FTB ... Should we buy now or wait?

LittleStar

noisysaver wrote: »

Don't spend more than £5k on a wedding.

It's just one day and £5k will get you a fantastic day if you shop around and pull in favours from friends and family.

Buying a house? Well if America are ahead by 2 or so years it means within the next 18 or some months we could see up to a 30% reduction-readjustment of house prices here in the UK.

Thats is our exact budget!! ... 5k, and we are pretty much on target so far which is great!! ... totally agree that its not about getting into debt to please others ...

Also that is a very vaild point about the USA and their house prices!! ... thanks .x.

LittleStar

penguine wrote: »

I think this is the crux of the matter, you are more clued-in than he is! You say your parents aren't really in favour of the idea either, so could you and your OH talk to them about it? -- they may have some personal experience to share that will help him see the situation more clearly.

Yea my mum and dad were hit by the huge interest rate increases etc ... thought they would be fine, but it crippled them ... so I think that is why I am so cautious and they are advising us against it! ...

Thank you so much for your advice ... I was starting to doubt think I was being silly and too cautious but it seems like I have right to be!! ... thanks again!! .x.x.

huntersc

noisysaver wrote: »

Don't spend more than £5k on a wedding.

It's just one day and £5k will get you a fantastic day if you shop around and pull in favours from friends and family.

I spent £30k on mine. It was a lovely day. Amazing in fact. I'll remember it for the rest of my life. I still feel like an idiot for spending that much though. Completely stupid and although it didn't hurt me financially I could have spent that money much more wisely. I said to the wife the other day, if we did it again we would have just a couple of friends/family and a registry office. I'm cringing right now just thinking about how much it cost me. £1k for a cake! £2k for a photographer, £7k for the venue, the food bill alone was £6k nevermind the booze.

One of the stupidest things I've ever done. Indeed I feel embarrassed just thinking about it. :embarasse:embarasse:embarasse:embarasse

So take the advice, £5k will do it, spend the other £25k on a holiday to Mauritius, every year, for the next 7 years.

penguine

noisysaver wrote: »

Don't spend more than £5k on a wedding.

It's just one day and £5k will get you a fantastic day if you shop around and pull in favours from friends and family.

Why be in debt for the next 10 years just to impress a handful of people for a matter of hours? I know so many people who are struggling because of a huge wedding/honeymoon, it's just crazy.

We almost had a big wedding, then some family strife over the arrangements made us think again -- and right at that moment my grandpa died and when I flew back for the funeral my grandma told me how they'd been married in the parsonage (church weddings weren't the done thing during the Great Depression). Just the pastor and his wife and their two witnesses -- my grandmother's mother wasn't well enough to be there and grandpa's parents were too far away. Her mother just asked her to phone to let them know when they were married so she could write it down in the family Bible.

I figured they were married 60 years so a big wedding obviously wasn't essential! We did ours for about £1500 in the end, a registry office ceremony followed by a small reception and just family and a few friends then a 4-day honeymoon in the UK. In retrospect I wish we'd invited more friends but we were too cautious as we were in hot water with in-laws over changing the wedding arrangements at short notice. But I've never regretted the small wedding itself, we were struggling financially for the first year or two we were married and it was a relief not to have spent more money on one "big day".

lostinrates

Hmmm, natwest don't have an online calculater...shame I fancied seeing how much they'd lend us Always nice to know.


Good luck OP, whatever you decide. FwIw DH and I are waiting.

Dinah93

LittleStar wrote: »

Sorry I am painting a bad picture of my otherhalf ... he is not as bad as it must seem ... We are very much in love and we really want to live together in our own home, and I think his feelings of wanting to own our own house is clouding his judgement ... that it is not a sensible thing to do right now!

You haven't made him seem bad at all, just financially oblivious! You may have been together 6 years but if you haven't lived together before I can not advise strongly enough that you rent before buying. Attitudes to money are very important in a relationship. A lot of my debt was accumulated trying to support my ex who honestly seemed to think money grew on trees. £1200 on 'average' salaries is a collossal ammount to me. I consider my salary 'average' at £26k, even with two of those coming in I would be extremely reluctant to spend that much on a mortgage, as food, council tax, bills etc usually come to roughly £500 a month, and I would rather rent and save AND still be able to go out sometime, and spend £900 a month on a mortgage in a year or twos time. Unfortunately you can love him to the end of the earth, but the age old adage is true - it won't pay the bills!

