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.

Think further ahead if wanting children.

Where are the nearest primary and secondary schools?

This is not a viable plan.

If you had £1600 left over after accounting for the loss of one salary or budgeting £2K per month per child for childcare, it would be different.

Is the land garden or a bit more wild like a field? How many hedges/bushes/trees? And what are the boundaries made of, are they panelling or post and wire? What’re your intentions with the land?

I think £1600 a month fun money for the two of you and kids is fine, but with you both working full time and potentially needing to get help in to manage the land it could disappear quite fast.

It’ll be an adventure though, so I’d go for it - you can always sell it later down the line if it gets too much. It’ll be amazing for the kids going off adventure exploring in a giant play park that’s as safe as houses for them!

All fields but there is a section which has always been used as a garden too. There are very little trees but all the boundaries have hedgerows. Luckily, we now have a very good understanding of the land so the maintenance shouldn’t be as difficult as we initially thought. It will need fencing if we decide to keep livestock but there will be no rush to do that and it’s much more efficient to pay a fencer to come in and do it.

Someone above suggested we needed £2k per child whilst at nursery and I spoke with friends who all laughed out loud! They pay absolutely nowhere near that and would never have been able to have children if it cost them £4k. The fact we would have £1600 a month left after bills was far more than any of them seem to have.

You could look up your hypothetical childcare options now and figure out how much they would be. Think it's childcare.co.uk should give you cost indications for childminders, and info for nurseries is often online. Full time local nursery where we previously lived in South East London (Woolwich) was £1,900 a month last year (thankfully we didn't pay this as we were lucky to find a great childminder for £1,400 a month instead, but in some areas childminders are scarce) and full time local nursery where we are now in Yorkshire is £1,650 a month. Our health visitor recommended changing to a nursery after 2 years old. Worth being aware of costs locally to you.

is the 1600 after heating petrol and food and clothes, etc bills? If not I think it will difficult and really difficult once you have kids. Perhaps make sure you get critical illness and life insurance on the mortgage if you do go ahead.

Well that's how we did it - despite what the entitled will tell you.
Boomer x
(My emergency fund was the unspent tenner on my £100 credit card for about 5 years)

OP, MN is very weird when it comes to money and in all honesty I wouldn’t listen to them 😅 by MN standards there’s about three people in the country that can currently afford to have a baby. MNers reckon you need 25 years’ worth of bills saved plus extra…But in reality people do it in all kinds of financial situations and make it work.
From where I’m standing you have MORE than enough disposable income, especially if you’re planning to stop at one or two kids.
I absolutely think you should buy the land; it sounds like you have the knowledge and the lifestyle for it already. And as someone said, if it turns out it’s not for you, you can just sell it on again - you might lose a few k but you’ll learn a lot and if the house is a project you’ll probably make your money back off that anyway if it comes to it.
However, the people saying not to underestimate how much time a baby/toddler takes up have a very valid point. If I were you I’d definitely aim to have the majority of the reno done before you have a baby, certainly structural stuff, plumbing, plastering etc. Your first baby is going to be a huge shock to the system and you don’t want to be putting loads of pressure on yourself. I’ve just had DC5 (plus two SC so DC7 in the house) and am the queen of just cracking on with things, plus an old hand with babies - and it’s still been surprising all over again (and annoying) how much longer and more tiring everything is with a newborn in tow! Wrapping 6 lots of Xmas presents one handed while breastfeeding was just not it 😅 you might breeze through pregnancy, childbirth and the newborn stage and be back on the fields with a baby in a sling after a few days, but you also might not so make sure you have some kind of backup plan. Also, you might not WANT to - all my labours have been easy, easy babies, all good feeders - but it’s still tiring; so even though I’m perfectly capable of running about doing stuff from about five minutes post birth, I don’t always want to - sometimes it’s nice to just sit on the sofa and cuddle the baby!
But - you sound sensible and like you know what you’re getting into. I would 100% go for it if I were you; the old saying about regretting 100% of the chances you don’t take comes to mind. Nothing is set in stone - if it doesn’t work for you, you can change it - but if you go for it it could work out to be the best thing you’ve ever done ❤️

Childminders seem very high in demand but look to be incredibly cheap in comparison to nurseries in the area. Costs will of course change by the time we even start to plan a family. The plan is to have all the major work completed before we consider trying for a baby. Having a baby has been a very carefully thought out and considered process, we won’t be rushing at the last hurdle.

