Travel Bug

Yamaha1300

Hi all,

I am new to this forum, but wanted thoughts on our situation. We are both in our early 40's now, and due to having a mortgage since we were very young, and having moved several times, we are now in a position to sell our house, and downsize locally to be mortgage free, even though we have put a lot of hard work into this house, as it is too big for us, we have one grown up child who wants to leave us to travel next year.

Our mortgage is 155k and we have 15 yrs to run on repayment, so we dont find this an easy task either.

We are both fed up with our jobs and would like the freedom to try something new, and also we both have a strong urge to travel also.

Would we be mad to do this now/next year ?
Should we hold onto our house till we're older?
Should we rent out and go?
Would we be a lot better off being mortgage free even tho rates are low at mo. we have a 2.99% variable rate.
Do we wait till rates go up, and then unload?
Your thought please.:j

dimbo61

Will rates go up ?
What could you rent the property out for and would it cover the mortgage?
Do you fancy the idea of someone else living in your home after all the hard work and cost of doing it up!
Is now a good time to sell ? with mortgages hard to get and worry over jobs you might get a poor price for your property but that depends on where you live.
Save up and have a month long holiday in New Zealand/Australia and after a month see if you want to come home to your home.

Yamaha1300

Hi,
Thanks for your response. Yes, if we rented the house out that would cover the mortgage, plus some extra left. The other problem is because my husband runs his own small business we would have to stop to go travelling. Do we stay where we are while mortgages are cheaper than they were. Renting house out to strangers may be hard, but both willing to try. Maybe now is not the right time to sell to downsize and to hold on, maybe we should have that long holiday instead and see !!!

getmore4less

I think you need to to think bigger picture and longer term.

what is the pension situation looking like?
(is seems to better to have nothing or loads)

Do you want more than a basic retirement?

What other investments do you have if the basket of eggs is one house and you need the equity for the future you have to diversify at some point.

How much do you hate the jobs?

Any eldery relatives that might need looking after.

I am older than you and would love to travel never did it when young, lost job but parents got ill so never got that window and iam getting older.

Could the OH drop the business for a couple of years and come back to it.

Where will the child live and work on return(if they do).

What about waiting till the child returns set them up with a place that will do them and you for the future and you go traveling while the child looks after the place they get there own on our return

My thought if we do travel is we need to keep a foothold in the UK because it is very likely we will return for health reason and quite like the UK in the summer anyway so will probably do winters elsewhere while we can.

We hope we don't have to work on return I guess this will not be an option for you yet.

Another option for travel, is holiday swap we might look at this, you travel by swapping homes with other people, still need to manage your place if you are way long term so need someone local the alternative is return home regularly and take the hit on flight costs.

Yamaha1300

Hi there,

Thanks for your thoughts. That is one of our main worries, that we should think about our long term future, as we would like a half decent retirement.
I have an occupational pension I have been putting into since 18, and hubby has small private pension he has been paying into since 21, but our home is our main investment.

I dont hate my job, but my hubby would be keen to give it up and not come back to it ! maybe its time he tried to find something new, this may help ! But it is quite scary to give something up he has been doing it for 15 yrs.

Family have always lived some distance away, which also makesthings hard, my mother in law is in quite poor health now, father in law has died and my parents both well, but in another country, and siblings too.

We would want to make sure our daughter is catered for, if we downsized we would buy house outright locally so she could come and go, or we just stay put and let her do her travelling !

Lots to think about really.