Saving/Applying for a mortgage 2015/16/17/18/19

Do this for a start

List your income and expenses

Open Google sheets
Write down your after tax monthly income
Then list every single monthly expense you have
- Rent
-Phone
- Electricity
- Gas
- Car loan
- Personal loan
- Petrol/Diesel
- Insurance
- Food
- Lunches
-Alcohol
- Coffees
-Lunches
- Clothes
- Holidays
- Sky
- Spotify
- Netflix
- Any other subscriptions?
- Anything else? Check you bank statements, where is your money going? Write it all down

This will give you a good idea of what you can realistically save per month after expenses

Reducing Expenses

Go through the list above and identify areas where you can cut down. Do you have subscriptions you no longer use? Cut them

Can you save by switching car insurance? Moving Electricity and Gas to another supplier? Do it

Can you get a cheaper phone plan? Great

How much APR are you paying on your loans? Can you re-finance elsewhere and reduce the repayments? Most likely yes so make sure to check this.

bonkers.ie can be used for most of the above and will take you 30 mins.

First time I did this i saved 5k in personal loan interest over 4 years by moving my loan, not bad for half an hour work right.

Mortgage

You can borrow 3.5 times your gross salary, what is that figure? That figure is 90% of what you can afford to buy as you also need a 10% deposit.

3.5 times not enough? Ask the bank for an exception. If they say no, ask another bank, I applied to 5 banks and took the best offer.

Once you have your total house budget you can start looking to see where you can afford to buy.

Do you want a new build? Check out Help to Buy scheme to get a generous tax refund up to 5% of the house price. Now you might only need to save a 5% deposit!

How long will it take to save up your deposit now that you know how much you're spending each month?

You'll need about 5k on top of the deposit to take care of solicitors fees
Don't forget about furniture, that's not cheap, another 5k to get you going.

To ease the pain here go with a bank that offers cash back. You can always move your mortgage a year or two down the line to a lower interest rate without having to pay back the cash back.

Income
Sometimes you'll have done the above and figured out it will take too long to save up. You have one other path here, increase your income by changing jobs. Not always an option but something you may have to do to get what you need.

Can you earn extra money on the side? An extra 100 a week is 5k a year.

This isn't definitive but should be enough to get you into the mindset where you need to be to begin the process.

Best of luck

HI,

I'm hoping to buy an apartment in the next year or two. I'm currently saving a fair bit every month and getting my accounts in order. The deposit won't is an issue, but I might need more than 3.5 times my salary.

Is it possible to get an exemption, whats the highest ratio you can get, and how do you qualify for an exemption.

Thanks

A start would be to take responsibility and put your own effort into your personal finance.

Looking for someone else to hand cash over to to fix it for you is a red flag tbh.

molly09 wrote: »

Can I ask a few questions on this please......

Is it possible to get approval for a mortgage if you have a small car loan?

In a previous post someone mentioned about a help to build scheme or something .....where would I get information about this ?

Also do you need a larger deposit for a self build rather than buying a house?

It’s possible, but it may impact the amount you can borrow, as it takes from how much you can pay back every month. If your mortgage was small, maybe that wouldn’t be an issue.

Bubbaclaus wrote: »

What you are asking for is very basic. A bit like asking for professional chef recommendations to show you how to boil pasta.

And I still would like the chef’s recommendation, please. You must have not seen Marco Pierre White’s lesson on cooking pasta;)

Black_Knight wrote: »

Primary school should be sufficient.

Recommendations are probably a light because what you're asking, people generally just figure out for themselves. What do you expect this professional to do? Mammy your bank account and see where you're going wrong? Someone putting that effort in is likely going to charge a fee, which, i'm inferring from your post, you don't need. There's apps for that (YNAB) which categorise where your money goes, and can help you save (if you're mature enough to stick to it).

RTE ran a program where financial idiots got consultant advise around their spends. It's called How to be good with money. Looks like yer man that ran it sells that service privately.

If you find me asking for help in something so primary school basic so upsetting, please refrain from posting your patronising commentary and scroll over and enjoy your day.

antimatterx wrote: »

HI,

I'm hoping to buy an apartment in the next year or two. I'm currently saving a fair bit every month and getting my accounts in order. The deposit won't is an issue, but I might need more than 3.5 times my salary.

Is it possible to get an exemption, whats the highest ratio you can get, and how do you qualify for an exemption.

Thanks

The max with an exemption is 4.5x salary. Each bank have different criteria rules. I got exemptions with same banks and not in others. Those I did get exemptions with, it varied on the amount.

Some banks our income wasn’t enough for exemption. We are not high earners but the banks we got approved exemptions with liked my job. So it’s very on a case by case basis it seems.

Also banks may say they can’t issue you with exemption until you have a house in mind.

I was honest and said I need an exemption and they ran the numbers. The main thing is the stress testing. You want a clean account and to meet the stress testing on the exemption amount. We have to clear a car loan before drawdown for the exemption.

