How would a young woman become financially independent?

[AbsentinSpring]

Without help from parents or an inheritance.

I've been pondering. I bought my first house (2 up 2 down Victorian terrace in not great area) 30+ years ago. I was single, worked in admin and earned slightly above average wage for that role. House cost £30k which was slightly less than 3x my salary and the interest rate was, for a time, 15%.

How could a young woman (who wasn't a hedge fund manager or corporate lawyer or such like) do that now?

That same house is now selling for £350k. And it's not in London or SE.

Bumping - cos I'm always reading on MN how important it is for women to be financially independent and it would be good to have some tips to pass on to daughters and nieces.

My friend has just become independent at the age of 35 by saving and waiting to leave home until this age. She has a good job eotj decent pay and has lived rent and bill free with her parents in order to save to by a house. It's worked out for her but it's not something I would ever want to do.

• with decent pay

same with young men too! most of our graduates at work are still living in flatshares at an age where I'd bought my own place but I was "lucky" that I could live back home when I first started work so saved on a rent which enabled me to buy a fairly affordable flat. Where i live now I expect a 1 bed flat is about 5 times their salary and rents are through the roof (a room in a flatshare costs almost as much as my current mortage).
I think my only advice to anyone young is to save as much as they can from an early age and consider if they really need to go to university (and the debts it results in) to get to where they want to be. One of my friend's sons is about to start an accountancy apprenticeship instead of going to a red brick uni. The pay isn't great for London so they'll still have to support his living costs but at least in 3 or 4 years time that will increase and he won't have a massive debt.

Same way a young bloke would I imagine!

I'm not sure young people these days (of either sex) can buy houses in large swathes of the country without considerable help from parents or very large salaries.

Maybe buying with a friend is the answer?

I don't even think living with your parents and not spending a penny will cut it soon - house prices are going up faster than wages. If cookiecreammmpie's friend were 18 now, I wonder what age she would be moving out?

Education & training- get a better than average salary. Fight the gender pay gap with savvy career decisions, self confidence and an intolerance of poor management which hold them back. Get clued up on financial investment options.

It's tough out there...I have known friends buy a place together as a 'partnership' for a few years to get themselves on the ladder. Has its risks & not a long term solution- just enough to get a foot up.

I didn’t have an inheritance. I left the Uk to work in a low-tax country and then a zero tax place. I put my “tax” into a savings account and bought £100k first house mortgage free.

Ofc that house is now worth about c £250k so …. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Study hard, save hard , consider the earning potential of your academic decisions from an early age (14-15 - as soon as you start making subject choices for qualifications). Parents can encourage and set aspirations as well as support - a room at home if required - for the study / early worth years WITH the understanding that is short term and to enable them to move out

DD is hell bent on studying a 4 year humanities degree (includes year abroad). No clue what she wants to do as a career. I know part of the "uni experience" is finding yourself and the path you want to take, but it seems a bloody expensive route to take!

My husband and I bought at 28 in 2017. We had about 35k of savings each, and put down equal deposits/costs on our house - 20% deposit of 54k.

Our salaries at the time were circa £36k - not small, but not mega bucks. At 22, we were both on about 20k, so we made progress up the pay scales over the next six years. We lived in the city centre in a fancy flat and holidayed frequently (5-6 international trips annually), but generally speaking we didn't spend a lot on the day to day leisure costs - phones, cars etc all bought cheaply. No Sky TV etc.

Whilst we're happily married it's comforting to know that if we split now we'd have 90k equity each, ish. Enough to set ourselves up with separate, affordable mortgages on our respective salaries.

I don't think either of us did anything special - we're just both sensible and financially literate.

I was an arts student but my two take after DH and prefer STEM. I’m grateful for the opportunities I had but am not foolish enough to think I’d be able to do that now. Degrees HAVE to be worth it in monetary terms in a way they didn’t in the past

You were in a couple though. Try being a single person on an average salary trying to buy somewhere.

