tips so we dont go under

were looking into buying our first house shortly and have approval for the loan etc but will be borrowing the depoisit from family. we could wait and save but the market is definately in the buyers court atm so we decided to take advantage, we will pau back the deposit when we build up some equity in a few years time.

were on a single income +FTB A+B as im a SAHM and student for now until the kids go to school (about 5 years max)

anytips for manageing a mortgage on a single income?

whatever your repayments are, pay a little extra even if you don't think it's much, over time it will make a big difference. also, try to have some savings in case something does happen. have an amount directly debited from your account into your savings account at the same time you get paid, that way it's like you never got paid that amount and you learn to live off the rest. even if it's $20, like the extra repayments it will build up.

We're thinking about buying soon too, its pretty stressful hey? I would say don't buy a house where the repayments are too much more than the rent you are paying - as you will need to also be forking out for rates, insurance, repairs/upgrades and whatever extra costs there are tied up with owning a home in your area.

Until you go back to work you could get a revolving mortgage, where it is kind of just like a big overdraft - easy to re-borrow against if you find yourself in the poo financially. But I guess it takes a bit of will power to reduce it when it is so easy to just keep borrowing up to your limit. But later on when you have two incomes you can make it so it has a reducing limit.

Our lender said to do the sums and make sure you can afford for the interest rate to be 1% higher that it is now.

this wont help with the managing of your money but have you heard of the first home owners grantits a one time payment of 7000 that you dont have to pay back i'm not 100% of the conditions of getting it
but if neither of you have owned a home before you should be elidgable (sp)

My tip is to make sure you don't borrow too much. Keep your debt to income ratio well under 36% because otherwise you could eat up with debt spiralling out of control. Here's how you calculate it:
https://sites.google.com/site/munniesleetlehelper/review-your-debt-loans

This probably means you won't get your dream home (eg. you may need to look in a cheaper suburb, or get a smaller property etc). But what's the point of having a dream home if you can't afford to spend any money on little luxuries?

Another thing you can do is look at all your bills and try to get better deals with different suppliers etc. Here are some tips
https://sites.google.com/site/munniesleetlehelper/review-your-bills

Good luck!

We bought our first house last august.. It is a bit of an adjustment..

A practical thingthat we do is have our mortgage taken out the day after DH gets payed. That way we know that we've payed the mortgage live on whatever is left. We pay weekly, quick means that we are two weekly payments ahead each year.

dont forget the cost you will pay for home /contents insurance and those lovely council rates. Banks never tell you about paying those. Those only consider the repayment and not extras that come with owning a house. goodluck

Our lender said to do the sums and make sure you can afford for the interest rate to be 1% higher that it is now.

good idea we hadnt thought of doing that! i think our rate is 7.8% so maybe calculate it at 8.5% or higher?

this wont help with the managing of your money but have you heard of the first home owners grantits a one time payment of 7000 that you dont have to pay back i'm not 100% of the conditions of getting it
but if neither of you have owned a home before you should be elidgable (sp)

sad not eligable as DH owned a house in his 20's im eligable as long as hes not on the mortgage or loan and i have to do it under my own income lol yeah thats not alot ahh well as i said were borrowing the deposit from the ILs

dont forget the cost you will pay for home /contents insurance and those lovely council rates. Banks never tell you about paying those. Those only consider the repayment and not extras that come with owning a house. goodluck

we forgot about insurance, weve taking into account rates and a few other things..stupid insurance lol
hmm when we take all that into account our max loan amount we can afford goes down considerably sad but the home we want need s a bit of TLC and DH is really handy so its a fixer-uper job over a good 10 years. but definately live-inable now well just have to be really pushy with the price

Hi Gypsy,

I bought a budget program off the net for about $5! There are heaps of free ones, I just liked that one.
simpleplanning.com is the web site

So every cent we spend goes into a spread sheet along with all our bills. You can see ahead what a tough month looks like when all your bills come at once and plan for it. We love it and there are no arguments about the money and who is spending more as you can see it all!!

Hope that helps smile

Hi Gypsy,

I bought a budget program off the net for about $5! There are heaps of free ones, I just liked that one.
simpleplanning.com is the web site

So every cent we spend goes into a spread sheet along with all our bills. You can see ahead what a tough month looks like when all your bills come at once and plan for it. We love it and there are no arguments about the money and who is spending more as you can see it all!!

Hope that helps smile

cheers ill have a look, we use an excel model speadsheet that sounds similar but its not too good for forcasting month to month just for overall general budgeting

cheers for all the tips its s daunting step for me, i know DH has done this before and with success and knows what to do and consider but i havnt a clue!

Also, we decided to go with a fixed rate for the first 2 years. This way, we are not stressing about the rates going up and know exactly what our weekly repayments are for the next 2 years. During this time we can pay up to $25,000 extra too (like that's going to happen).