move house or stay put and put up with neighbours?

[roising]

Age: 39
Spouse’s/Partner's age: 40

Annual gross income from employment or profession: 30,000 (jobsharing - could go full time and increase to 58000)

Annual gross income spouse:54000

Type of employment: e.g. Civil Servant, self-employed civil servant - me, employee - him

Expenditure pattern: In general are you spending more than you earn or are you saving? spending

Rough estimate of value of home 385000
Mortgage on home 257000
Mortgage provider:AIB
Type of mortgage: Tracker, interest only, fixed rate Tracker
Interest rate 4.7

Other borrowings – car loans/personal loans etc Personal loan with AIB 4,300 (paying 100 per month back) Credit Union 4000 (paying 420 per month back)

Do you pay off your full credit card balance each month? no
If not, what is the balance on your credit card? 1200

Savings and investments:none

Do you have a pension scheme? yes (both me and spouse, mine index linked, his not)

Do you own any investment or other property? no

Ages of children: 4 and 5

Life insurance: yes


What specific question do you have or what issues are of concern to you?

 

[Welfarite]

My two cents worth:

1. The big issue seems to be the neighbours. Ask yourself would you be thinking of moving if they were not living next door?

2. Your loans are costing you 520 per month, almost the difference between 2000 and 1400. however, you have no savings (apart presumably from the CU shares which could be used to pay off the loan?) which leaves you vulnerable.

3. Your option to go back full-time would ease your relocation and financing headaches, but you would lose a certain quality of life considering the children's ages.. Are you prepared to do that?

 

[roising]

Hi Welfarite,

1. The big issue seems to be the neighbours. Ask yourself would you be thinking of moving if they were not living next door?

no - all the other neighbours surrounding us are great, and we're on good terms with everybody bar our joining neighbour. We stretched at the time to buy this house as it has more space than the average semi -d and a great garden in the back.

2. Your loans are costing you 520 per month, almost the difference between 2000 and 1400. however, you have no savings (apart presumably from the CU shares which could be used to pay off the loan?) which leaves you vulnerable.

We have no savings (used ssia to do work on house). The 4000 credit union loan is actually 11000, but I was factoring in our 7000 shares when I said 4000.

3. Your option to go back full-time would ease your relocation and financing headaches, but you would lose a certain quality of life considering the children's ages.. Are you prepared to do that?

It's the last thing I want. At the moment I drop and collect kids to and from school and they can participate in after school activities and meet friends as well as just being at home in their own house. I worked full time until the oldest started school and we paid full creche fees for both - that's why the savings are nil! I went parttime knowing that things would still be tight but we are both in very secure jobs so I've never panicked about our lack of savings (not suggesting that this is a good thing!)

 

[Giggsey]

Hi Roising,

How about increasing the payments to Personal loan with AIB to 400 a month.

This will be a test run to be see if you can afford the extra outgoings - if things are too tight pull back to 100 again.

After approx 10 months your loans will be gone, and you'd be in a lot healthier position to get bigger mortgage.
(For double bonus - house price might be lower in 10months)

Is this too much time to deal with 'Him next door'? Can you survive another 10 months/year.... At least you'd have a target and have some light at end of the tunnel.....

Best of luck.

 

[Welfarite]

Hi Welfarite,
no - all the other neighbours surrounding us are great, and we're on good terms with everybody bar our joining neighbour. We stretched at the time to buy this house as it has more space than the average semi -d and a great garden in the back.

I suppose my comment was about that one troublesome neighbour... from what you say, you like the rest of it. You say the Garda and community warden have recently been involved and things have improved...maybe you should stick it out for another while, giving you tiume to get some of the loans cleared adn then review things?

We have no savings (used ssia to do work on house). The 4000 credit union loan is actually 11000, but I was factoring in our 7000 shares when I said 4000.

I should have knwon it wasn't as simple as I made it out to be!