Have I lost the plot or is this manageable?

[UpSticks9]

We have fallen in love with a property in the countryside (not far from where we are now) which has land. It’s our dream so I need to know if that is currently clouding my judgement.

Property would triple our current mortgage costs and would need £200k to extend and renovate.

Once bills are paid, we would be left with £1600 a month. We don’t have children but plan to have them in the next 3-5 years. It seems very doable right now but we I am happy to be told otherwise by people who have similar disposable income.

That £1600 would need to cover savings/ investments, anything child related (in the future), holidays, new cars, etc.

The thing is OP none of us know how life will turn out. I do regret not buying a bigger dream home with a bigger mortgage when we were younger pre DC. You can be as sensible as anything financially but you can’t predict illness or mortgage interest rates going insane or other things happening
out of your control. Is this your dream home?Will you regret not giving it a go down the line ? If so then go for it.

It’s feasible like most things but economically we are in for tough times for the foreseeable future. Utilities are only going to get more expensive, life will keep on being expensive & children require far more time than one anticipates which increases financial burden. There are a lot of things that could look completely different in the future. Where would childcare be located for example or schools. Birth rates are falling which is impacting the provision of both.

It’s very normal where i live to live rurally so whilst it would be slightly further out than i am now, it isn’t a million miles away from civilisation. I’m very used to only taking planned trips out, we wouldn’t just “pop to the shops” because it takes half an hour to get there. I grew up doing the bus route that felt like it took hours because each person was picked up miles between the next etc. There’s a difference between moving from London to the countryside to living in the countryside but buying a house with more land. Maybe that’s where some of the more extremes are coming from on here.

If you have never had to fell a tree, hunk a whole log store worth of logs from A to B or feed animals, deal with a septic tank, I can imagine buying a small holding feeling overwhelming but it is what we are used to to some degree. Albeit, we don’t currently have 8 acres. It is fairly normal for our family and friends though so we wouldn’t be learning from scratch.

The plan is to plant an orchard, maybe more trees and have a large vegetable patch with chickens and maybe even ducks. Very small scale!

I think you sound clueless @UpSticks9. An orchard and a large vegetable patch would be time and labour intensive.
Children are time and labour intensive.

Where I live in rural Ireland it is very normal to own and live on a diary farm but both work full time and have kids. I think go for it OP. You don't plan to have kids for a few years and so can get the renovations done before they arrive and get things established on the land. The large veg garden can always be put aside for a few years if the dc don't sleep well etc.

Can you afford it - yes
Do you want it -yes
Can you possibly make extra money off it - yes
Will it cost more time and money than you plan - yes

Can you sell up easily ish if you need to or will it not attract many buyers?

If the answer to the last question is yes then you have no problem either way. If it’s a no then check those figures really well!

you have one life…

I don’t think I’m clueless. It’s very normal here. We don’t have the same lifestyle as someone living in London nor could we ever achieve that here. I do think our lifestyles to date have been house focused (we renovate our houses) so this would just be an additional step. I am not daunted by it. I have access to tractors, machinery, all the knowledge in my parents and I even have someone who would come out and take away trees for free but we would probably do this ourselves so we can keep the fire wood. We live in a farming community so to some degree, this is all very normal!

I don’t think I’m clueless. Well you wouldn't would you.
I think you should go for it if it is what you want but maybe take off the rose-tinted glasses.

Do it, if you wait you might not get the opportunity again. You'll work it out somehow.

It's very normal where I am, too. What you describe feels very familiar. Lots of people do the things you are describing and have small amounts of land like you describe.

But it is extremely hard to do with small children, and both of you planning on working a 40 hour week in compressed hours.

It's not the money, it's the time.

Do you know a lot of farmers who both work 40-hour jobs outside of the farm? I know loads of couples where one person - usually the wife - works her absolute socks off, often with two jobs. But I don't know anyone who has a farm or a smallholding, where both people in the couple work outside the home, 40 hours, and have children. And I'm including people who already own the machinery they need and are totally familiar with the demands of maintenance.

I do get why it's so appealing. I just think it is a huge gamble. What is your contingency plan if it doesn't work out?

There is constructive feedback and then there is just throwing an insult into the wind. It is much easier to throw words around than be constructive with the feedback you provide.

I live in a farming community, have parents who grew up on farms, and have friends and family with much larger scale farms than the 8 acres we plan to buy.

We lived on far less than £1600 a month when I was training following 5 years at uni. In fact, I was paid nowhere near that to start off with. No we didn’t have a small holding but we did have a derelict house to renovate, a wedding to pay for and everything else that comes with being in your 20s and starting out.

Maybe the difference between living semi-rurally versus big towns/cities is that you simply cannot spend the levels of money because the opportunities are not there. You can’t go on days out every week because you’ll be going to the same place over or travelling for miles on end. A night out is a planned, thought out process which involves hideously expensive taxis or you stay there the night, you don’t go out on a whim.

I suppose we would need to adapt. We would have the house for a good 2-3 years before planning to grow our family so it would be at that point we would need to re-evaluate.

We could always sell the house for a profit down the line if need be but we plan for this to be our forever home. I’ll dig a bit deeper with friends and ask for very honest feedback. I want to be eyes wide open in this but they’ve never complained about the farm, maybe the horses or the kids! 😂

That sounds like it would work - taking 2-3 years to get used to it all.

