What % of Your (Combined) Take-Home Salary Goes on Your Mortgage?

loracan1

I put 39% of my income into my mortgage but this is with a massive overpayment, with the knowledge that if interest rates rise/my circumstances drastically change in the next few years I'll have a buffer. All carefully budgeted for, and with the knowledge that if anything unforeseen occurs I can halve it immediately.

charleyroo

Our basic payment is 15% of combined income (income = £2,500 pm) but we repay an extra £100 on top. We took out mortgage just in my name, in which case the payment would be 26% per month. I was too scared to take out much more than this in case we were at the total mercy of interest rate rises in 2 yrs time!

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn

£650 of £3100(working off our lowest average wage)

Which by my calculations is 21%, after bills, mortgage, travel costs, food clothing and all other expenses we have £1000p/m left over.

I would use this budget calculator
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/resources/property-guides/buying-guide/what-you-can-afford.html

Good luck:beer:

hcb42

22% for us at the moment. However when we bought this house six years ago it was more like 31%. We have no kids at home, hubby now 50, I am 43.

Personally, it doesnt sound too bad to me, having worked out your payment, it is a little over mine, but not a lot, and I know we have other expensive items, but I still save quite a chunk every month - plus I too would stretch to get the best house in best area (definitely get the latter!) but only you know your plans e.g. how sustainable is it if you do want family etc.

oasisfeverish

We are currently at 17%, but hopefully moving this November and it will rise to 20%.

As we already have one child and another due in March 2012, we forcasted total income now, in November, next March and next June. and then approx. worked out what our ratio would be.

This allows us to streamline our spending now to cover the reduction in income when on maternity leave. We also did a spreadsheet with 0.5% interest rate increases, to again work out worse case for out ratio.

As far as the wedding costs go, it's up to you, but make sure what you are spending is for your benefit and not to give a 'show' to your guests. As they will enjoy the event, but won't be helping you pay for it.

MessyMare

about 20% or so. Nice and affordable

kmmr

Ours is 20%, but would be a problem if/when I stop working as we couldn't cover on OH's income. Fingers crossed in the next year or so I'll need to take some maternity leave, so we will have to budget for that if it happens. We have enough savings to last for 6 months I suppose, but it would require a change in lifestyle for sure!

cathh70

At the moment about 0.5% of salary because we made huge overpayments last year due to low savings rates, (relatively) high fixed rate and ERC (since waived). We now have approx. 99% equity. It has been 20% at worst in this house, but in my first place it was 33%.

Castleman

Well...13k for a wedding sounds fine to me - it will be the most amazing day of your life and will probably be worth a lot more than that to you!!

Re: monthly repayments 30-40% doesn;t sound that unusual for people in their late 20's-early 30's buying a first (or second!) house from people I know and compared to lots of rents. We used to pay 40% of takehome for renting a small 2bed flat and that was a bargain for south London.

What matters more than % of takehome, is how much you have left and whether this covers all your other outgoings. A better question might be, how much do you need for monthly expenditure including bills. As long as you can meet this (and it's probably worth recommending having some sort of buffer* for should your situation change), then your % of take home is irrelevant.

* this could be through exisiting savings, making regular savings, overpaying mortgage, having flexible mortgage so you can increase duration etc

scottishchick27

Ours is just under 10% but we pay more than double our mortgage to the csa for my OHs son.