Where to from here...

Age: 33
Spouse’s/Partner's age: 36

Annual gross income from employment: 45k base salary + 5% bonus
Annual gross income of spouse: 45k base salary + 5% bonus

Monthly take-home pay: 5200 pm total (excluding bonus) – pensions and health insurance deducted

Type of employment: private sector

In general are you:
(a) spending more than you earn, or
(b) saving?

Up until recently have been saving approx. €1,500/month to purchase a house - we did this consistently for three years


Rough estimate of value of home: 350k
Amount outstanding on your mortgage: 278k
What interest rate are you paying? 3% with BOI 5 year fixed (1170 pm)

Other borrowings – car loans/personal loans etc

Loan from parents - €25,000 – plan to pay back €500/month for next 4 years

Do you pay off your full credit card balance each month? Yes
If not, what is the balance on your credit card? N/A

Savings and investments: Approx. €15,000 in cash savings

Do you have a pension scheme? Both of us have PRSAs through our employers – we contribute 5% each and that’s matched by employers – approx. €7k total in funds.


Do you own any investment or other property? Yes – a house bought with a friend in the boom. The friend is unwilling to sell. The house is rented for €1600/month.


Rough estimate of value of home: 325k
Amount outstanding on your mortgage: 325k
What interest rate are you paying? 2.25% tracker – €1100 or so per month



Ages of children: No kids but hopefully soon

Life insurance: Mortgage protection policies covering the balance of both mortgages. Both employers also provide 4x salary death benefit.


What specific question do you have or what issues are of concern to you?
We recently purchased our house so I want to get a handle on our finances in our new reality if that makes sense.

We currently have €15,000 in savings. Approx. €10,000 of this needs to go on refurbishment of the house immediately. It needs a new central heating system and partial upgrade of electrics.

The remaining €5,000 I want to set aside as an emergency or baby fund should things change on that front in the coming months.

For home improvements above the €10,000, our plan is to cash flow each month – after everything is accounted for we can spend approx. €800/900 per month on the house (living very frugally).

Do people think we’re taking a sensible approach given the resources we have available? Should we pause renovation once the plumbing is sorted and beef up the emergency fund? Or should we pay down the debt to my parents to improve cash flow?

What would you do in our situation?

Fair play on 3 years of saving prior to buying the house.

bluebell11 said:

The remaining €5,000 I want to set aside as an emergency or baby fund should things change on that front in the coming months..
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Should we pause renovation once the plumbing is sorted and beef up the emergency fund? Or should we pay down the debt to my parents to improve cash flow?

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The emergency fund and baby fund should not be the same. I would suggest beefing that up. Also - if both of you intend to stay working after kids come along how will you fund childcare? You really need to live frugally until such time as you have a handle on things (in my opinion).

Thanks PGF2016, I appreciate your perspective and don't disagree! We are definitely going to live frugally for next few years. I agree and think increasing the emergency fund before we do any unnecessary or cosmetic refurbishments is the best approach. I guess having it there would also alleviate some of the mental pressure of having to cash flow everything else we'll have going on month to month if we're doing up a house and have a baby to pay for.

Set up a DD to your parents, increase savings and pause renovations, after plumbing, until parents are paid off.

If the woman is 33 I would plan the baby. Today!

If she's 36 yesterday wouldn't be too soon.