For a lot of young people now the only truly financially sound plan will be to stay living with parents indefinitely as a 3 earner household (if all lucky enough to be earning) to afford the bills and afford a joint mortgage and take over the hopefully mortgage free property just in time to retire.

Goodbye to independence and a family though!

My husband and I bought at 28 in 2017

So you weren't financially independent.

Develop a skill set targeting higher-paid industries and change jobs every few years to bump up overall earnings. Live with roommates, save, and INVEST what you can afford monthly (even if it's just £100/month) into an all-world index fund/S&P 500 index fund, and don't touch it for 35-40 years. Match your employer's pension contibutions as soon as you can.

Well I was a young woman who was a corporate lawyer - and I chose that path as it paid more than family law! (And I chose to study law rather than history as I was more sure of a job that way (qualified overseas where you HAVE to study law to be a lawyer). So…like the PP says, being savvy about choices and career paths from a very early age. I knew at 15 that I didn’t want to be scrimping and pinching to make ends meet like my parents.

Sharing with a friend is a good option and I've known a couple of people who have done that. You pick your friend carefully and both agree a rough timescale, e.g. share a flat for 5 years, sell and split the profit to fund your deposits on your own place. Of course, that only works in a market where there is a profit in selling after 5 years.

Otherwise, you take some basic DIY courses and be prepared to buy a doer-upper might be an option for some.

I bought my own place a few years ago as a singly - but to afford the deposit I left the country for 2 years and took an oversees assignment. I really disliked it but it allowed me to buy a house so was worth it.

I chose to use my resources with my husband, yeah, but if you substitute sharing with my husband for sharing with flatmates, and the house I bought with him and the house I'd have bought alone, then there's no difference to the circumstances. And yes, I could have absolutely afforded a house by myself. I was the higher earner for the majority of that time.

I mean, feel free to dismiss my experience because it doesn't suit your chosen narrative, but I think that it's pretty damn important to understand that financial independence can exist within a long term relationship.

We operate as a mini-socialist state. There's an account that we pay into for our joint lives, and all else is separate.

If you're going to take your argument to its logical conclusion, I'm not financially independent because I have an employer. Which is of far greater relevance than how I manage the financial resources I have.

Again, I could have bought my own place. I didn't, I share it with my husband. That comes with downsides, but it doesn't equate to a lack of financial independence.

In terms of practical advice for being financially independent as a single person:

• Work full time on as high a salary as you can

-Live very frugally, get familiar with budgeting, no takeaways etc -Pay yourself first (set aside a chunk of salary each month for long term savings/deposit) -Find cheap rent, eg. House share with friends, property guardian, housing co-ops etc -Use an lifetime ISA to save for deposit -Don't have kids (controversial I know, but having kids adds a whole other dimension) -Save for 10-15 years -Do all of this and I promise at the end you'll be rewarded by being able to buy a tiny shitty flat in an unsafe area that you don't want to live in because that's all you can afford. (Speaking from experience!)

Save, work hard, don’t have children until you’ve saved, rent cheaply, and aim to buy when you’re older.

I mean, feel free to dismiss my experience because it doesn't suit your chosen narrative

Don't be so touchy! I'm pondering how to advise young women to be financially independent so you buying a house with your husband isn't really relevant.

While owning property is obviously the way to go in terms of financial independence, I think we’re talking about two separate things here.

To me, a young woman being financially independent means not relying on a partner financially. A woman can still rent and do this. The important thing is for woman to not get into a situation where they’ve reduced their own financial opportunities to allow a man to increase his- eg, giving up work and pension to mind children so that the man can continue on in his job without being impeded by childcare.

Absolutely there’s no question that home ownership is the ideal but, in the absence of that, a woman renting, contributing to her pension, and working full time, with savings, investing, having access to money (whether solely hers, or joint) is financially independent.

I did it, but as part of a couple.
Salaries of approx £20k each and our flat was £116k. We lived on pasta pesto for a year and saved £11k. We were renting a place for £625 a month at the time.
I certainly think it would be VERY difficult (borderline impossible) these days as a single person.