The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: weeblesim on November 26, 2016, 01:05:33 AM
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Hi all,
I've been a long time lurker of these forums, but never posted before. I'm hoping to get some advice about my current living and job situation.
Some background! I live in the UK. Me and my partner have no debt, some savings and recently started to invest. We have also been overpaying the mortgage for the last 2 years. We bought our house 3 years ago in my hometown in a LCOL area. This area is in between 3 cities and is very commutable to 2 of them, and doable for the other city in the short term. Our mortgage is currently £70k, it was actually much cheaper to buy than rent in this area, we were originally looking to rent!
In this time we have done well in our careers, (being helped by being able to job hop between cities) but we have also reached a level of specialization that now makes it more difficult to move jobs. We now both have jobs in the city that isn't very commutable to. We are talking a minimum of 2 hours per day in the car, any form of public transport would take significantly longer. Its really starting to impact on our lifestyle. I'm already working from home 1 day per week and due to the nature of my job, I can't do this more often.
Here in lies the dilemma: We have both been looking for other job opportunities in the other cities, unfortunately there is none, this job search has been going on a while. We work for the national health service, so its a case of if its not in their budget, theres no negotiation. There are no plans for this situation to change in the near future. Where we currently work is a very HCOL area, meaning we would almost triple our mortgage if we were to move to the local area. (worth mentioning that we live in a small house, every room is utilised, we can't downsize as theres nothing to downsize to)
Options: We could pay off our current house in 2.5 years and afford to reduce our working hours to 3 days per week and still FIRE in a reasonable amount of time, but we would still have the insane commute. Its probably also worth mentioning that where we currently live, there isn't much going on, we often have to travel to see friends or do anything fun.
Renting near to our jobs would cost us more in rent than it currently does our mortgage plus transport.
I feel like me and my partner have been going over every possible scenario to try and work out what is best, but thus far we haven't came up with a solution or action plan.
I've tried to keep it short, so you guys may need some more details, but any advice would be really appreciated! Thanks
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Hi there, and welcome.
Sorry to hear you are in the classic bind created by the insane house prices we have here in the UK.
Any chance of looking at key worker accommodation, affordable to buy, etc.?
Does your NHS Trust have an accommodation office?
What are the local housing associations and do they have any housing set aside for NHS workers?
If you are clinical, there is the NHS Homebuy service - http://www.homebuyservice.co.uk/eligibility/nhs.html
House does your current house stack up as a rental? It sounds as though it might do you quite well, if buying was cheaper for you than renting, so look at both selling or renting it when working out your options.
Good luck.
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Thanks for your reply, much appreciated!
The eligibility for the homebuy services in the area seem to be for first time buyers only, which unfortunately we are not.
As far as I'm aware, there is no key worker accommodation in the area.
I suppose I was looking for advice on what is the Mustashian way to deal with this dilemma? As I'm very aware that I spend a lot of money on petrol, which I don't like. Should I just shut up complaining about the time I spend in my car and just go full steam ahead to FIRE and keep the cheap house, or should I try to utilise my time better for my sanity?
My house does stack up well as rental, we wouldn't have too many issues renting it out. This is something we have started to consider.