Help to figure out affordability

[TortoiseEnthusiast]

Hi,

I wondered if I could ask your advice about figuring out if a certain kind of house or job is affordable?

My teen son worries about how he will afford to live when he is grown up.

We have the offer of a house from a relative (in about ten years or so) and I am trying to explain to my DS that this makes a very big difference financially.

I would like to try to sit down with him and figure out what the bills and maintenance costs of such a house would be and what sort of salary he would need to have in order to run the house, and what his commute costs would be for the job.

I'm just a bit uncertain about how to find all these numbers though.

I wondered if you know how I would estimate the bills and maintenance costs for a house, without being really cheeky and asking the owner?

It's an 80s bungalow in good condition, with double skin walls, but only partially insulated between the walls. There is room for an absolute truckload of solar panels and there is space round the house for futher insulation on all sides, which I think will be signficant with climate change when the need for air conditioning becomes important. (I'm planning very long term here). The house is well above sea level.

Thanks!

I just wondered if there might be tools online to do this.

I would also be really glad to know if there are tools to work out tax on salaries.

If it's just ChatGPT then that's easy, but I'd be glad to know if there is something more factually reliable.

You tell him if he's being given a house he's barely better of than most of the population...

You can't work out tax on salaries for the future because you don't know what job he'll get, what the salary will be at that time, what else the government will do, how much the cost of living will have changed. He'll make it work like we all do

This will help with take home salary

https://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php

This might help too

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/budget-planning/

I think you need to help him work out what his income is likely to be and then what his expenditure is likely to be. You want the income to be higher than the expenditure, to state the obvious!

If you use the salary calculator to estimate the take home pay and then use a budget spreadsheet to work out the expenses. You will have to estimate because who knows what the situation will be in 10 years but that's fine, it sounds like he's just after an estimate right?

He'll need to consider estimated monthly costs for water, gas, electricity, council tax, car leasing, car tax, car maintenance, commuting, haircuts, clothes, house repairs, phone, broadband, going out, gifts, food and anything else he can think of.

I hope that helps.

Thank you very much. I just wondered if there is specifically an online tool to estimate the costs of gas and electricity and water and council tax for a given size of house?

Thanks.

Just ask the relative?

If you want to give a rough estimate I’m in a 4 bed Victorian with the worst insulation I’ve ever experienced and my gas and electric is £140 a month. Water is £48. Insurance £55.

Total bills £405.

His electric will be less due to solar.

I found this online:

https://www.epcmortgage.org.uk/

This seems to be the equivalent for water

https://www.anglianwater.co.uk/help-and-advice/save-water/water-usage-calculator#

No there isn’t because there are too many variables - how many people live there, do they always turn the heating on or never, how many showers do they have a day, do they cook?

okay thanks.

Don't worry about it, I think I have figured it out.

You can check the council tax online with the local council. It differs wildly across the country.

For utilities go from what you are spending and up or down a bit as you think it may be.

You can check the exact council tax band and current price for that band in the relevant council area from the address.

If I were doing this I would get current prices for CT, broadband, insurance, average electricity, gas and water costs for property type to add up expenses and then use current minimum wage info plus tax & NI to see what the position would be now. It’s too difficult to try and determine how much all the costs might go up by.

Even without a mortgage or rent the running costs for a property are significant so one person on minimum wage would struggle covering the running costs alone. You could look at what a salary might need to be now to cover those costs or talk about a lodger/living with a partner to make costs more feasible