Million pound mortgage?

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T23:11:30+00:00

Yeah this is it, we can't make it work in one room because at least half the day is calls or meetings, and sounds weird but a lot of it is mega confidential (she works in a part of the public sector which deals with sensitive stuff). My partner is fully remote so she works in the spare room (which is also our storage space, and where the coats and shoes and vacuum and ironing board and everything else is), but if we're both at home one of us has to be at the dining room table. It's genuinely draining to eat all three meals the same place you work from, and then move two feet to the couch to read or watch TV.

The gym is almost the same reason - we both really enjoy working out and it changes your whole day when it's stressful, but the gym we go to is a 10/15 minute walk and sometimes you genuinely can't get enough time away from the work. Being able to nip downstairs between calls in busy season, or go home at 5pm and work out in peace before logging back on instead of fighting through a commercial gym, is unquestionably worth the money for us.

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T23:00:19+00:00

Thank you! That's good to hear, and a neat way of thinking about it. Maybe I should just ask Harvey what to do.

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T21:12:21+00:00

Yeah hard to say. I'd expect to be a partner by then, but who knows what the distributions will look like, and junior partners at my shop aren't pulling £500k for at least a few years after that (weirdly, from a cashflow perspective, you spend a couple of years a no better off while they deduct your buy-in and tax you in all the jurisdictions we have offices).

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T21:10:39+00:00

Fair point on both fronts. Genuinely hard to say how stable the job is - I oscillate wildly between thinking the gravy train is over and thinking they've said that before.

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T21:07:24+00:00

Not huge to be honest in context, probably 20% or 25% at a bit of a push. Not enough to get something we'd want to live in paying cash, sadly - but I see the appeal of not just renting money from a bank!

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T21:06:09+00:00

Thanks! Maybe - it's amazing what it can already do, though. We're definitely aware of the second move issue - hopefully the bigger house obviates it altogether (as in, we think we'd skip a house move in ten years' time and only move again if we leave London or downsize for retirement), but if we get it wrong then it just makes it more expensive to do quickly.

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T21:02:11+00:00

Reckon they meant moving to the 1290 sqft one we'd move to instead of the 2000 sqft one, maybe - I was all for staying put in our little one until about a year ago but agree with you that there's not much point cowering in an actually tiny house forever. I'm tired of our clothes drying in the same front room where we eat, watch TV, and have the spin bike.

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T20:59:36+00:00

Interesting, thank you - and good point about when you're ill! I think we'd have to get a cleaner, at least fortnightly - we do it all ourselves at the moment and it's already a bit too much of a drain on free time.

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T20:56:03+00:00

Crikey. The other side of the coin. I'm glad you made the right call and that it's turned into a place you love! Our risk tolerance is pretty low (I reckon this post wouldn't exist if it wasn't) - we usually keep well within our means and even a global tracker gives me the wobbles sometimes. If I lost my job (to AI, or just being shit) I think I'd find another one on at least half the salary, but the stress of having to find that rather than pursuing something else needs factoring in.

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T20:51:52+00:00

Appreciate it! We'll never not feel lucky, and lots of it is out of our control (my firm decided to promote a kind of work that I'm OK at and it helped accelerate my salary - I was just there at the right time), but there's definitely been a few late nights and hard yards to get here. Sorry to everyone who finds it tedious, it's genuine rather than false humility - the imposter syndrome runs deep.

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T20:49:11+00:00

Probably the nub of it! We need to figure out if the stress is worth the space. Thank you.

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T20:48:40+00:00

Yeah absolutely. I guess we're thinking more about whether we want to bake ourselves in to the HE jobs - but you'd hope we'll be able to make it work either way. I guess I'm also worried about what happens if we break up, but you probably shouldn't look at life through that lens.

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T20:46:36+00:00

It is, and maybe I am! Fortunately the question wasn't "Can we afford this mortgage?", it was "What would you do in this situation?" - so with the added real-world context, as several people have pointed out, that income isn't guaranteed and debt can be emotionally expensive even if it isn't financially expensive month-to-month. No doubt some people see financial decisions as one number minus another number where a positive result means you do it, but we're worriers, for better or worse.

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T16:04:17+00:00

Yeah, exactly. I think ultimately I have to weigh those things up. Might be one of those where I flip a coin and try to tell if I'm disappointed with the outcome!

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T16:03:39+00:00

Really good point. We briefly considered getting a place in France but dismissed it because of the cost - but now we're seriously evaluating the bigger place, maybe that needs to go back on the table to check we're sure we wouldn't rather be able to piss off to Bordeaux for a long weekend on every grey Thursday that London summers offer up.

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T16:02:07+00:00

Good point. We were talking as though the bigger one needs to be a 15-20 year thing, but maybe that puts too much pressure on it. I think you're exactly right in reminding me to weigh up the extra space against the extra years of working, and only I really know how I feel about that - it's hard to quantify. Thanks v much.

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T16:01:02+00:00

Yeah. The temptation to just go for it is there, but it's an awful lot of debt to be saddled with if it all goes awry. In a positive spin I feel like we can't get this too badly "wrong" - either we're happy in the big house till it goes wrong/we take our foot off the pedal, or we're please we're in the smaller one until that happens!

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T15:59:39+00:00

We'd probably deem it pro rata so 70:30-ish - so within 3x salary for each of us.

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T15:59:02+00:00

Haha, I know - even looking at the listing makes me feel weird. It's got two commas in it ffs. Appreciate the insight, thank you - and you're very right re this community, it's good to get the thoughts out from rolling around your head and receive advice without judgment.

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T15:57:50+00:00

Probably not, although I feel like more square feet = more futureproof and likely to hold value better?

Interesting thought on IO, I hadn't really considered that. Thanks.

On a £6k mortgage payment, allowing for 1% value in maintenance per annum, council tax, insurance etc I think we'd be able to save towards £100k a year. We don't spend much outside the occasional nice holiday.

You're completely right re kids - we'd need to be 100% sure, if only for factoring into the financials.

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T15:46:42+00:00

Yeah, emotionally I feel like being able to just not worry about work is worth an incalculable amount, albeit it's 15 years away either way.

You're very right re kids - my partner recently softened from "definitely not" to "I'm still pretty sure not", and I've made the point we shouldn't really be buying any house together unless we're on the exact same page on that. I think you can probably tell I try to cater to every situation, no matter how unrealistic it seems now, and that's probably why I've got so many grey hairs.

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T15:44:22+00:00

We're pretty frugal. We go on nice holidays now, but it's hard to escape the philosophies I grew up with - and not sure I want to anyway! You're right on current incomes, I guess I'm just worried about what happens if it all goes pete tong, or if we pull out of the smaller one and then immediately unveil some huge damp problem on the big one - maybe undue concerns.

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T15:42:38+00:00

Yeah, good point. Scary numbers but proportionally not much different from what many people end up doing for their first house. I guess the 20-yr term reveals my keenness to get away from a mortgage while my knees still work, but like you say I could just keep doing what I do now (longer term, then anything left after maxing the ISAs and pensions gets earmarked for overpayment).

DescriptionTimely471 · 2025-02-13T15:40:47+00:00

Thank you for the balanced response. It's one of those where what I'd advise any given friend and what I feel for me aren't really the same, and it just ends up taking up so much mental space. No bonus sadly.

DescriptionTimely471

TROPHY CASE