Category Archives: My Life

Should You Buy a House or Get Married?

Being engaged to your partner is an exciting time, but having the available finances for a wedding may leave you feeling conflicted on whether to arrange the big day or invest your money into property. In this article, we’ll discuss whether you should buy a house or get married

Photo by Maria Ziegler on Unsplash

For most couples, marriage, purchasing a house, and having children are significant parts of building their lives together. Although, the order in which to do this is often unclear to many. There is no right or wrong way to do life. Some people don’t want to get married, others don’t want to have children, and some couples want to do both. But if purchasing a house and getting married is on the agenda, figuring out what to do first is a concern of many.

The process of residential conveyancing and planning a marriage can be stressful, and that’s why when you make a decision on what you will do first, you appoint a conveyancing solicitor or wedding planner.

To learn more about whether you should buy a house or get married, keep reading…

What Are the Benefits of Purchasing a House?

It’s an Investment

Purchasing your own home over renting someone else’s is an investment. Instead of spending money that is going into paying off someone else’s mortgage, you are paying off your own. Property value has the potential to increase in the future. For example, you might purchase your home for £280,000, and in 30 years, there is the possibility that it may be valued significantly more.

Your Mortgage Might Be Cheaper Than Renting

Depending on your interest rate and the amount you borrowed from your mortgage lender, your monthly mortgage is likely to be cheaper than if you were to rent a property.

You Can Decorate it How You Want

With rented property, you most often don’t have the power to make it exactly how you want. You may not even be able to paint the walls, put photographs or shelves up, let alone undertake bigger home renovation projects.

For more information on the benefits of purchasing a house, take a look at Home Owners Alliance article on Buying vs Renting: Benefits of buying.

What Are the Benefits of Getting Married?

Increased Borrowing Power

This is an important aspect to keep in mind when you are considering getting married or buying a house. If you marry prior to purchasing a house, your marriage can provide benefits when it comes to borrowing money for your home purchase, whether that is concerning your mortgage, renovations or purchasing furniture.

Inheritance Tax Benefits

Being married not only comes with many benefits during your life, but you can also get some advantages when you pass away. These advantages can include, reducing the amount of inheritance tax your estate will need to pay.

When you leave anything valued above the threshold of your estate to your spouse, your estate will not need to pay inheritance tax. This means anything under the threshold can be left to anyone you want, children, siblings, friends, etc. Inheritance tax is also not due when you leave your entire estate to your spouse.

To learn more about the financial perks of getting married, take a look at the article Experian has: What Are the Financial Perks of Getting Married?

What Is More Beneficial Marriage or Purchasing a House?

Sadly we cannot provide you with a definitive answer as each person’s circumstances, wants, and needs can be entirely different from another individual’s. Both buying a house and getting married have benefits, but both also have cons.

The main factor to keep in mind when you decide to do one or the other is if you are using up all your savings. As, if you are, it may take a considerable amount of time to save that money again. Moreover, it is essential to consider what is more important to you.

You can make the decision by weighing up the pros and cons and taking the time to have a clear discussion with your partner about both. This will ensure that you and your partner are on the same wavelength and are both happy with the decision made.

The Decision of Whether to Buy a House or Get Married Is Yours

What we can conclude from this article is that there are both benefits to purchasing property and getting married. Although, ultimately, the decision of what order to do this in is entirely your own and what works best for you and your partner.

Let us know in the comment box below whether you are planning to buy a house first or get married.

Please be advised that this article is for general informational purposes only, and should not be used as a substitute for advice from a trained legal professional. Be sure to consult a lawyer/solicitor if you’re seeking advice on the law. We are not liable for risks or issues associated with using or acting upon the information on this site.

Disclosure – this is a collaborative post

Too Much

Some of you may have wondered where I’ve been. Many of you won’t have noticed and that’s fine too, it’s not like I stick to a specific timetable when I write. But I don’t like to leave work that I’ve started unfinished and recently I have.

