International Nesties
dulcemariamar1
member
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Poll: About your rent or mortgage
I dont want to get into personal details on the Internet but I would like to know your opinion on this subject.
What is the highest % of your total househole income would you feel comfortable paying towards your rent or mortgage. (I hope I am wording the question correctly)
I was talking to somebody the other day and he told me that he was paying over 50% of his salary to pay his mortgage. Is this normal? I thought the rule was not to pay more than a 1/3 of your income.
Re: Poll: About your rent or mortgage
I'll get personal. My first year here I made ?210 a week and my rent worked out to ?100 a week. So it was a huge chunk of my pay. But, it included my bills and I love my flat and my flatmates.
If I were here for a long time I would need to make more money or live somewhere cheaper, because it was impossible to save any kind of money with that much going to housing.
I would prefer to be paying closer to ?300 a month for a shared flat, but for my location, flat and flatmates, it was worth it. Over 50% of my pay would not have been doable, and when I move back home I will not be paying as high a %age as I do now, because it isn't realistic if you're thinking long term.
Our mortgage back in the States was about 20% of our take-home pay (not salary on paper). I probably wouldn't be more comfortable with 25%-30% of our take-home pay...and even the 30% is pushing it.
We pay a little less than 1/4 of our take-home income on the mortgage. But we have a really great low interest rate. I know for a fact we are paying half what a lot of people pay for just renting so I think it's a pretty darn good deal. For example, we have friends that just started renting a 35m2 apartment in a fairly good location and they are paying 650 a month...more than what we are paying on our mortgage for a 65m2 apartment.
I don't know the rule of thumb, but I know we're getting a pretty great deal! I couldn't imagine paying half our income on the mortgage or rent, especially if I was working too. That'd be one pricey apartment.
This! I love online house shopping!
Right now I think we're paying about 16% but we're looking for a bigger flat. Without actually looking at percentages beforehand (although it's a good idea!) it appears we plan to spend around 20%. DH is up for a raise next year so it might go down a bit.
For us, we spend a lot of money on going out and travelling so we wouldn't want to spend more than that on our rent. We have no plans to buy in the near future, we could afford to but Edinburgh's an odd city in that it's financially more sensible to rent.
BFP Apr 2012, EDD Dec 19 2012 * twin h/b at 6wk, 9wk scan * Baby A lost at 12wks, Baby B was my rainbow born at 36wks
The standard rule of thumb is your PITI should not exceed more than 28 % of your gross pay. In addition to that, PITI and all other debts should not exceed more than 36% of your total gross.
If you are in a HCOL area, these figures can increase slightly due to housing costs. The more debts you have the less money available for housing and other areas and needs to be taken into account.
Your other goals also need to be taken into the equation too. At the moment, DH and I are saving aggressively for a few goals including saving for a DP. Our rent is 18% of our net pay, which translates to 14% of our gross pay excluding the rent we receive from our roommate, bonus and my part-time job. This is a decision we made based on other priorities in our life and would use that also as a guide.
Oh, per your friend. It could be possible. If he earns a net income of $10,000 per month, he could spend $5,000 on his PITI. Because that still leaves an additional $5,000 for food, transport, etc. The cost of food will not necessary (unless you eat lobster every night!!) will not change dramatically is you bring home $1,000 or $10,000 per month therefore allowing you to spending more money comfortably in other areas which is often not the norm. The same thing applies to gas, but not necessary the type of transport because you could afford a more expensive car.
Cecilia arrived 12 October 2012
We pay almost 30% in London but thankfully when we move back to the US soon it will be about 18% (not including bonus or me working when we're back). We will probably refinance when we get back so that will save us even more.
I also love looking at houses and hopefully we'll upgrade a year or two after we move back depending on selling our house.
that's awesome!
In London it is very hard NOT to pay around 50 or more % of your salary for housing if you want to live somewhere half-decent & are on a modest salary. I definitely did when I was on my own and paying for a room in a flat/house. Many people I know make less than ?30,000 per year and rents here, even with sharing with two people can be upwards of ?500-800 in zone 2 in the north of the city.
Right now, between my H & I, I would think our mortgage is about 1/3rd (tough to say as he's a contractor & has a varied salary at times), but if he were to die, it would be about 50% of my salary, so could carry it but it'd be tough!
I think it's a nice idea to have a smaller mortgage or rent, but for many people it's just not feasible, unless you have a seriously good salary or live in a very LCOL area (which London is not).
Right now we are paying 30% of our income in rent, which is all we were comfortable with.
In the States we were paying 25% of our income for our mortgage.
Both figures above are NET.
Here net is essentially taxes. In the states was taxes, insurance and 401K contributions (15% of our income).
I really do depends on what our income is what percentage we're ok with. I know that when I had a very low income, I wasn't comfortable with paying more than about 20-25 percent of take home pay because I really needed the rest of my money for food and utilities and clothes and such.
Now that we live together and both have well paying jobs and are more towards the upper scales, I'm okay with paying about 40-45 percent, because we still have more than enough to buy good quality groceries, clothes etcetera.
I think right now we pay about 35-40 percent, but that's before tax deduction (In NL homeowners get to deduct paid interest on a mortgage for 1 house they own from their taxes, so if you include that, we pay less. We opt to receive that once a year though, because that way, on tax day, we have money for a big big vacation or major upgrade on the house or something. If we had a lower income and needed the money to live off immediately, we would get the tax rebate monthly)
Honestly, I never really thought about a percentage before. I know banks look at that and rental agencies, but to me, when we bought this house, I was more held back with the total amount of our mortgage. Just an uneasy idea to have a mortgage of more than x. We could've gotten a higher mortgage if we wanted, but really, I was personally not comfortable with a higher loan in our names.
My food blog
What I'm looking forward to in 2012:
Eating our way through (northern) Italy on vacation
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home DThank you for mentioning this about London. I still really struggle with how much it costs to live in a decent area here, as I grew up in the Midwest with such a LCOL mentality. There I think our rent was something like 15-20% of our pay and we had a 2-bed townhouse with attached garage.
Here we have a one bedroom and our rent is about 38% of our take-home pay (excluding bonuses). With the average bonuses that we receive, it's a bit more realistic, but we work to the salary only. The other thing that is tough for us is that we work in opposite directions, so we can't look into other cheaper areas without it becoming really inconvenient for one of us. I had a 90 minute commute when I first started, and it's just absolutely exhausting. Now we are both around 45-1 hour, which is doable.
Honestly it's a real struggle here--not the rent, but the rent plus other debts (student loans and some credit card debt from when we were doing the wedding and moving here and not communicating as well about money, since it was our first time doing things jointly). Some days I feel like I beat myself up over it. Other days I get really upset because I do feel we have worked really hard and sometimes it feels like we're not getting anywhere against the debt, the CC debt especially.
I'm hopeful that if we hit our bonuses this year, we will be able to pay off the CC debt for good. It will finally allow us to start saving. (I don't mind carrying the SL debt more long term, as those interest rates are a little easier to swallow--especially the ones at below 2%!).
I would prefer to spend under 30% on our rent, but I don't know if that will ever happen in London. And when we have kids--I just don't know how you do it here. At all. (Without whoring yourself out to The Man, if he'll have you.)