I think it's a really tricky one. It's hard for people who know you to crush your dreams! And you could find you're absolutely fine; your children just slot into your lifestyle and it's all fine.

Equally you could find that, actually, once you have kids the jobs feel less important and you settle for having less disposable income and working fewer hours, and that's obviously something lots of people do.

It's just useful to think about the 'what ifs'.

I am a big fan of doing slightly crazy things when you feel they are right; it's just I also think you want to plan the hell out of it, with all the contingency plans you can imagine, so that if things get hard, you're not stuck with a newborn, totally sleepless, trying to muster the brainpower to work out what the hell you're going to sacrifice to make it work.

And I've got to say - sorry, I know it's a hard one - but, when you have a baby it suddenly becomes hyper-obvious that the world is not set up for women with babies. And you are liable to be the one who loses out.

This is extra true if you are living in a rural community and trying to maintain land, because that sort of community is more institutionally sexist than many.

Lots of people who tell you it's all doable may be quietly thinking 'of course it's easy: my mum came and helped out five days a week when the children were little, and of course Jane used to be a solicitor and now she has her cake-baking business and she does a shift in the petrol station, but that suits our lifestyle so well!'

Only you know whether or not the idea of ending up as Jane fills you with dread.

with much larger scale farms than the 8 acres
8 acres isn't a farm. (It's about 6 football pitches.)

My reason for thinking you are clueless is based on 'We could buy a tractor to maintain the land ourselves.'.

@GloriaMonday I wonder whether you have experience of farming or smallholding and why you're so scornful of plans to buy a tractor? An old tractor would be very useful on an 8 acre plot and @UpSticks9 seems to have plenty of relevant experience and support for the lifestyle she is planning. We bought something similar 25 years ago and even although we're old now, we can still manage the woodland and the orchards and the garden with minimal help. If you're used to rural living, it's very manageable.

@gmgnts , I am a farmer from generations of farmers. Live rurally, extended family of farmers, or in farming-related occupations.

Turns out my family used to maintain the fields and they are good family friends 😂 I have had more information from one conversation versus several with the estate agents!!

I suspect you’ve tarred me with the “townie” brush. You think I’m some townie idiot buying up precious farming land with no idea, and I’ll be complaining that the dairy farm down the road is polluting my senses when the farmer is muck spreading.

I am not sure how helpful this is, as we didn't end up with children (though wanted them), but I did buy land. The pull of that was very strong and I don't regret buying it, but it hasn't been easy.

I thought I knew what I was letting myself in for, grew up rurally and used to helping others with field maintenance. However, it was still different in practice with my own land. I needed to re-fence all of it early on and mend various animal shelters. Husband in a manual job and though he said he was up for it, he found it hard on top of work. I physically couldn't have done it alone. It was a shock to the system and I didn't enjoy it at the time, because my husband really didn't enjoy it at all and we really fell out at certain points. We did all the work ourselves but the materials and buying kit was still expensive. Even now years later when we have far more of our own stuff it is a pain and the fencing desperately needs doing again. Husband is now physically shot (the problem with a long term manual job), but I will need him to do most of it.

In your position I would go for it, but I would make sure the land was in top condition before trying to conceive as you won't have the time then. I would also make some of the land low maintenance in the sense of just needing to top the grass every so often (if you can't persuade someone to graze it for you), so that you can pull back from the work while you have very small children.

The worst that could happen is that you have to sell it again, but you will at least have lived your dream for a while.

Not at all. I'm not thinking 'precious farming land' for a start although all land is precious.

I think you could make a go of it, but you might be underestimating the amount of time and labour involved in running a renovation project, repurposing the land and raising a family.

Even if you were a townie with a full time job, a house needing no renovation, and 'easy' children you'd probably feel you were juggling your life.

No chance would I do this, that’s a low amount of disposable income every month for a couple. Moreover, the unemployment rate is the highest rate it’s been for years, so for me it would be too much of a risk to take on.

£1600pcm is a low amount of disposable income for a couple full stop or do you mean in this particular scenario?

The latter. £1.6k disposable money for a couple living together would be fine if those two people had low housing costs and a huge buffer to keep them afloat in case of a job loss / losses. Also - against the backdrop of this really gloomy economy and the march of AI…I just wouldn’t.

On childcare costs, it's worth sitting down and writing a timeline of each working day assuming compressed hours, to see how feasible it is and whether you need to stress test your finances to 5dpw of childcare costs.

We recently considered compressed hours to reduce our 3yo's childcare costs and mean we can see him more, but found it impossible to make work alongside 8-6 childcare hours. On a 40hr working week you'd each be trying to find 2 extra hours a day on top of working 9-5 which takes you to 8-6. So this would allow no time for travel time to and from childcare/work or for lunch break. Even if WFH, with kids having 15/30 mins spare at either end of the day to decompress / put washing on / wash up / make a start on tea is hugely useful.

Also worth looking to see what childcare is available locally and how much. I remember being shocked when we were pre-kids and trying to figure out finances to ensure us buying our house was feasible with childcare costs. This would help you understand costs and also timeline, factoring in journey time.

It might also depend on whether your 40 hours compressed are exactly 40 hours each week or if more during busy working periods.

Good luck with what you choose, big decision and great you're thinking through it fully.