As it stands at the moment I have a book review to get live, a book to finish reading and two I haven’t even started. That’s just the book reviews. I have a competition to launch. Two Halloween recipes to get scheduled. Four product reviews to deal with as well.

Continue reading Too Much

Half Term Plans

Other than being slightly confused with the May half term being fairly solidly in June I can’t believe how quickly it has come around. It means we’re nearly at the Summer holidays and that means L has nearly finished Key Stage 1!

I can’t go much further down that rabbit hole, this year is going by too fast and we haven’t really done anything!

Continue reading Half Term Plans

Goals for the Year Update

You may remember back in February I’d set myself some goals for the year. Well it turns out some of them have been rather easy and I should have stretched myself further. Others have seen no movement whatsoever, so here is a little update on my progress and some new goals where needed.

goals update reading
GoDaddy Stock Image
Read 12 Books this Year

Well I’m currently reading book number 11 and I’ve listened to an audiobook with and am halfway through a second audiobook. So I think this needs revisiting as we’ve not even finished April yet. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Little Friends by Jane Shemilt and I’m still reeling after Red Notice by Bill Browder. I can’t even talk about Firefly Lane yet, watching it on Netflix wasn’t enough so I had to read it, a rollercoaster of emotions that one! At the end of the year I’ll write a proper round up of what I have read but for now I think I need to stretch my goal to 20 books.

goals update - finding a geocache in a tree
Sunday we walked 4 miles and found 22 caches, it was great
Find 100 Geocaches this Year

Well I’ve smashed through this one. When I wrote it I had actually meant just to get my total to 100, from the 35 I was at. It had taken me a fair while to get to 35 so I felt that was achievable and reasonable. Well, as of today my total is 162. So clearly that needs to be revisited. So I’m going to say I’d like my total to be sat at 300 by the end of the year, that is a real stretch but I think it’s achievable. We’ve well and truly got the bug and have been having a blast going out and hunting for them, so it’s a fun challenge to have.

Bluestone 2018
Bluestone 2018
Go on 1 Holiday

We are no closer to achieving this than when I wrote it in February. I’d still love to get away somewhere in the UK this year but it’s not feeling overly possible at the moment. I’ve seen people having UK breaks but I’m not sure I’m there yet. I would still love to get back to Bluestone so I’m hoping we all get some time off together were I can afford that but it seems that it’s school holiday prices holding us back, not the restrictions around Covid-19. That being said we have booked a holiday in Turkey for next year, so fingers crossed that actually goes ahead. So this goal is to remain.

Red Letter Days Blissful Spa Day for Two
I am ready to lose the knots in my back
Use my Spa Vouchers

Friday. FRIDAY!! The spa is open, they have spaces and on Friday I shall be having a Life Saving Back Treatment. A salt scrub, hot stones and a massage. I was starting to think I’d never get to use my vouchers, having had to extend them twice, but when they reopened on the 12th there was no stopping me. I called and literally went through all my days off until they had a spot and it wasn’t as long of a wait as I had expected. I’m rather excited. So by Friday this shall be ticked off and done.

Learn to swim goal 2021 goal
I’d love for him to get the confidence to enjoy swimming
Teach L to Swim

So pools are open now but we haven’t been yet. The private pool we were using hasn’t had any spaces and as that’s where L feels most comfortable it’s definitely where I want at least his first swim after such a long break to be. So I shall keep my eyes peeled for any available swim slots. Once he’s gotten back into the swing of it I think we’ll have to start booking public pools so he can get the maximum amount of time in the water possible, but as he’s got such a fear of it I don’t want to push him too hard, too fast. This one was always going to be the hardest challenge, but fingers crossed we’ll make some progress soon.

Garden Time

It’s nearly time! It’s nearly time to see people. Not just one person on your daily exercise but up to 6 people or 2 families in the comfort of your garden. I am excited but also rather on edge about this.

Last time restrictions lifted for a bit I felt this way. The months and months of an empty diary rather suited my hermit like tendencies. I’m not a social butterfly and not having to see people all the time sat well with me. At the same time, just to really confuse me, I’ve missed people.

Continue reading Garden Time