Tag Archives: advice

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

The Pros and Cons of Leaving Your Children with Unequal Inheritances

When parents pass away, it is understandably upsetting but can be made to feel worse when one child is left with a larger inheritance than another. In this article, we discuss the pros and cons of leaving your children with unequal inheritances.

Most children that have siblings expect to share their inheritance equally with their siblings and don’t expect to find out that one or more siblings have inherited more than themselves. But this does happen in some cases and can cause considerable issues when not discussed prior to their parent’s passing.

The problem with unequal inheritances is the possibility for contested probate to occur, where family members dispute the Will in hopes of receiving more money. For matters like these, a solicitors for probate can provide specialist assistance, including the advice and guidance needed to get through this difficult period.

Want to know the pros and cons of leaving your children with unequal inheritances? Keep reading to find out more…

Why Might Someone Leave Their Children Unequal Inheritances?

There could be many reasons why parents make the decision to leave their children unequal inheritances, from family disputes to one child needing the inheritance more than the others.

How stuff works provides an interesting and helpful article: When is it ok to leave kids unequal inheritance?

Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash

Examples of where parents may decide to leave their children unequal inheritances include:

One Child Needs Additional Support

Being a parent isn’t easy, especially when your child has a disability or they have suffered an injury that requires them to have additional support or time away from work. There might even be scenarios where they are experiencing financial difficulty or something else entirely.

In circumstances like these, parents may feel more inclined to support that child by leaving them a more substantial inheritance. For example, leaving them the family property instead of splitting it between their children.

They No Longer Have a Relationship

While this point is understandably sad, some parents and their children don’t have a good relationship or one at all. If a parent is in this position, they may decide to leave their child with no inheritance or a smaller amount compared to what they leave to their other children.

One Child Became Their Primary Caregiver

Sometimes when you become older and less able to do tasks for yourself, you may find that one of your children becomes your primary caregiver. This could be that you move into their property, and they help you with day-to-day tasks, such as feeding you, bathing you, etc.

In response to this, you may feel like you want to reward and thank your child for their assistance during your time of need by leaving them a larger inheritance, especially if they have done this without asking you for any compensation.

They Have Both Biological Children and Step Children

Some individuals may have remarried later in life and gained step children that they wish to share their estate with. Step children are still family, and often step parents and step children have a strong relationship, but if the marriage occurred in later life, the relationship you may have with your biological children is likely different. This could mean you are more inclined to leave them with a larger inheritance.

What are the Pros of Leaving Your Children with Unequal Inheritances?

It’s easy to presume that there is no good reason for leaving your children an unequal inheritance, but in some circumstances, there are some advantages to doing so, including:

Providing Support to a Child That Needs it

If one of your children is worse financially than your other children, leaving them a higher inheritance can provide the support that they need. This could be if they are still studying, whether at school or university, or they could earn a lower salary, have a large amount of debt, or perhaps they have learning difficulties, are disabled or have an injury which is impacting them long term.

Leaving them with a larger inheritance can provide you with comfort knowing that they are sufficiently financially supported even after you pass.

couple sitting on chairs discussing inheritances
Photo by Arthur Mazi on Pexels.com

What Are the Cons of Leaving Your Children With Unequal Inheritances?

Contentious Probate

Deciding to give your children unequal inheritances without discussing it prior to your death could potentially lead to contentious probate disputes. If there is no reason as to why you have left your children an unequal inheritance, it is very likely that this is going to cause problems between your children.

Risk of Family Disputes

Unfortunately, in the waking of death, it doesn’t mean that disputes between family members don’t happen. In fact, in most circumstances, that is where they start or increase, especially when children are unhappy with the unequal inheritance they have received from their parents.

Leaving your children with unequal inheritances could potentially break up the family dynamic. So it’s important to consider what the aftermath might be before you make any big decisions.