After my ex and I split up I was still paying our rent (£600) a month, and all the bills on the house as well as trying to pay off my debts, when it was halfway through the month and i had to smash my loose change jar with a hammer in order to pay the dentist (oh she LOVED me going in with a reusable bag full of little bank bags of coppers!) I realised this was no life at all, and spending nearly half my take home pay on rent, and almost as much again on bills wasn't sustainable, and was making me downright miserable. Trying to save for a wedding is enough stress in itself, concentrate on that first, then try to save up a bit more for a deposit. As a rough guideline every £1000 you put down as a deposit will save £2000 paid back on a mortgage.

Best of luck in whatever you do, Dinah x

LittleStar

Dinah93 wrote: »

You haven't made him seem bad at all, just financially oblivious! You may have been together 6 years but if you haven't lived together before I can not advise strongly enough that you rent before buying.

I do stay with him regularly 4-6 nights out of the week, but like you say I spose you don't really know someone until you have lived with them! ... I just think its a good idea to carry on renting anyway at the moment, would be nicer to be using the rent money to pay off our own house, instead of paying off someone elses mortgage tho lol

Dinah93 wrote: »

£1200 on 'average' salaries is a collossal ammount to me. I consider my salary 'average' at £26k, even with two of those coming in I would be extremely reluctant to spend that much on a mortgage, as food, council tax, bills etc usually come to roughly £500 a month.

Yea my mum nearly had a heart attack when I told her!! ... Thank you for your advice ... I spoke with my other half on my lunch break and I think I have convinced him to hold out, at the moment he still only wants to hold out till after the new year ... but maybe some of the advice/info I have been given on here will change his mind!!

Thanks .x.x.

noisysaver

Our wedding cost £3,500. We got married in a restaurant and had the reception in a local club. We found a lovely old lady who catered for us, we bought all the food and she and some of her friends from the WI just cooked it and served it. We had friends handle all the photography, NO free bar and the disco was an ipod with a PA and a few banks of flashing lights. Mother in law made the cake and all the bridesmaids formed a team and decorated the club for the reception.

My wife wore her mothers wedding dress from 30 years earlier which was a perfect fit!

We borrowed a flash wedding car from a friend who also dressed up as a chauffeur and drove!

Everyone we know says it was one of the best weddings they'd been to because it was full of love and almost everyone we knew had played a part in it somehow.

As soon as you mention wedding to anyone remotely involved in such events they instantly pull out a 'special' price list, typically 50% above regular prices!

I know a fairly famous celebrity couple who got married 11 years ago...and are still paying for it. That was their advice to me and I followed it!

geoffky

let him read these threads........hello m8 your girlfriend leaves you for dead on finacial matters so hand over the money running to her when you get married....

Nenen

Hi Littlestar... here are my thoughts on what is often an emotive subject! We are in a slightly similar situation to you and your partner in that we would really like to buy our own house now but have to balance emotional needs with trying to make a sensible financial decision. We sold our old house last year and, through a series of circumstances, ended up renting for what originally was to be 3-6 months max but has extended into 17 months! I'd love to have my own house again (well mortgage company and ours) but have decided to hold fire whilst keeping a very careful eye on the housing market and economy.

Regarding the popular saying that 'rent is dead money'... that is only true if the cost of renting a place is higher than the cost of an interest only mortgage for the same type of property. If it is cheaper for you to rent than to pay an interest only mortgage then you actually SAVE money by renting (which can later be used to put towards a deposit). Without wishing to sound toooo patronising you are too young to remember the last property crash when thousands of young couples went into negative equity meaning they had to stay in tiny flats and houses even when they'd had children and desparately needed more space... or even worse couldn't afford to keep up their repayments and had to sell at a loss leaving them with massive debts.

I read all the posts on here re house prices etc and try to balance the extremes from both sides. There is an interesting thread here:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1115785

[FONT=&quot]and I was particularly struck by the graph (around post 19 if I remember rightly) which shows a graph plotting average earnings against average house prices. It really does lead me to believe that prices are set to fall far lower than they are currently... whatever EAs might tell you!

The other thing I do, which you might find helpful (if you don't already) is to download and use property-bee (it is an add-on to Rightmove but you have to use Firefox as your bowser for it to work). This tracks all changes to any property advertised on Rightmove, including price changes and you can see just how many property prices are falling in your area and just how long things are sitting on the market without selling.

Good luck with your future... your bf sounds lovely... just obviously loves you too much not to worry about taking a risk to make your nest together!
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