How much do you have left a month?

Silkster365 said:

Following on from Poidy's thread on buying somewhere, my mrs and I are both looking at buying our first place at the moment too.

We are very conscious of not stretching ourselves, but at the same time finding somewhere to stay for a long time to come.

So, for those who are happy to share - how much do you have left each month after paying your mortgage and bills?

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Silkster365 said:

Following on from Poidy's thread on buying somewhere, my mrs and I are both looking at buying our first place at the moment too.

We are very conscious of not stretching ourselves, but at the same time finding somewhere to stay for a long time to come.

So, for those who are happy to share - how much do you have left each month after paying your mortgage and bills?

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spongy said:

I don't have any left as it stands but I'm in a similar position to you, ie. I want to buy a house but don't have any deposit unless I save.

Me and the missus could afford to buy a house but we don't have the capital up front. We rent a flat, so our bills are the same as a home owner as in rent, electric, water, gas, council tax, sky/broadband, the car running costs and various insurances etc. our monthly outgoings average about £1400.

I'm now 35 and have resigned myself to never buying my own house now as much as I would love to. And now We have a baby on the way due in July so we will have even less cash available. But we have tried to enjoy life as much as we can by going to the pub midweek to break the monotony of the week up. Having a take away at the weekend, buying a new pair of shoes or a new shirt for me every 3 months or whatever.

But on the other hand I have no savings to speak of, I've only just started putting into a private pension this month now my work has started the government compulsory pension plan early.

The trouble is that I desperately want a stable environment to bring up my baby, and that to me, means having my own house to provide said stability. Renting is a horrible thing to do, I realise mortgages are variable and can rise with interest rates etc so it can become too much. But the longer you have a mortgage, eventually it will get cheaper the older you get if you don't remortgage. Rents on the other hand are always going to increase. Now I've started a pension late I'm going to have to figure out how I can pay my rent when I'm 75 (if I live that long) on a small pension and the state pension (if that will even exist in 35 years).

It's really hard to deal with for me personally knowing I probably won't own my own place. I'm quite an intelligent chap who can normally figure out how to deal with a situation one way or another with a decent attainable answer but this question has me stumped and is depressing now being able to figure it out.

Between us, after bills, we have about £400 to play with so to speak, so if we just go to work, come home, eat and then go to bed, stay in on weekends and repeat that cycle we could save £4800 per year. So 3-4 years of being hermits and not seeing friends or socialising or going out. (That includes giving up my season ticket) I haven't looked recently at deposits but unfortunately neither of our credit ratings are particularly good so we could need circa 20k to even be considered and then it would have to be a bad credit mortgage with higher interest rates and a higher deposit , even then it's no guarantee of acceptance.

Or we could live up north where we could afford a house, but I can't earn the same money in the same engineering sector as I can down here and that would mean a complete move away from all family and friends.

I realise this has been a bit of a thread hijack but it's nice to know that at least other people are or could be in the same boat.

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Beach Hut said:

Around £3k to live off after all the direct debits

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