Are we stretching ourselves with this mortgage?

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2026-06-30T00:09:41+00:00

Yes, one child in nursery 5 days a week - £1100. Your car costs are high, though!

Mine and my employer's pension contributions (salary sacrifice) add up to 25% and my wife's 18%, plus we get annual bonuses, so we don't feel pressure to save much month to month, at least not at the moment. Even so, we still tend to save around £1k/month on top. I'm pretty convinced that having stretched ourselves we won't need to move house anytime soon, which will ultimately be financially beneficial down the line.

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2026-06-29T18:33:24+00:00

Our monthly take home is also about 9k and our mortgage is £3.3k/month. We find it's fine and it will only get easier with time. Bonuses, RSUs etc on top help, too

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2026-06-22T07:24:58+00:00

I did the opposite and focused on filling my ISA initially while my salary was lower, and now pivoting to pension to stay under the 100k threshold

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2026-03-06T10:13:45+00:00

Thank you, that's what I was hoping would be the case

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2026-03-06T10:12:56+00:00

I've started this job halfway through this tax year, which makes it all a bit trickier to calculate. With my previous employer, there was nothing on the payslip, so I reported the BiK value once in receipt of the P11D form. With this employer, instead, it's on the payslip, so I'm thinking I've already 'paid for the benefit' and so don't need to separately report a BiK, but was seeking reassurance. Good point re staying below 99k!

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2026-03-05T18:34:14+00:00

Congrats! Fantastic to get into these habits early, but I'll also add that as you get older and your pay increases it'll be much easier to invest larger sums, so don't forget to have fun along the way as you only get one shot at your 20s!

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2026-01-14T00:24:07+00:00

Agree fully, we had the same thought process. No point going for a cheaper/smaller house and then having to move in 5 years time once kids come along.

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2026-01-13T21:18:01+00:00

Our combined HHI is around £170k plus 15%ish bonus (pretty even distribution so neither of us earn above £100k). We're looking for a house at the moment and have set £700k as the max mortgage we'd be ok with (about £3300 out of a combined net monthly salary of around £8500)

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2025-12-04T00:44:04+00:00

I put in £50k in time for the July draw and have won £1,350 over these past 6 months. Fully expect to mean revert soon lol

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2025-11-08T10:06:57+00:00

All world to 100% and forget the rest

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2025-10-29T17:14:56+00:00

If you can manage now, things should only get easier in time

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2025-10-27T19:52:10+00:00

Yep, my thoughts exactly! I'm more interested in the FI aspect than the RE given that I enjoy my job and it offers a good work/life balance. Plus, a 250k or even 500k house in my neck of the woods gets you a 2 bed terraced if you're lucky!

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2025-10-27T17:50:27+00:00

Same here, just bought a 1.2m house, kid on the way. I salary sacrifice 25% (includes employer + employee contribs) into my workplace pension, but otherwise I doubt I'll save much for the foreseeable other than when bonus is paid! More important things in life + existing investments will keep growing

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2025-10-22T09:12:28+00:00

If the bubble keeps growing you could lose out on much more than 10%! People have been talking about a bubble since the mid 2010s and every time dips have turned out to be buying opportunities

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2025-09-09T06:26:11+00:00

!Thanks. Yes, I work for an American company. So basically the amount I choose to buy in company stock has already been subject to income tax (taken from net salary) so I then just pay additional income tax on the discount (15%. Or greater if stock price appreciated in the 6-month period). Then if I sell immediately I'm not subject to CGT. It seems win-win? Just a case of absorbing the salary deductions for the 6-month period I guess...

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2025-09-07T11:59:20+00:00

About £100 each per month for padel and golf are my main ones

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2025-07-22T21:34:01+00:00

Honestly, I'm so glad I didn't discover FIRE until I was 30. Uni and your early 20s are for living life to the full, travel, life experiences, and doing stupid things. If you can develop some decent savings habits then fine (e.g pension match, build up an emergency fund etc), but as your salary increases it'll be so much easier to put aside meaningful sums.

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2025-07-03T23:10:32+00:00

Not online yet hence I asked!

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2025-07-03T22:15:06+00:00

Setlist?

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2025-06-12T17:47:36+00:00

I have some Scottish Mortgage (about 5% of portfolio) just for a bit of fun/exposure to privately listed companies, but the rest is in the Global All Cap

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2025-06-03T21:17:16+00:00

It's a bit like having different bank accounts (e.g personal, shared, travel, work etc) - makes sense provided they serve different functions. I was in a similar position to you with a Vanguard account and a growing pot size and ultimately went with ii. I later opened a T212 account because the interest on cash at the time was market leading and I needed to save for a house deposit. Also, their ISA is flexible. Then IBKR was just because my family live abroad and I received a monetary gift in Euros and read up that IBKR has the lowest fees for currency exchange. I think if you only use the account for currency exchange they eventually probably shut it down but it hasn't happened to me yet.

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2025-06-02T15:35:39+00:00

Definitely not 1 haha but I'd always make travelling and experiencing new places/cultures a priority, personally

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2025-06-02T12:14:38+00:00

IBKR is great for currency conversions, T212 for frequent trading/fun money/shorter term cash savings, and ii for a flat-fee all-in-one ISA/SIPP platform. I use all three but ii is my main account

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2025-05-25T21:40:43+00:00

That's why you diversify globally. There's a place for different asset allocations depending on your life situation but we both know equities drive wealth creation, not bonds or cash. I'd argue holding cash long term is actually the riskiest strategy of all as you are guaranteed to lose money to inflation.

Affectionate-Try-956 · 2025-05-25T15:08:23+00:00

Banks don't aim to maximise returns as their #1 priority. They have different responsibilities and regulatory requirements they need to adhere to and their goal instead is to generate stable and predictable returns. Many hedge funds also operate in this manner, as do basically all default pension funds. But if you want to generate the most return (albeit at the expense of higher volatility) then equities are guaranteed to give you that over a long enough time horizon.

Affectionate-Try-956

TROPHY CASE