AIBU to wonder how people can afford to get married, buy a house AND have children??

[diamondeyes10]

Just that really...

I am approaching 30 and I have been with my partner for 4 years.

I have numerous comments from others assuming that we are going to get engaged soon and have children, honestly we are struggling to scrape a deposit together to buy a house and it is taking a very long time! I know people have different priorities but I really don't know how people can afford it all nowadays (except for the obvious reasons!)

I'm not sure what I am wanting to get out of this thread, but enjoying having a little moan!

Work hard, save hard. Think you need designer clothes? Holidays? Nice car? You don’t. You cannot have it all but you prioritise what’s important to you.

Wedding - parents & grandparents paid (mine & his ... was about 7k in total)
House deposit - my student loan & both our savings. Mostly unfurnished for a year, then second hand/Ikea.
Children - I’m a SAH parent so no childcare, I get carers allowance for our disabled child.

We have a very modest house & small mortgage. Run an old banger, no holidays abroad, vegetarian etc - all the usual ways of saving money.

In all honesty we only own a house because Mil stumped up the deposit.

Kids, we afforded by having low housing costs due to Mil having already stumped up for a deposit.

The wedding we afforded on our own by going for a registry office do and a reception in the back room of a pub. This is

Not very helpful to you, OP, I realise. But I think it's important to be honest and recognise the unfair structural advantage.

I think it's a case of when you have to save you can iyswim
I found out I was pregnant shortly after I graduated so had no money. Its been 4 years since and we got married (£5k) had 2 dcs and just bought a house. We've been on one wage for the last 4 years as I went and did my masters between having dcs. Partner isn't on a huge wage, about £27k. Obviously if we'd have had more money we'd have had a bit more of an expensive wedding, got a bigger house in a better area, nicer holidays, better cars etc. We were lucky that our previous rent before buying was cheap otherwise saving for a deposit would have taken a bit longer.
I guess just don't over think it op, you will find a way to make it work if you want house, marriage kids. Try not compare yourself to others (easier said than done!) they may well have had financial help from family or have debts etc to get the things they have.

My partner and I lived at home with parents for the first 4 years of our relationship and managed to save £1,000 each per month by literally doing nothing and going nowhere. We were total hermits! We bought our first place and the end of 2016.

Since then we’ve saved £500 a month- got engaged at the end of 2017 and we are getting married in a few months. Wedding is 25k including a big expensive honeymoon, and it’s all coming out of savings.

Once we are married we will keep saving £500 a month- the plan is to start trying for a baby next year, so hopefully should have a good chunk of cash saved up by then.

So really it’s all just been a lot of saving and sacrificing things for us! It’s worth it though.

I think it depends on your personal priorities and what will make you happy in life. I think many people who aren’t well off tend to pick one of the three and look to achieve the others at different stages of their lives. Think positively, you’re working towards buying a house which will be a great asset to you in future for when you may decide to explore marriage and children.

My partner and I have just had our first child but are decades away from purchasing a house...we can barely afford rent. We will get married in the next few years but it will be a cheap and cheerful wedding (I don’t see the point in wasting thousands for one day as I’d rather use it for travelling). You can have it all depending on how you time it, but generally people won’t achieve. The traditional marriage, house, child, until their mid 40s.

We live in a rented 2 bed flat with our baby, partner is in catering and I’m starting a masters. We’re saving up what we can for a deposit in a LISA, I do surveys and occasionally matched betting to earn a little extra money and I’m looking for a weekend job. We are planning on getting married but will just be the three of us, no big wedding as we can’t afford it and anything spare goes to the deposit fund. We’ll never be wealthy but I want to make sure we’re secure :)
I’m 26 and most of my friends who own houses and/or had big weddings had parental help.

We could never ever have managed it without help from family. So hard work and being lucky enough to have comfortably-off generous families and a great aunt dying at the right time. It’s wrong and unfair - I was especially aware of it once we bought a house and I realised that our mortgage is nearly a third cheaper a month than the rent we were paying for a similar property: the system feels designed to keep people off the property ladder. It’s shit.

We had DC1, bought a house, got married (smallish jobby, €5k) in that order. Then had DC2. And to be honest, PILs gave us our house deposit.

I didn't wait to do it the sensible way. I had DS at 22 (unplanned but don't regret it) and we live in a rented flat.

It's just life. I am single and rely on tax credits to top up my income. Loads of people are in the same situation as me. Thankfully I live in an affordable area so I don't struggle. I just save as much money as I can.

We did it out of order. Bought house early 20s when mortgage people more or less giving them away and hardly needed a deposit at all.

Very cheap registry office wedding didn't really cost much.

Children are the expensive ones, had them a bit later. Were very lucky to be able to juggle both jobs and help from my parents so we didn't have to pay for childcare.

We did it the opposite way. My husband owned a flat, I moved in. We had children, moved country, bought a house and then got married when we had the money.

We were just really lucky, we bought a house in 2002 with a 110% mortgage.
We got married in 2005 with a mix of money we had saved and some gifts of money from parents and grandparents and then when we had DD a year later dh changed jobs and we managed with his wage for a time when I was on mat leave.