Consider Talking to Your Children First…

What we can conclude from this article is that while many would find unequal inheritances unfair, there might be a clear reason for it. But if that is the case, make sure to talk to your children first and explain why you have made this decision, because without doing this, there is the potential for contentious probate and/or family disputes to occur.

For helpful info on leaving unequal inheritance, see here.

Let us know your thoughts on unequal inheritances in the comment box below.

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 wills and probate professional. Be sure to consult a wills and probate professional if you’re seeking advice about your will. 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

It’s Time to Talk Breastfeeding

A new survey recently released has sadly revealed that nearly 1 in 10 (7%) British women would feel uncomfortable discussing their breastfeeding struggles with their partner. The survey, conducted by Multi-Mam breastfeeding compresses, found the same number of women said they would also feel uncomfortable discussing these issues with their GP and 11% said they would even feel uncomfortable talking about their struggles with their mum.1

Continue reading It’s Time to Talk Breastfeeding

Common Breastfeeding Problems

5 Common Breastfeeding problems and how to overcome them

Breastfeeding your new baby can be difficult, and with side effects like sore nipples, engorgement and thrush, sometimes it can be hard to keep going. To help you on your breastfeeding journey, Lactation Consultant, Kitty Hackel offers her best tips and advice on some common breastfeeding problems and how you can overcome them.

Continue reading Common Breastfeeding Problems

What We Took Camping

We kicked off July with our first ever camping trip. We headed to the New Forest for a Park Ranger weekend with Camping in the Forest and got to meet Chris Packham.

So what did we take for our first ever camping trip?

Camping with a toddler
Surveying his territory

Continue reading What We Took Camping

This Plus That Equals…. My Social Life

This plus that equals…. my social life

Here’s the latest instalment in my series of posts all about what makes our lives here at home tick. This week is all about my social life.

I was reading a thread on Mumsnet last night where I girl was asking if it was unreasonable of her to be a bit hurt by her friends effectively icing her out. Why? Well because she had a child it seemed. Her social life seemed to be a lot like mine, and her friends, well they aren’t friends at all.

Continue reading This Plus That Equals…. My Social Life

Could Hygge Reduce The Stress Of Parenting?

Could Hygge Reduce the Stress of Parenting?

It’s no secret that Denmark is famous for being the happiest nation on earth. Now hygge-mania is sweeping the UK with thirteen books on the subject hitting the best seller chart in 2016. But can hygge, the untranslatable Danish concept of cosiness and quality time together, still be applied when you have a new baby in the house? Continue reading Could Hygge Reduce The Stress Of Parenting?

The Blogger Recognition Award

Last week I was nominated for the Blogger Recognition Award by the truly lovely Zoe over at The Tale Of Mummyhood. If you haven’t checked out her blog you really should, it’s great.

The Blogger Recognition Award, rules:

  • Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
  • Write a post to show your award.
  • Give a brief story of how your blog started.
  • Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers.
  • Select 15 other bloggers you want to give this award to.

Continue reading The Blogger Recognition Award

This Plus That Equals… Potty Training Dilemmas

This plus that equals…. potty training dilemmas

Here’s the latest instalment in my series of posts all about what makes our lives here at home tick. The time has finally come in our house for potty training and we are in full flow. It ain’t easy, that’s for sure. There are a surprising amount of potty training dilemmas we have come across, so I thought I’d share them and be of absolutely no help to any parent anywhere.

Continue reading This Plus That Equals… Potty Training Dilemmas

Taking Risks and Making Decisions

If you’ve been reading my blog over the last month or so you’ll have sensed a change in me. Less upbeat. More worried. Definitely more stressed. You’ll also know this is because I felt like I was losing my dream.

So now I think it’s time for a catch up. A proper one. Honest, warts and all catch up on what has been going on in my life this month. As it is real life, my real life. The reason I think most of you read this, although I’m never sure I’ll know why. But thank you so much, as the kind comments I’ve had these last few weeks have truly meant the world to me and kept me going.  Continue reading Taking Risks and Making Decisions