What would you consider affordable monthly mortgage payment if earning joint income of £35k

[2babyblues]

Just out of interest what would you consider an affordable monthly payment for a mortgage on around £35K joint income a year. No need to divulge personal details am just interested in what people think as we are planning on moving soon. We have no other major outgoings as I don't pay childcare and have paid off car. I am a bit nervous about increasing the mortgage but really want to move! Also, I should be able to earn more in a year's time once youngest is at school. Thanks for your thoughts.

Thanks Riven we get about £2,000 after tax and about £160 in CTC and CB.

I think we pay about 1/3 of our income a month, but that gives us a fair amount over to save etc once all outgoings paid off. We could pay 1/2 - we would just save less/none.

Depends on other outgoings - do you have any debt - school fees - do you need to run one car or two or none?

How much does your commute cost?

We have income of £2,100 and a mortgage of £1000 and it is completely unmanageable but then we spend nearly £600 per month on commuting.

You need to sit down and tot up all outgoings- food, petrol, debts, subscriptions, entertainment, utilities, insurance etc. Leave nothing out. Find out how much you have left over, what contingency you want to leave and go from there.

I am totally fed up with it Riven. I want to chuck everything in and sod off to a cheaper part of the country, dh can live with his parents and commute from there but he won't hear any of it.

Thanks for the advice. I think we have been spoilt with a relatively small mortgage due to buying first property a while ago so am now a bit daunted by increasing it. I reckon we can do it with budgeting but there is always going to be the worry of redundancy , car breaking down etc. but I feel we have to make a move now or we will never do it.
FreeTheGuidoOne - I really feel for you with all that money on commuting.

You might find it quite hard to get a mortgage that would involve you paying out 50% of your take-home income each month - most lenders are a lot more cautious these days and they do now use affordability calculators rather than just salary multipliers. The maximum we could borrow on (what was at the time) my salary of £86k was £320k, which would have worked out at about £1700pcm (on a take home pay of about £4500 pcm with no debts).

The 'standard' advice is that you should be spending no more than one-third of your monthly income on mortgage repayments. That's what we pay now and it is manageable. The exception is if you earn mega-bucks, the lenders will lend you more as living expenses have a finite level beyond which your income is just disposable - so if you were earning in the hundreds of thousands then paying out 50% of your monthly net income would be perfectly manageable.

Our monthly income (now that we have relocated and I am on statutory maternity pay) is about £3k and our mortgage is £1120 as mentioned above. We are fairly careful and don't spend lots on clothes or going out, we paid cash for our cars and don't have any debts at all other than the mortgage and to be honest I wouldn't want our mortgage to be any higher than it is. Things come up - our roof needs fixing, for example, and DH's car needs new tyres soon, then it's going to be Christmas. Our house is a standard 30s semi, so our bills are 'normal' (we don't have a huge draughty mansion to heat IYSWIM) - am trying to say, we have a very average house and average lifestyle and on the basis of what it costs us to live I think £1k a month (even if you can get someone to lend you that amount) on a £2k income is way too much.

We moved nearly a year ago and similar to yourself. We had a very small mortgage prior to the move. We nearly doubled it and are still paying less than £800 a month. Our income is similar. We've not seen a reduction in our standard of living, we were clearly wasting money before hand which makes me a bit at myself.

www.budgetbrain.com/budgetplanner/edit/459729

Have a look at this to try and work out your budget. It's part of Martin Lewis's site moneysavingexpert.com and will look at all parts of your incomings and outgoings.

Do remember to factor in increases in interest rates: I see you said you first bought a while ago, so perhaps like us you have first hand memories of 15% interest rates.