Bought very cheap 1 bed flat in 20’s. in good area did up, prices went up there this made profits next house further out ( London)and bigger. Worked serious overtime for deposits and were not snobby about what we could afford, just the potential to make money on it.
Got engaged, my parents did pay for wedding ( only daughter and only girl to make adulthood for 2 generations in dads family) was lucky they paid but if didn’t have funds would have done it cheaply even just registry office type thing. Marriage is important to me before children as it does give you protection.
Both have professional jobs my maternity leave was good and went back working mostly nights and weekends to keep childcare costs down but maintain career. DH has done very well over the years in his career.
Basically hard work and being very flexible makes it work. I have 3 children btw

Bought a house in 2008 aged 21 with now DH. I had a cash gift from parents for 21st birthday, DH had worked all through uni so had just banked his student loan for deposit. Small 1 bed but fine for us, two salaries, saved over £1000 per month.

Married 2012, 'eloped' abroad with just parents and siblings there.

Savings and money made on first house meant we could buy a bigger place (but still affordable on one wage due to DH's increasing salary.) The house needed work but was liveable and all done now.

DS born 2016, I'm now a sahm, but we won't be having anymore. Aiming to go back to work when DS at school.

I don't understand either how people do it with house prices how they are. We bought a house years ago but I'm worried for my children looking at the housing market now.
Life is too short to wait isn't it?!

Lived with respective parents until we got married. Husband started saving when he was in his teens . I started saving about a year after we met, so 27ish . Engaged , married , house then children .

Wedding: had a small one and saved for about 2 years for it.

House: very tough - we saved for 5 years and DH took on extra contract work to bump up our income and even then only had a 15% deposit for a cheap house in the middle of nowhere. We sold it 4 years after we bought it because we moved abroad and lost 10k on it because the market was sluggish in our area.

Kids: not easy either, started trying at 31, took until I was 33 to successfully have DC1. We would have been very strapped for cash if we had stayed in the U.K. but we moved abroad where DH got a fantastic career opportunity and that, honestly, is the only reason that we now - at 40 - have almost paid off our mortgage here and have savings in the bank and are debt-free.

So, yes, it’s tough. You have to find a way to increase your income while maintaining or reducing your living costs and that is pretty difficult to do. I read somewhere that 35 is the most expensive age in most people’s lives. It was certainly true for us!

Didn't get married for ages, then our parents did bits for us - my MIL made the cake, my Mum paid for the flowers, bought a dress in the sales, got married at 4pm so we only fed people once etc.

Bought a wreck that needed complete renovation, we lived in it while we were doing it as well, which was fun! We were lucky enough to have help from MIL with childcare and childcare vouchers helped as well.

Youngest is 6 now and life is definitely easier than it was.

All our siblings and closest friends did things in this order too . None lived together before they got married , lived at home and saved and saved . Saving and paying rent would be difficult I should imagine .

I bought my house at auction 7 years ago, it was a complete horror show but in the best part of the area we live in. My now husband move in 4 years ago and we have only just finished doing it up, its been a real slog completely gutting it and renovating whilst we've lived here but now we live in a beautiful home with a small mortgage that's worth way more than i paid for it. It's not for the faint hearted but it allowed us to go to town on our wedding and have a baby fairly soon after as we're on decent salaries and our housing costs are relatively low for what we've got. I'd never buy a house in that state again but I'm glad I did then.

We didn't move out until age 22/23 (32 now), both had decent jobs and were able to save for our deposit.
Had got engaged a year later and had DD a year after that. DD was 5mo when we got married, I was still on full pay so we were still able to save enough between us for our wedding.

I think the key is living rent-free (ish) with parents and no DC until you save enough for a deposit. Friends who moved out and rented/ had kids before hand have really struggled to get on the property ladder.

I can't answer you apart from to say we are in the same boat! I guess it mostly comes down to doing one thing at a time, people who do them close together probably have help from family, very good salaries or possibly get into debt.

We had all 3 by a similar age, due to a combination of luck and good financial decisions (except blowing a lot on a big wedding - both huge families and wanted the works. No regrets, we saved for 3 years, generous parents paid a third, and if we felt it would impact on the family home we could buy or meant we couldn’t afford kids when we were ready then we wouldn’t have done it obviously).

The job I got on leaving school paid a good salary and funded me through my degree, meaning I could buy my first home at 21 before the crash when they practically threw mortgages at you. When it came to buying a home together we had good equity so a decent deposit, and mortgage rates were so much lower that the monthly payments are actually now lower on a house that is almost double the value of the first one. We live in a cheap area which obviously helps.

Kids - waited til we could definitely afford it, saved for maternity leave in advance so we weren’t struggling and didn’t end up in debt. Budgeted for childcare and claim tax free childcare, plus I went back on compressed hours to save a day’s childcare. There will be no DC2 until DC1 is at school as there’s no way we can afford two at nursery.

It was a teacher who spotted my job advertised by pure chance, and I often wonder how we’d be doing if I hadn’t applied and been lucky enough to get it. I really feel that my life would be so different. Most of my friends are married with kids and on the property ladder though, so I’d say where you choose to live has a huge impact

• House Deposit
• Small Wedding, that doesn't incur any debt.
• Buy House
• Save more money
• Have Kids

[Do Not have kids before you buy a house.]