Saving for a house deposit

[Inthenightgarden1]

Please help me…how do people save for a house deposit?
We both work a lot, don’t have treats or spend money on us. We only ever go on holiday on cheapie caravan deals and have no extravagances. Yet we are finding it impossible to save. Rent takes a huge chunk of our income. Can’t really love somewhere cheaper due to jobs and school etc.
How do people save for a deposit?

I think house buying is out of reach for a lot of people tbh, unless family help or they earn a huge wage. I managed to buy my own place around two years ago but that was only because my dad gave me my inheritance early. Before that I'd rented for 7 years on my own and managed to save around 6k but it certainly wasn't enough to buy a house or flat. I would have been waiting a lot longer if my dad hadn't stepped in to help me. I know I'm extremely fortunate.

We did it before we left our parents homes so weren’t paying full rent and bills.
I think once you’re running a house, it is pretty hard to save a decent deposit unless you’re earning well.

Honestly mainly by doing it before kids and/or whilst renting.

By living with parent until I'd saved enough. My ds is doing the same.

Thank you. I left an abusive childhood home at 18 and so staying with parents was not an option. It makes me so sad to think I will never own a house.

A mixture of renting a cheap crappy flat, going without a car, taking a £7k interest free loan from work and paying it back over 3 years, along with a few pay rises but no lifestyle increase and settling down young but no kids so could pool incomes.

Also choosing to live in the North rather than move to London so we could buy with a £20k deposit.

It took about 2 years. I think we were saving about £700pcm between us.

I lived frugally for 7 years, but saved a substantial deposit, mainly as I was 51 when I got my mortgage so needed to put down more. I read "Your money or your life" I kept a spending spreadsheet, I totally changed my lifestyle, ie walks with friends, instead of pubs, dinners etc. which was nicer and healthier anyway. Cheap holidays. I self taught myself to invest in shares and use dividends to boost my savings. I did have a cheap house sitting rental, but it was only me saving, no partner to buy with, plus I'm in the south east. I've had zero family help. It seemed impossible to start with due to low interest rates and ever increasing house prices, but I got there. Set a savings target, think about all the ways you can save money but still enjoy life, that's the key, expensive isn't always better. You will get there.

I did matched betting for 2 years, several hours a day while studying to be a nurse. Actually made enough for a decent deposit (£30k ish) but had to spend 2/3 of it on living costs due to DH not working (health reasons). Slowly building back up, mostly through doing extra work when the covid vaccine clinics were really busy. Can't afford to save much/at all at the moment but hopefully this will change.

Some schemes available are actually helpful. LISA adds a 25% bonus to savings. HMRC help to save account (if you qualify for it) gives a 50% bonus on savings over 4 years (then put in the LISA for another 25% on top).

By living in cheap house shares and cycling to work. By doing medical drug trials. By scraping every last penny out of my account at the end of the month in to savings. I also did every offered minute of overtime for 5 years and volunteered for 2 years of anti-social shifts for the shift allowance pay. Only managed it with a 95% mortgage on a 1 bed to get my foot on the ladder. It’s really hard OP, I don’t think some people in older generations realise how much more difficult it is these days.

Oh and some lifestyle changes like instead of getting the tram to work (£90pcm) I got the bus (£28pcm) and saved the difference even though it took twice as long.

Never bought lunch or coffee at work, always taken from home (some days I’d just take porridge for lunch and use the milk at work. I worked for a big corporation so didn’t feel guilty.

In your position I’d go through every area of spending and see what you can cut down. Even if it’s only £50 a month or so, overtime it adds up. Lots of savings accounts now pay 4% interest and you can set up a LISA for the government top up.

Also no stamp duty to worry about as a first time buyer!

It's not easy. I've managed to save £30k for a deposit and about to buy in my late 30s by myself. No help from parents and currently renting alone so almost half of my salary disappears on rent, council tax and bills. I'm on an average wage for London but will have to move away from the South of England if I have any hope of securing a home for the amount I can borrow.

My tips:

• Monzo and set a strict monthly budget
• Get a LISA and try and max it out each year
• No car, no expensive holidays, cut down on all the luxuries, meals out only v v occasionally, no expensive mobile contracts, no TV, cut down on subscriptions, no takeaways or coffees, etc.

-Rent as low as possible -Pay yourself first (transfer your savings as soon as you get paid so you're not tempted to spend it).

It's a lot easier to buy with someone else, but I strongly believe that financial independence is really important, especially for women. Don't forget you also need to pay for: conveyancing fees, removals, furniture/redecorating/renovation, emergency fund, repairs.

Can you not look to relocate to a more affordable area by changing jobs and schools?

