How do people do it?

iwannabefree

Hello all,

Not quite sure if this is the right topic for this thread, but here goes.

Fairly new to this site and have put one or two comments on and threads of which i've had numerous helpfull and supportive comments made.

Please bear with me on this bit.

Have debts which are just about sorted and on an even keel which me and my OH are able to cope with on a daily/weekly/monthly basis:) They will be ongoing until some time in 2011. Boohoo!! but after that will be debt free:rotfl:

We rent our house through work (in the Military) so the rent is quite cheap. We have an IVA which is up and running and bearable as sort of said before.
The total we pay with these two combined is around about £835 per month.
My annual salary is around £26500, my OH is approx £4000 (part timework) Through cutting back, getting rid of things we don't need (Sky, 2 mobile phones, plus a couple of others) we now have a nice weekly budget of around £200 :cool:

This monthly payment (Rent/IVA) is or close to what many pay as a mortgage. How do those of you who have a mortgage cope? What about things like buying a car when you need to? Replacing washing machines or any other household appliance. I mean our household income is fairly healthy but in the years to come when my OH and me want to buy our first house we are thinking we are going to struggle for ages. Yes ok we can cope with daily living etc, but things like the car, or holidays (by the time our debt is paid off we'll need one, lol) seem like another hurdle to lose sleep over.

It would be great to see how people are able to get through and their experiences would be of inspiration probably not just to me, but to others as well.

I look forward to hearing from you all:wave:

themaccas

£835 sounds like a hefty mortgage to me and I would not like to pay that much. How much does that give a mortgage for? You should never use more than a third of your total monthly salary to pay for a mortgage, so with that mortgage you should have £1670 still left over in your monthly budget towards holiday/car/general expenses.

yung

how do people do it? my personal opinion when I was working I used to plan and budget for every eventuallity although retired now I still do it, I used to live on 80% of my income and only buy what I consider to be necessities, sometime it was hard and sometime easy, but thing is harder now with the price of houses, no Job security. you said you are in the military how long have you got left to do? if you got a few more years left you need to start planning now while you have got the chance because it is a big wild world out there outside the barrack good luck.

iwannabefree

There's alot of if's and but's, however at the moment the plan is in 5 1/2years time we would like to buy our own house (FTB) In 5 years we would be debt free, in 5 1/2 years time i'm currently due out, but that may change depending on the circumstances, i could sign on for longer if i wanted (haven't decided yet) When i come out i get a lump sum (enough for a good deposit) will re-train as something completly different to what i do now (hopefully become a plumber) who knows?

So that's the plan of sorts. Always have a backup plan (stay in the mil) bit of security and a roof over my head.

Themaccas - you say £835 is a heafty mortage. Did a mortgage calculator thing for a mortgage of £140k, that's what it came up with. Don't know if that's alot or not, mortgages not my bag, well not at the moment.

With the prices of houses high, i'm a little concerned for the future once i come to leave, with regards to housing.

themaccas

Hi £835 for 140K mortgage does sound about right actually, it just looks a bit high initially. Our mortgage is 67K and monthly only £400. I would advise relocating to a cheap area of the UK and get as much as you can for your money - we did my OH is also in the military and is out in 18 months!

yung

5 1/2 year you need to start planning now otherwise it may become harder, remember even when you are out you can still find an NRPS job while you getting use to being out

iwannabefree

thanks guys, anyone else want to share their experiences?

Want to start planning sooner rather than later

Cheers!!

itsarichmansworld

If Your a first time buyer get a house in a run down area but make sure there are plans to redevelop, we did we bought our flat for £15k now worth £60k! 5 years later

Thats a flat in Glasgow

Mrs_Sparkle

We have a huge mortgage- £1400 a month. It's easy to budget for as it's money that comes out of my bank account literally 24 hours after it lands in there. The mortgage, regular bills and transport to work are our "set in stone" expenses. We use our "spare" money to pay off debts, but if something else comes up we have to use our spare money for that instead and pay less off our debt. For example if you have to buy a new tyre or pay for washing machine repairs you just deduct that sum from the amount you would have used to pay off debt.

I started putting £50 a month into a savings account 6 months ago to build a bit of a cushion for unexpected expenses- last month we used it to buy things we badly needed for the house but at least the expenses didn't use up our "debt" money.