Age: 35
Spouse’s/Partner's age: 38
Annual gross income from employment or profession: c. 70K
Annual gross income of spouse: c. 45K
Type of employment: Self: Public Sector, still on probation until April 2010
Spouse: Private Sector
In general are you:
(a) spending more than you earn, or
(b) saving? We're Saving
Rough estimate of value of home: 350K approx.
Amount outstanding on your mortgage: 213K
What interest rate are you paying? Tracker at ECB plus 0.5% (NIB)
Other borrowings – car loans/personal loans etc: None
Do you pay off your full credit card balance each month? Yes
If not, what is the balance on your credit card?
Savings and investments: 12K in Anglo One year fixed
22K in First Active e-savings (2 accounts)
Scottish Provident with profits policy to mature next year, circa 10K
Husband has share options at work which we are paying the maximum percentage into. Can't sell for about 3 years until tax advantage starts.
Do you have a pension scheme? Yes, just started public sector. Private pension from previous job worth about half of what it was (c15K)
Spouse, yes, has a few pensions from different jobs, no idea of value
Do you own any investment or other property? No
Ages of children: 1 child, age 1
Life insurance: Just covering the mortgage if one of use dies.
What specific question do you have or what issues are of concern to you?
We bought our house in 2004, a 3-bed semi in D24. We had always planned to move and this has become more of an issue since we had a baby. Would like to have more space before number 2 comes along (hoping to start trying again next year). Would also like to move to a better area before baby goes to school, and one that would mean a shorter commute for both of us. I was on a year's maternity leave last year so we didn't manage to save much, but still didn't dent our savings too much either (spent about 6K of savings, I didn't get paid maternity leave,but we cut back a lot.).
At the moment the plan is to look for mortgage approval next summer when my probation at work is finished. We are hoping that my public sector job will be seen as good by the banks. Our main questions are:
We have been overpaying our mortgage, but think that we should stop this now and concentrate on saving as much money as possible for a deposit?
We're not sure if we should sell our house or try and hold onto it, rent it out until the market improves? It would be hard, but we think we could just about manage it for a while at least.
On the other hand, life would probably be much easier if we managed to sell our house. We paid 350K for it in 2004 and figure that that is probably what we might get for it at this stage. But next year, who knows? We are hoping that the house we will buy will have fallen more in value than our own, so we won't make a loss in the big picture.
We are worried about taking on too big a mortgage in the new house, because quality of life is very important to us and we're hoping that my spouse might be able to work part time after no. 2 arrives (if everything works out as planned). We have a great deal on the mortgage at the moment as we got the house valued at the top of the market and switched mortgage to the NIB LTV. We assume that we won't get anthing like that when we go searching for a new mortgage.
Really, we would like some advice on the best way to handle moving to a new house?
Spouse’s/Partner's age: 38
Annual gross income from employment or profession: c. 70K
Annual gross income of spouse: c. 45K
Type of employment: Self: Public Sector, still on probation until April 2010
Spouse: Private Sector
In general are you:
(a) spending more than you earn, or
(b) saving? We're Saving
Rough estimate of value of home: 350K approx.
Amount outstanding on your mortgage: 213K
What interest rate are you paying? Tracker at ECB plus 0.5% (NIB)
Other borrowings – car loans/personal loans etc: None
Do you pay off your full credit card balance each month? Yes
If not, what is the balance on your credit card?
Savings and investments: 12K in Anglo One year fixed
22K in First Active e-savings (2 accounts)
Scottish Provident with profits policy to mature next year, circa 10K
Husband has share options at work which we are paying the maximum percentage into. Can't sell for about 3 years until tax advantage starts.
Do you have a pension scheme? Yes, just started public sector. Private pension from previous job worth about half of what it was (c15K)
Spouse, yes, has a few pensions from different jobs, no idea of value
Do you own any investment or other property? No
Ages of children: 1 child, age 1
Life insurance: Just covering the mortgage if one of use dies.
What specific question do you have or what issues are of concern to you?
We bought our house in 2004, a 3-bed semi in D24. We had always planned to move and this has become more of an issue since we had a baby. Would like to have more space before number 2 comes along (hoping to start trying again next year). Would also like to move to a better area before baby goes to school, and one that would mean a shorter commute for both of us. I was on a year's maternity leave last year so we didn't manage to save much, but still didn't dent our savings too much either (spent about 6K of savings, I didn't get paid maternity leave,but we cut back a lot.).
At the moment the plan is to look for mortgage approval next summer when my probation at work is finished. We are hoping that my public sector job will be seen as good by the banks. Our main questions are:
We have been overpaying our mortgage, but think that we should stop this now and concentrate on saving as much money as possible for a deposit?
We're not sure if we should sell our house or try and hold onto it, rent it out until the market improves? It would be hard, but we think we could just about manage it for a while at least.
On the other hand, life would probably be much easier if we managed to sell our house. We paid 350K for it in 2004 and figure that that is probably what we might get for it at this stage. But next year, who knows? We are hoping that the house we will buy will have fallen more in value than our own, so we won't make a loss in the big picture.
We are worried about taking on too big a mortgage in the new house, because quality of life is very important to us and we're hoping that my spouse might be able to work part time after no. 2 arrives (if everything works out as planned). We have a great deal on the mortgage at the moment as we got the house valued at the top of the market and switched mortgage to the NIB LTV. We assume that we won't get anthing like that when we go searching for a new mortgage.
Really, we would like some advice on the best way to handle moving to a new house?