If anyone was to speak to our family and friends they would be told we have overthought this process, we are the most financially secure of all our friends (we could be mortgage free if we didn’t want to move), we have good jobs, we have been together more than half the years we have even been alive 😂

We are risk averse and make strategic decisions but for some reason, this feels right despite holding more risk.

It is now or never essentially because we wouldn’t want to take on a project like this once we have children. It is hard enough using up all your evenings and weekends childfree! I can’t ever imagine having millions to spend on something already renovated and good to go, and let’s face it, even if we did, we realise this is a dream of ours for maybe the next 30 years. I can’t see us wanting to continue with the small holding in our 60s!

With council tax, utilities, credit cards etc, £1600 is nothing. Sounds like you’ll be over stretched.

Council tax and utilities are bills.

Could you sell off a bit of the land for building? A couple of plots would be less than an acre. That might help the coffers a little. If so, I’d do it!

I would go for it, but rent out the land, bar 1 acre to someone else. Start small with half a dozen poultry and a small vegetable garden - max.

Plant an orchard if the site is suitable, or a coppice.

Keep it up for a year, whilst working, and then see what else feels feasible. Even compressing your hours - after baby you will absolutely have LESS time!

I am a keen gardener and SAHM and I can't even garden with my toddler most of the time. An hour or so morning and afternoon perhaps. But progress is slow (and frustrating) when you need eyes in the back of your head.

There is only so much a child will be able to get involved in, and their safety has to be paramount. They also get fed up and need lots of attention - they are not like a spaniel that will follow you around and enjoy the outdoors.

Unlikely, it’s green belt and I would like to keep our options open. Renting the land would be the better option for us. Particularly for the first year or two whilst we renovate the house.

I agree with PP that the biggest issue would be spare time to maintain the land and you will need lots of money to throw at it. I've got a house which need renovating, with 8 acres coincidentally, and we are looking to sell up this year as it's just too much for us. I can barely maintain the bit around the house, let alone the rest of it. We've alrrady sunk thousands into the land maintenance (fencing, tree, topping, mowing etc) and we've not even started on renovating the house. Went both work full time, no kids, and with the need for a bit of down time after work there is just not enough time (or energy) left, let alone the kids factor. We moved here with the same dream and have now admitted defeat, I now just want a normal 'done' house with a garden!

How old are you both? As others have said, children are tiring. Children plus condensed hours are especially tiring. Doing it in late 20s is one thing, late 30s is something else. Money buys time.

This is interesting! Do you have renovating experience? Is this just overwhelm at both renovating and maintaining the land or was it just the land maintenance that is eating into your time/ money?

It sounds like you have been outsourcing help so I can understand that it would be a money pit in that sense. We have had some crazy quotes for simple work on our renovation project so it’s all been DIY!

No renovation experience as such but my husband is very handy and has so far replaced a barn roof, the water main and septic tank. We paid for help with the fencing but everything else we have done ourselves.

With regards to time etc, it's just impossible to relax as there is always something that needs doing. I can go out for six hours during my precious weekend and do some weeding for example, I will do maybe a three metre square patch (the 'farmyard' area is an acre) in that time and turn around and a month later it needs re-doing, along with the rest of it which hasn't been touched because, heaven forbid, we wanted to go away for a weekend or have a day to relax. Add to this the normal housework that needs doing and hobbies etc.

In the meantime the house hasn't been touched because the outside work was more pressing, so I've been living with concrete floors, barely any hot water and no shower or heating for 8 years and I'm done.

In fairness we ended up not having the cash that we were planning on to pay for the renovations (long story) so we're having to pay for it all out of our wages as we go. We've ended up in the situation where we're both working all hours to pay for each project, knackered from doing this, yet always skint, no free time and basically no life. I think if you have the money available then absolutely do it but if you don't, then the novelty wears off very quickly. I moved here with such good intentions and I love this house and wish we could have done it justice but I can't dedicate another 10 years+ of my life to doing this.