Hi there,
Having finally bought a house, we're looking at evaluating the best way to manage our finances in the short to medium term. We've (for right or wrong) delayed this until now to focus on saving for a deposit, so this is now all a bit new. Details as follows:
Age: 32
Spouse’s/Partner's age: 28
Annual gross income from employment or profession: 50k
Annual gross income of spouse: 15k
Monthly take-home pay: 4k
Type of employment: e.g. Civil Servant, self-employed: PAYE Employee
In general are you: saving - difficult to get an idea of how much, but estimate about 1k per month.
Rough estimate of value of home: 125k
Amount outstanding on your mortgage: 112k
What interest rate are you paying? 2.9% fixed at 3 years - 35 year mortgage
Other borrowings – car loans/personal loans etc: None
Do you pay off your full credit card balance each month? Yes
Savings and investments: 25k savings
Do you have a pension scheme? Yes, but just started. Contributing 5% matched by employer.
Do you own any investment or other property? No
Ages of children: 8, 3.5 and one on the way.
Life insurance: Mortgage protection only.
What specific question do you have or what issues are of concern to you?
Until now, we've just been putting away money to pay deposit and to show savings. We ended up buying a much lower value house than expected so have savings left, but will always be tipping away at house improvements. At the moment we have money sitting in savings doing nothing, which doesn't seem to best way to go. We'll be hitting college aged kids in about 10 years time and that'll likely continue (although staggered I guess) for 10 years or so. Looking for best thing to do right now to put our money to best use. From reading through similar experiences here, I feel like it'll be to find the best way to pay off as much mortgage as possible monthly, or pay maximum into pension but worth asking.
Having finally bought a house, we're looking at evaluating the best way to manage our finances in the short to medium term. We've (for right or wrong) delayed this until now to focus on saving for a deposit, so this is now all a bit new. Details as follows:
Age: 32
Spouse’s/Partner's age: 28
Annual gross income from employment or profession: 50k
Annual gross income of spouse: 15k
Monthly take-home pay: 4k
Type of employment: e.g. Civil Servant, self-employed: PAYE Employee
In general are you: saving - difficult to get an idea of how much, but estimate about 1k per month.
Rough estimate of value of home: 125k
Amount outstanding on your mortgage: 112k
What interest rate are you paying? 2.9% fixed at 3 years - 35 year mortgage
Other borrowings – car loans/personal loans etc: None
Do you pay off your full credit card balance each month? Yes
Savings and investments: 25k savings
Do you have a pension scheme? Yes, but just started. Contributing 5% matched by employer.
Do you own any investment or other property? No
Ages of children: 8, 3.5 and one on the way.
Life insurance: Mortgage protection only.
What specific question do you have or what issues are of concern to you?
Until now, we've just been putting away money to pay deposit and to show savings. We ended up buying a much lower value house than expected so have savings left, but will always be tipping away at house improvements. At the moment we have money sitting in savings doing nothing, which doesn't seem to best way to go. We'll be hitting college aged kids in about 10 years time and that'll likely continue (although staggered I guess) for 10 years or so. Looking for best thing to do right now to put our money to best use. From reading through similar experiences here, I feel like it'll be to find the best way to pay off as much mortgage as possible monthly, or pay maximum into pension but worth asking.