To ask if anyone else found it hard handing over their savings to buy a house?!

I’m going to be completing on my house at the end of this month and I hadn’t actually thought about this! I can imagine feeling the same when the time comes.

My deposit is minuscule compared to some of the figures mentioned here but as a single mum it has been hard work and nice to know I had that money on the bank just in case.

Yes!! I look at my account now and mourn the ££s that disappeared overnight. It took ages to get together for potentially that purpose, but yes. I actually felt vulnerable too without the security of having it there.

Never felt hard to hand the money over as we knew that we were buying something really special.
What hit me a few years ago was that for a few months, were were technically millionaires as we had sold our old house and waiting to complete on the new one. Along with savings, we reached that magic threshold, just a shame that it didn't last 😆

I didn't have an issue with it because in my mind the money isn't gone, it's still there and I can still access it (as a very last resort) by selling.

I'm buying in the new year (alone) and kind of dreading it - I have two years' worth of essential expenses in my ISA and Premium Bonds ring fenced for the deposit and it's a lovely, comforting feeling knowing it's all there safe and sound, and easily accessible. This terrible economy makes my anxiety worse. But I have to get out of the insecurity of private renting.

Not me, but my daughter cried when her flat purchase went through.

Had to remind her that she hadn’t lost anything, just transferred the value of her cash into value in her flat.

Sitting here with neither savings nor a house, in my privately rented house I’ve lived in with my son for 5 years but am having to leave as landlady is selling 😫

There are different kinds of loss. Liquid assets (money) are very different to illiquid assets (a house - especially one tied to an obligation like a mortgage). Turning one into the other can immediately cause a loss of control and options. One day you had loads of choices and loads of control. The next you have a house (which is usually a good thing - most people don't buy stuff they don't want) but you don't have all the choice and control anymore - or certainly not as easily as you had before. Some people have more difficulty with that than others.

Of course it's normal! You know the value of the work and time that went into having that money. It can be worrying for some people to see that money suddenly "gone" - it isn't, it's in the house, but it's a change in routine that some people can find difficult to wrap their heads around.

For others, the issue with buying a house is that you've suddenly turned liquid assets into illiquid assets. For them that can cause a feeling of a loss of control and a loss of choices/options.

For others it can be disconcerting putting their savings into something that is co-owned with someone else.

Difficulty with change, especially if you have lingering doubts about the house purchase, can cause anxiety too.

It's good to try to figure out the underlying cause of the anxiety - if only so you can address that cause. It will be different for everyone

I had £300 to my name when I’d paid the house deposit and solicitors etc, I was young enough to not worry too much but I certainly had no financial security and a big renovation to do.

20 years later lots on the house needs re-doing again but I don’t have the funds so am just doing the essential works and saving my emergency fund for big emergencies.

I worry about money a lot and fear not having enough so try and be as financially savvy as I can be

I'm just saying I don't understand, that's all. Not that they're wrong for feeling that way.

You're not "parting" with it - you're getting a house?

You've saved to buy a thing and now you're done saving and getting to buy the thing, the whole thing you were saving for. I don't see where the loss is? if you don't want to part with it then don't buy the house?

People's brains work in different ways, I guess.

I just thought ‘my savings are now being held as bricks and mortar rather than cash in the bank’. I now include the equity in my house (all its value as we paid off the mortgage) when I calculate my ‘savings’. I’m amazed that I’m worth almost half a million but bought the house for £45k 😂

It's also the passive interest growth I miss. I would sometimes look at my ISA and think wow, I earned this much this month for doing nothing. Must be great to be rich when that amount is many times more in passive income.

We’re getting some work done soon and will be in a very similar position. I also find it unsettling not having the comfort blanket anymore.

I actually found it a bit thrilling. It helps that I love the house though. I enjoy the house far more than seeing the money in the bank. It was frustrating having the money but not the house!

It’s about the loss of a safety net for me.

the money was a deposit for a house, that is what we’d been saving for - however it also was our savings so if something else had happened that meant we needed a big chunk of money fast, no problem, we’d have dipped into the savings and just have to wait longer to buy.

At the time, we needed a car for work so if our car had died before buying the house, we’d have gone out and replaced it buying a 2nd hand car with our house savings immediately. We had a family member living overseas (long haul destination, not cheap flight distance!), so if she’d had an emergency, we’d have just bought a ticket and gone, no problems. If one of us lost their job, we’d have savings we could dip into to cover bills until they found another.

But the day we bought, we handed over all our savings, all our safety net was gone into this house. Yes we now had a house with it, and yes we were able to continue to save and rebuild our safety net over the next few years, but after having around 7-8 years of a savings pot that was enough to cover all life emergencies we could see ourselves experiencing, it was quite scary to go back to the position of having no financial back up if something went wrong.

I remember when we bought our house the next door neighbours who were in their fifties said you will pay off the mortgage one day and it seemed so distant. Well here we are all paid off, they are still our neighbours in their seventies now and we are now them!

It is hard to part with a huge chunk of money as it may still be an asset but it’s tied up.

I think you are being strange. More than 50% of 40 year olds own their own home.
Many people spend years saving and scrapping and working hard to get to that position. She's hardly saying my mum gave me £50k it's so hard to part with it.

Yes I felt like I was giving away my security blanket! However once I moved I realised I felt much more secure in my own house than renting

Not for a house, but for a car. It’s nice to have that financial security in the bank.

Omg we have had to liquidate every scrap of funds to go from shared ownership to our own place 🙈😬. But I know it will be worth it.

I didn’t feel like this about the deposit money but I did about the stamp duty. I really resented paying thousands to the government just to move because I live in an area of the country where housing is expensive. It too years of saving just to pay that.

The site isn’t just awash with six figure earners…there are plenty of six figure depositors too 😂

Yep