from family. If we were to cash out investments, borrowed amount is quite small, relatively to out current monthly savings amount.

Sort out the DW pension.
Dont move.
Work out what the next 10 years look like.
my kids moved out at 18 which is absolutely what I wanted but required help for them to do so but we now have a large fairly empty house and DH will not move out until he dies and 8 years til retirement.

I will continue to ruthlessly make our lives easier and less complicated and do things that will produce income post retirement. We also travel as much as possible because so many older friends that waited never got to do anything because life shits on you.

New house = £500k
Fee (stamp duty, etc) = £30k (approx)
Total =£530k

Current house value = £340k
Investments = £175k (approx)
Total = £515k

Shortfall of £15-20k, but as I'd like to leave some contingency thinking of borrowing £35k.

Isn't an issue lending money.

How have you saved so much money and cleared a mortgage on relatively low salaries whilst raising dc?!

Being frugal and luck. Bought house after 2008 financial crisis for £165k, and just being aggressive with investments. However, our pensions are small, as stupidly I didn't contribute for first decade working, and dw hasn't really contributed at all (while working).

I wouldn’t if I were you.
Your husband is low-earning and you both could do with shoring up more money in your pensions.

Is there a cheaper house option where you’d only need for example to use 100k of your savings?

I'd go for it. You're in a good position financially and only in your 40s. Salaries will increase albeit slowly and things will get easier. You won't be actually spending your money, rather investing in property.

How old are the DC? Are they likely to head off to university?

With poor pensions, no, stay where you are.

Yes, both likely to go to university. I've been thinking about this too, and ability to support them, but thinking was as we take in £5.2k p/m (excl. CB) with expenditure (excluding holidays) of £3k, we'd be able to support them even if they lived away (maybe with exception) of London.