After graduating I house shared and did very little but go to work, go to the gym, and have friends over to mine / go to theirs so that an evening of drinks would only cost me about a fiver, and managed to save £20k in about three years. I bought an ex council flat in a part of London which is oft referred to on MN as a rough, stabby shithole. By the time I came to sell it, that shithole (which I loved living in) had gentrified a bit and the flat sold for over three times what I’d bought it for, giving me an enormous deposit for my next place.

It is possible to do, even for young people today if they earn an average salary, but you really need to put your mind to it before having the money drain that is children, and many FTBers need to lower their expectations in terms of size of property and location of their first purchase. I have friends who wanted to live in trendy parts of London and paid £££ rent for the privilege kicking themselves now that they didn’t do as I did early on.

I’m currently saving for a deposit and it’s slow going as I really don’t have much spare cash but I am slowly getting closer to my goal.

I’m using a LISA to save which is helpful in terms of the interest and also because it helps the money feel completely separate to my own bank account.

I work a full time job (37.5 hours) and a part time job (12 hours) so that I have more coming in.

I am about to move to a cheaper rented property than what I’m currently in to free up a little bit more each month.

I don’t drive so have no petrol/tax/MOT etc costs to worry about. My travel to work is around £25 a week by public transport.

Open a LISA and government will make top up payments into your account. I think if you save £4k a year they will add a £1k.

My son saved in a LISA but found even with saving £5k a year every year a house got further away. So he decided to move North. He took almost a £9k per annum pay cut but found in North he could afford a house on the lower salary.

I lived at home with my parents pretty much rent free after I finished school and starting working. This allowed me to save up a good deposit and I bought a shared ownership flat. Once I was on the ladder it was great from there. I don't know how I would have got on the ladder without my parents letting me live at home to save, am very grateful. Seems nigh on impossible these days to buy, this was twenty years ago.

Worked a SHIT load of overtime through the whole of covid when my DP was furloughed, managed to save £10K in one year doing 30-40 hours of OT a month. We have a child so if it wasnt for the furlough and not having to worry about child care it wouldn't of been possible. I would find it impossible now

I saved my student loan. You could do this under the old system. You can't now on UC as they make deductions for student loan. It really does suck.

Can you look at shared ownership if it's the deposit that's the problem?

However, without details of your income and spending, it's impossible to say whether there is money you could be saving (some people who say they 'never have treats' have a very generous definition of 'basic essential').

Can either of you earn more? Promotion, second job, informal cleaning/baby sitting/gardening work etc?

However, you need to consider whether buying a home is an achievable aim where you are. How much do you earn and what does the type of property you need cost? Unfortunately in some places, many people will never be able to buy unless they save enough deposit to reduce the mortgage amount needed for the income multiple they would qualify for.

6 years of very hard saving- no holidays at all, no car (until 3 years in- and then an old wreck that cost £600). Renting in the direst places. Budgeting every penny. We had no family help at all. It got us a very scruffy end of terrace that we didn't get furnished for another 4 years, but it was the start we needed.
Good luck! It is hard. I remember so well having friends with helpful families and being so envious.

It was easier as housing was cheaper 24 years ago. A 10% deposit on our house then was 10k now it’s 35k. Our junior level wages were about 25k, those positions are now at 36k. It’s a perfect maple of how wages have just not kept up with house prices.

We lived in shared houses till late twenties and that’s when we met, we also both invested in stocks.

DS is about to open a LISA, he also has a known trajectory to his career and we ask for a token amount of rent. His GF is about to graduate and if she gets the contract that she has been shortlisted for they will be on very good graduate wages. Even with these two being very lucky and both having supportive parents and good careers they will not be able to afford anything as nice as we did. It’s dire for the younger generation.

Prioritised buying a house before having children. DP is self employed and worked 7 days a week for a while. We also both had LISAs and maxed them out for 4 years.
But other than that it was mainly through having well paid jobs that we were able to save £1,500-2,000 a month between us without having to make huge sacrifices. We bought when I was 30 and DP was 32.

12-24 months of hardcore savings, no holidays/weekends away, save every penny where you can
Lifetime ISA
Look for affordable schemes ie 5% deposit, key worker deposit contribution, new build offers etc
Look for cheap area

• Living in rather shabby places, doing house shares way past an age when I was happy house sharing.
• Relocating several times miles away from my partner with the hope to progress my career and land myself a better job.
• when eventually buying, buying in a not so great area with the hope to one day move to a nicer area further down the line.

But also , be incredibly lucky that it was 15 years ago when housing was cheaper.

Honestly, if you are already being cautious with your money, could you perhaps look at relocating or get a side job?

We saved like mad (decent amount) by literally working all hours for around 2 years. We lived extremely basic and savvy and made huge sacrifices, no fancy cars on finance, no hols, most basic phones etc and we weren't big earners. I will say this was before we had our children so was easier!