bigger house and mortgage or stay and live abit?!

F_Bear

myself and OH are thinking of moving but wanted peoples wisdom and advice on whether to move or stay put.

we earn c£50k, 32/24 years old, no kids, choc lab and for the last 3 years live in a 3 bed £100k semi paying £400 a mnth mortgage, 2 cars and 2/3 getaways a year.

theres 10% equity in the house and have saved £15k to 'move'.

we're looking at moving to a 4 bed detached for no other reason than we want something bigger and better (want it now generation!)

if we move we'll be broke re: holidays, meals out etc. we will want kids in the future but no immediate plans.

so my question is do we skint ourselves for the bigger house or stay where we are and have more cash?

becca0417

Would you definitely be paying out that much? Our situation is almost identical to yours but we got our 4 bed detached a bit cheaper as it needed some work & we only raised our mortgage by £300 pm.

I'm sure you've already looked but worth a thought as we ended up paying 40k less than we'd actually budgeted for

Heffi1

How will you afford the kids if all of your income is going to be spent on the new bigger house? 3 bed house with one child or two is manageable, it depends on whether you want instant gratification and maybe have to move later when kids come along ...

peachyprice

Would you actually be able to afford to the have children to fill this 4 bed house that you want?

£50k income isn't that big an income to be taking on a large mortgage, even less once you were on maternity leave. Do you envisage being able to spend a long time off with a baby or would you be happy putting a young baby into childcare because you need to go back to work?

MrsAtobe

Having recently moved from a three bed terraced house, with neighbours from hell on one side, to a four bed detached, I'd say move! Is it right for you financially, in the long term, sorry, not got a clue.

Could you afford to move once you have children?

sassyblue

If you're happy where you are there's a lot to be said for saving very hard for when you do decide to move.

If l had my time over again l would pay off as much of the mortgage as l could, again benefitting you when you do move. You have a fab income l would get that mortgage paid off.

£400 monthly repayments seems little on a £90k mortgage, are you only paying interest?

One of the best pieces of advice given to us was never to tie up ALL our money in keeping the house, you don't know what's around the corner in life and you need treats if you're working hard. That said £9.50 holidays in the Sun have done us okay when we've needed them.

lika_86

You say if you move you'll be broke, have you thought about what happens when interest rates rise? Could you still afford the mortgage on the big house?

sassyblue

lika_86 wrote: »

You say if you move you'll be broke, have you thought about what happens when interest rates rise? Could you still afford the mortgage on the big house?

And what if you need IVF (happened to us), or didn't want to go back to work full time after your family arrives?

F_Bear

thanx for the replies.

our mortgage at the mo is a variable at 2.99%. we can get a 4 bed on our estate, kingswood, hu7 for £140k.

could we afford to still have kids if we moved? i sure we could afford it but its the level of 'comfort' we'd want thats the problem. we'd still want the holdiays, meals, cars etc which we could have in the 3 bed......

im sure once we had kids our 'selfishness' of wanting will change, but once the kids come we wont be able to afford to move!

Lotus-eater

You can have it now, or you can have it later, or you can do some hash inbetween.
It doesn't matter if you have kids now, move house now, save it, or spend it now. The money will go somewhere.
If you spend money on luxury's now, you won't have it later.
If you spend it on a house now, you still have it later.

Put into new house/save, or spend on holidays, that's the choice and only one you can make.

We went for the putting money into house/savings route and it was right for us. Now we have kids it's alot easier than it would have been.

Had we spent it all on holidays etc, we would now be struggling due to changes of circumstances.

But of course, some people would think we missed out on all those holidays etc.

What's right for one person may not be for another, I'm sure some of our friends look at us as being boring, for saving when we could have been spending loads.

But now our family house is virtually paid off, not many 40 somethings can say that, plus we have 2 kids and they do lots of clubs etc. We have no debts, but we still don't go on expensive holidays

jenhug

If you love the life you are currently living, I would stay where you are.