Mortgage, BTL, Job quandry

Mortgage, BTL, Job quandry

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Discussion

Big A1

Original Poster:

3 posts

222 months

Thursday 22nd February 2018
quotequote all
Morning,

Long time reader here. Over recent years my time spent reading PH has gone from reading the readers cars and specific marque forums to spending more time reading the business and jobs boards. I'd still class myself as a car enthusiast but in a passive sense without the desire to commit myself financially to something interesting.

I guess the above gives some context to my current thinking around what to do finance wise.

I am 34, married with no children. We live in the midlands where property prices are sensible. Quite happy in our current home and we have no desire to move to a bigger more expensive house. We both work earning a collective £85k between us with no debts.

Our mortgage is around £1250 per month with around 9 years remaining. We also kept our first house which is rented out and still has a mortgage attached to it. The rent covers all but £50 of the repayment so certainly no income coming from it at the moment. 9 years remain on this mortgage too.

Both me and my wife are committed to living a fairly modest lifestyle if we can become more time free and financially independent. We do not plan on having children so it's just the two of us.

We've got some cash that we could invest into another BTL (£30k) but I'm unsure as to whether this is the right move given the changes to taxation on BTL's coming in.

Whilst I earn a decent salary (£50k) I do not want to keep doing what I do for too much longer. My intention is to try and save as much as I can over the next 12 months with a view to starting a new chapter in my life this time next year. What that chapter is I'm afraid looks different each time I think about it.

Our friends are more interested in buying £500k houses and flash cars so the thought of a simple minimalist life is a bit alien to them which is why I'd be interested in the views of others.

My wife has started a sideline which she is expecting to earn around £1000 net from within the next 12 months. She would also like to go PT or finish work entirely.

I have a skill set which is fairly specific to my current role so unfortunately does not allow me to really do anything related on my own. Current thoughts for what to do on my own range from
> dog walking
> making something specific to the past time that I am interested in and selling for £10 per piece.
> buying and selling the odd car
> unskilled garden work developing my skills as I progress

Supplementing the above with some p/t work in a cafe maybe (10hrs) per week.

If we can do the above and bring in around £2k a month it feels like leaving regular work could be doable. What we don't want to do is end up killing ourselves to earn much less than we currently do and ending up with even less free time.

If you have got this far then well done.

My questions are,

> do we grab another BTL for £80k ish whilst we still have a salary that allows us to access the mortgage
> pay down our current BTL which has around £50k remaining leaving a much smaller mortgage
> invest in something different with the expectation of it generating an income 10 years down the line
> Try to remortgage our current home reducing the remaining term
> have I romanticized the idea of becoming time free with a low stress lifestyle?

Any thoughts on my wonderings are much appreciated :-)