We saw an IFA yesterday about mortgages & he was very helpful & explained a lot including what we can borrow, which was more than i thought (but we wouldn't want to be going top end anyway).
As ever though, you leave these situations & then questions come to you. I have just one that i think is pretty important though which i'm sure i could find the answer here....
Q: How do you work out how much of your income you can allocate to mortgage repayments?
To explain ... Between my wife & I, we earn about £2,000 (net) per month. It's actually more than that (about £2,300 really) but for easy maths we can go £2k round.
We've never had our own place & therefore don't know what the general cost of living is - all the various bills etc. We know you pay for food, electricity, gas etc etc, but don't know what you're likely to pay.
I calculated about £500 per month for mortgage, guessing that £1,500 would be ok for the bills, plus some retirement planning, plus some saving.
What i'm trying to say here is .... i don't know how much (i don't even have a clue) we would be left with in our back pockets to do with as we wish, at the end of the month.
This is before we get onto the topic of what if rates increase & your mortgage then becomes more every month.
And it's certainly before we get onto any topic of what if one stops work due to starting a family (though i guess that one would complicate this question too much right now).
So - how do you work it out when you've never dealt with these bills before? We'd like to have an idea of what our disposable income may be at the end of the month.
As ever though, you leave these situations & then questions come to you. I have just one that i think is pretty important though which i'm sure i could find the answer here....
Q: How do you work out how much of your income you can allocate to mortgage repayments?
To explain ... Between my wife & I, we earn about £2,000 (net) per month. It's actually more than that (about £2,300 really) but for easy maths we can go £2k round.
We've never had our own place & therefore don't know what the general cost of living is - all the various bills etc. We know you pay for food, electricity, gas etc etc, but don't know what you're likely to pay.
I calculated about £500 per month for mortgage, guessing that £1,500 would be ok for the bills, plus some retirement planning, plus some saving.
What i'm trying to say here is .... i don't know how much (i don't even have a clue) we would be left with in our back pockets to do with as we wish, at the end of the month.
This is before we get onto the topic of what if rates increase & your mortgage then becomes more every month.
And it's certainly before we get onto any topic of what if one stops work due to starting a family (though i guess that one would complicate this question too much right now).
So - how do you work it out when you've never dealt with these bills before? We'd like to have an idea of what our disposable income may be at the end of the month.