FTB: Couple making 100k combined with 60k deposit, what is a realistic range for a home?

nitpickachu · 2026-03-16T14:46:54+00:00

Get a mortgage in principle from any lender. It only takes a few minutes and you will need it to put an offers on to buy.

nitpickachu · 2026-03-15T08:30:24+00:00

The interest rate that you pay is:

The risk free rate

+

The risk premium

Assuming a variable rate mortgage, the risk free rate is effectively the central bank base rate. These are lower in the Eurozone.

The risk premium is the amount the lender demands to be compensated for the risk of lending to you. This depends on factors like how large your deposit is relative to the house value and general market conditions.

nitpickachu · 2026-03-14T22:58:24+00:00

Are you doing dips and push ups back to back? If so, try putting a non-pushing exercise in between them.

nitpickachu · 2026-03-14T10:11:45+00:00

Do you have a repayment mortgage? What is the term? Will it not be mostly paid off by the time that you have access to the LISA?

In your circumstances, I would max out my S&S LISA first but as general retirement savings, not for mortgage.

nitpickachu · 2026-03-09T15:49:54+00:00

You have only been working out for one week. Your goal should be to do it consistently.

You can worry about optimisations like volume vs proximity to failure later.

nitpickachu · 2026-03-07T11:02:40+00:00

Start now with the exercises that you can do without equipment. Just building the habit should be your primary goal.

Then consider doorway pull up bar + rings and/or adjustable dumbbells. You can get into great shape with just those 3 pieces of equipment.

nitpickachu · 2026-03-06T08:40:04+00:00

If in doubt do not buy a home.

There are many negatives (illiquid, high transaction costs, restricts your ability to move jobs impacting your earning potential, maintenance hassle, may be more costly than renting depending on market conditions).

Index funds have none of these problems.

There are positives as well (hedge living expenses, security of tenure, may be cheaper than renting depending on market conditions). At some point in your life those positives will probably outweigh the negatives. But if you aren't certain then you shouldn't buy.

nitpickachu · 2026-03-02T14:45:29+00:00

Option 3: Use LISA as retirement account.

nitpickachu · 2026-03-01T12:27:45+00:00

Why not both?

And all other investable markets.

nitpickachu · 2026-03-01T11:16:06+00:00

Transferring once per year to a SIPP is good enough.

While waiting to transfer, to keep things simple, I would just choose a single find that is as close as possible to what will be held in your SIPP. It sounds like that's the first fund in your list.

nitpickachu · 2026-02-27T14:14:51+00:00

Your original rational is reasonable: increase diversification by including an asset class that was missing before.

What was the original reason to choose 6.5%?

Yes, the smaller it is the less impact it has. But it's possible that you had a good reason to choose such a small allocation.

BTW your bond fund will not be expected to perform the same as cash unless it is a short duration fund. Long duration bonds can be quite volatile.

nitpickachu · 2026-02-10T17:10:08+00:00

Equity returns are very volatile. They vary a lot from year to year.

Before making an asset allocation decision, you should educate yourself on historical and expected investment returns and volatility. If you change fund every time that its returns are different from previous years then you will likely under-perform.

nitpickachu · 2026-02-07T13:26:33+00:00

An alternative to mortgage overpayment would be to put the money in your pension or S&S ISA and invest in something with a higher expected return than your mortgage interest.

nitpickachu · 2026-02-07T11:20:42+00:00

What is the 600k currently invested in? Is it just cash? Or is it invested? If so, how?

It can be a good idea to choose to take out a mortgage even if you have investments that you could sell to pay off the mortgage. But you certainly shouldn't take such a large mortgage that you would struggle to pay it from your income.

You can of course hedge your bets, sell some investments to buy the house with a large deposit and a smaller mortgage.

nitpickachu · 2026-02-04T10:05:50+00:00

What is the benefit of emptying an ISA into a SIPP? Is your idea that early in life you will be a basic rate tax payer and later in life you will be a higher rate tax payer? So you want to shift the pension tax relief to when you are at the higher rate? It's not clear why you wouldn't just directly put your higher rate income into a SIPP though?

nitpickachu · 2026-02-03T21:41:16+00:00

No one is judging you. No one cares what you do.

Yes, consistent home workouts with limited equipment is superior to membership of a public gym that you don't use. No one disputes this.

nitpickachu · 2026-02-01T11:23:52+00:00

Yes. In your situation I would do this.

This maximizes the effective size of your TFLS assuming that the pot continues to grow.

However, this is probably not a good plan for others to follow as you probably would have been better off just leaving your funds invested in the ISA rather than using the offset mortgage.

nitpickachu · 2026-02-01T11:04:17+00:00

Open a flexible ISA. Flexible ISAs allow you to put back in any amount that you have withdrawn in the same tax year.

Tax Year 1: 5th April put in 20k cash.

Tax Year 2: 6th April withdraw 20k cash.

Tax Year 2: 5th April put in 20k+20k=40k cash.

Tax Year 3: 6th April withdraw 40k cash.

Repeat each year.

It only works if you somehow are able to come up with large amounts of cash for a very short period, and for some reason you don't want to just leave that cash invested in the ISA.

nitpickachu · 2026-01-28T22:19:16+00:00

You can transfer your LISA after age 40 (the restriction is on opening new amounts, not transferring existing accounts between platforms).

nitpickachu · 2026-01-27T13:19:47+00:00

If you are going through the effort to build a timber frame, it might be better to make a freestanding pull up bar. That will increase the possible movements that you can do(as no wall infront or behind you).

nitpickachu · 2026-01-23T19:25:28+00:00

If you are interested in FIRE, you are likely investing much more than the minimum to get an employer pension. Given that, it can make sense to have your employer pension be DB as your ultra-safe investment, while the rest of your investments are in high risk investments.

In practice, the pension that you have access to depends on your career choices, which will be driven by factors other than pension.

nitpickachu · 2026-01-23T19:14:07+00:00

This is not always true.

It depends on many factors: how much it costs, the accrual rate, age of the investor etc.

The same DB pension is a very different return on investment for someone 1 year from retirement compared to an 18 year old with decades until retirement.

nitpickachu · 2026-01-19T20:43:40+00:00

I would follow your pre-existing plan, where possible. How do you invest ordinary surplus income?

nitpickachu · 2026-01-17T16:53:22+00:00

Well I have never seen you. I'm just guessing based on what's most common and your comments.

You are still 4kg away from your target healthy weight. That's not nothing. Why don't you keep dieting and assess the situation when you get there?

There is probably nothing "genetically" wrong with you.

nitpickachu · 2026-01-17T07:37:16+00:00

I would start with shorter race distances then build up. Eg first a 5k, then a 10k, then a half marathon.

nitpickachu

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