Just watch it with one bed apartments. I had a friend buying a one bed apartment in Cork with Haven. As it was a one bed (and deemed harder to sell in future) Haven restricted them to 80% borrowings even though a FTB

fibix wrote: »

A random question for a person that needs to get her finances in order. I’m looking for someone who can sit down with me, look at my bank accounts and tell me: this is too much spending here, this loan charging you that, in order to have your house deposit you need to do xyz, banks lending this and you need that. Where can I go for this sort of advice?
I want my own place more than anything, lucky with decent enough job but just need to get myself sorted.
Thanks!

Just stop spending on non-necessities......... this is literally it.

fibix wrote: »

That's beyond helpful, thanks.

Last time I checked, this was a really sound place to ask for random advice. What I got today (aside from a few helpful advices, which I'm grateful for), was unsolicited, direct or non direct, judgement on my finances (about which I revealed absolutely nothing) and myself, including some assumed analysis of my spending. Then I actually went and watched How to be good with Money and what revs me up the most, is some self professed 'experts' here calling these people, who sometimes were clearly lost, due to illness or simply lack of financial awareness, 'financial idiots'. I'm still shook after yesterday's revelations of yet another suicide, otherwise I wouldn't bother my poor keyboard with typing this. I don't know why the news affected me this much this time. If you have nothing constructive to say, just remain quiet. This goes for the condescending comments and not so subtle remarks. It so much easier not to be an Internet c**t and everyone can sleep better. Call this oversensitive, I'm sure a few will, don't care. In the world where you can be anything, be kind.

Hi Fibix, great post. I looked back over the last page or two to see what you were referring to as I haven't been on this page in a few days.

You asked a fair question but did not get a fair response at all from some posters. There was no need for the patronising replies you received.

We all have busy lives and fall into bad habits. A few years ago I got great advice from a loan adviser in BOI. I was getting a loan but she could see I was managing my accounts very badly and spent an hour of her time going over where I could make improvements.

Ideas such as writing out my expenses and income every month and making sure it tallies and stays in the black, refinancing credit card debt and getting a plan in place to pay it off monthly to avoid high interest rates, etc.

I did these things and more for a year and it did make me form better habits. Never be put off asking a question. That's what Boards is for, is it not?

I hope you get what you need from some of the good advice you got from other posters. It's definitely a good time of year to start thinking about organising your finances. Best of luck with it all.

fibix wrote: »

A random question for a person that needs to get her finances in order. I’m looking for someone who can sit down with me, look at my bank accounts and tell me: this is too much spending here, this loan charging you that, in order to have your house deposit you need to do xyz, banks lending this and you need that. Where can I go for this sort of advice?
I want my own place more than anything, lucky with decent enough job but just need to get myself sorted.
Thanks!

Hi Fibix, my advice is probably a bit outdated but EBS used to offer financial reviews.(they were required if you were opening anything beyond a savings account in recent years). You are not obligated to invest in any of their products but obviously that is what they are hoping you will do. I worked in EBS many moons ago, the reviews go over your current finances and what your financial goals are(Mortgage, pension, investments). They will suggest how to manage any debt you have and also investments in the short, medium and long term and also give you advice re planning for a mortgage. EBS as far as I know still have a good rep regarding mortgages. As with anything the value of this review is really how good the adviser is and how much info you are willing to give them. I would give them a try its only about an hour of your time. Best of luck.

fibix wrote: »

That's beyond helpful, thanks.

Last time I checked, this was a really sound place to ask for random advice. What I got today (aside from a few helpful advices, which I'm grateful for), was unsolicited, direct or non direct, judgement on my finances (about which I revealed absolutely nothing) and myself, including some assumed analysis of my spending. Then I actually went and watched How to be good with Money and what revs me up the most, is some self professed 'experts' here calling these people, who sometimes were clearly lost, due to illness or simply lack of financial awareness, 'financial idiots'. I'm still shook after yesterday's revelations of yet another suicide, otherwise I wouldn't bother my poor keyboard with typing this. I don't know why the news affected me this much this time. If you have nothing constructive to say, just remain quiet. This goes for the condescending comments and not so subtle remarks. It so much easier not to be an Internet c**t and everyone can sleep better. Call this oversensitive, I'm sure a few will, don't care. In the world where you can be anything, be kind.

I gave you 500 euro worth of free advice, go implement it instead of complaining

fibix wrote: »

A random question for a person that needs to get her finances in order. I’m looking for someone who can sit down with me, look at my bank accounts and tell me: this is too much spending here, this loan charging you that, in order to have your house deposit you need to do xyz, banks lending this and you need that. Where can I go for this sort of advice?
I want my own place more than anything, lucky with decent enough job but just need to get myself sorted.
Thanks!

Is there any financial advisor available in your work? When I got my house back in 2012 I used one from work and he pointed out some basic silly things I was doing (like leaving a balance on my CC whilst having savings that could easily cover the amount).
I found it very helpful to point out the obvious error's what I was ignoring.

You could also listen to some podcasts if that's your thing. Two I'd recommend are:
- Meaningful Money Podcast - UK based so some specific advice doesn't apply here but lots of great topics on developing a good financial mindset.
- Informed Decisions Podcast - Irish based similar to above. It does focus a lot on pensions, but plenty of episodes that deal with different topics.

Hope this helps.