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!

Small cheap do it yourself wedding, family help with loan for house deposit on cheap ex council flat , very little childcare with kids as i’m Self employed and work around them.

Same as @Redgreencoverplant

Dh has a very decent job/salary. He also has generous parents and inheritances from relatives with no other family. He saved for a house deposit. He's progressed to a higher rate taxpayer, etc.
Without dh I would never afford a house.
I had a professional career before kids and saved for the £6k wedding. But I'm personally terrible with money. Really struggle to save but would never buy on credit or borrow, etc.

We are aged 29 and 30.
We had a really cheap wedding 4 years ago.
We bought our first house 5 years ago, it was very cheap - a bit of a dump and did it up all ourselves - sold it, made a fairly significant profit on it, bought a second house and did the same, now have a bigger family size house.
Now have one child and another on the way.
I think most importantly we don't live a lavish lifestyle - don't get me wrong we don't go without but we don't have expensive taste, don't buy expensive clothes/food etc, don't have expensive holidays. Being able to economise is the best way to being able to save.
PS - no financial help from parents in any of the above.

House first.
Then wedding.
Then (3 years later) a baby.

In between wedding and baby we managed to squeeze in 2 luxury holidays (just about!). But stuff like xmas/bday/anniversary presents were small and of little monetary value as we wanted to spend on a great holiday instead.

We save every penny. Means we havent had a date night outside the house in over a year but we have date nights at home with a glass of wine and a home cooked pizza and its brill.

Plus change your outgoings. We halved our phone/broadband by switiching providers. Same with our sim only tariffs. That in itself is an extra £50 saving a month for us.

It all depends on what is priority. Ive been with DH over a decade. In the early years id have preferred nights out as they were important to us. Now we dont feel the need to do them anywhere near as often, if at all (we prefer netflix and chill ) so its an expense we dont have.

Its hard but you get used to it. Take it pne step at a time. My sole focus was house first. Then i thought of wedding. Didnt think of saving for baby until i saw the 2 lines on that good old FRER test

My parents paid for our moderate sized wedding (100 guests), we got 200% mortgage on our house back in the days when banks were giving everyone a mortgage (not such a good thing now as we're stuck in negative equity in a house that we are definitely outgrowing fast), and we could afford kids cos my DH got a good promotion and my parents and my in laws help us with childcare and I am part time. I know written down this all sounds idyllic but we still have to scrimp and save for everything we have, we don't get to go on holiday or drive nice cars (our cars are 10+ yrs old), but I know we've been fortunate in a lot of ways.

*100% mortgage not 200%

I used to wonder things like that, it all happens in little stages, you don't do everything at the same time. Take it step by step, you'll be completely skint at times and have to cut back, then get new job or pay rise which eases the situation and you take the next step. Good luck x

We had a cheap wedding and had kids in a rented house (in London). We brought a house later on because it is hard to get the money together these days.

My advice would be to buy a house before having kids if possible as you will both have full time jobs to get a mortgage against. If one of you goes part time / SAHP after kids then you won't be able to borrow as much just when you will probably want a bigger property and more space for the kids

We're a 1 wage family.
We had a child, then bought a house, then had 2 more children, then got married, and then had another baby.
We had a £6k wedding, so not super cheap, but not extravagant.
My husband got a reasonable tax rebate, which went on our initial deposit, and we are about to sell the house and move 3 hours away so we can afford a much bigger property. It surely depends on where you live, your expectations and ability to manage them, and your commitment to being on top of your finances?

well the wedding is probably the cheapest we got married and had a honeymoon for about 2k including a dress made by a dressmaker we had 30 guests you could have a nice wedding for not that much

children do not have to cost a lot in terms of equipment and stuff in the early years, it is childcare that costs a lot and can take up a large proportion of salary it gets better once they are 3 and get some free hours however once childcare costs go down clothes and tech and clubs go up in cost

I bought a house years ago but first in Midlands and then in Scotland so house prices are not crazy multiples of average salary I had a good job but all the money was mine I had no help from parents or inheritance though my parents helped put flat pack furniture together they were never in a place to help financially,, I saved really hard second hand furniture no going out to restaurants except birthdays takeaway coffee wasn't a thing then etc to start with

My husband has never been paid more than average often less but he managed to save over 50K by the time we married ( he was in his 40's) he says he just saved all the money he never spent smoking drinking and gambling it was easy even in 1990's to spend 25-30 pounds a week on these and it starts to add up. He is still frugal apart from crisps!!

However I do realise that saving £50 a week £2600 a year ( allowing for inflation) won't go far in the southeast or London, but where we are in Scotland an ex council house with 3 beds and a garden is 75-85K depending on decor etc so here saving for 3 years would get you a 10% deposit

you can save £50+ a week by making your own lunches, not buying coffee out, using a SIM only phone deal; don't update tech when existing stuff still works, switching utilities, using freeview not Sky or netflix, walking or running instead of the gym, cutting down severely on presents holidays and going out, shopping at Aldi; not buying anything you don't need especially more clothes, make up etc
you can't however save £200 a week like this which is what is required near London and the SE
consider buying a house a bit further out in less fashionable area that needs basic work ( not new CH / rewiring / new roof) that you can take your time with, I had deckchairs in my living room for 4 months when I got my first house you can actually live with an avocado bathroom so long as it doesn't leak and old fashioned carpets, kitchens etc

Small cheap house in a cheap area and small, cheap wedding.

Saved like crazy before we bought the house.

Wedding paid for by parents (nearly 30 years ago though, so that was the norm then). Tiny house bought about the same time, paying for deposit with our savings. Waited to have DC for 6 years and then DC didn't come along, so spent a fortune on fertility treatments before it finally worked.

We shall help DC with deposits etc when the time comes as, assuming house prices continue to grow, I have no idea how they will manage it otherwise.

Weddings can be cheap.

We have well-paying jobs. Obvious, but the only answer.

I got married in 2015 and had kids in 2016 and 2018 and never thought I'd be able to afford a house but in the autumn we buckled down and made a budget and we should be able to afford a house in spring 2020 if we continue to stick to it.

I think it's just a matter of staggering the costs. Maybe it takes you a year, maybe 5 years, maybe 10 - but if you really focus it should be doable in the long term.

My advice would be to buy a house before having kids if possible as you will both have full time jobs to get a mortgage against. If one of you goes part time / SAHP after kids then you won't be able to borrow as much just when you will probably want a bigger property and more space for the kids

Surely you don't want to borrow more than you can afford on the incomes you'll have once you have kids? The affordability tests seem pretty fair to me, I wouldn't want to be paying a mortgage with a mortgage to income ratio above them.

Didn't meet my husband until I was 31 and he was a couple of days off 30. He already had a house (he didn't go to university). We were able to move to a nicer house and afford two children through losing relatives unfortunately. This means that the next few years while both are in nursery and I'm part time will be a bit tight financially. But we have been lucky. Our wedding was also relatively cheap. The time of year (December) meant we got a lot of good deals and there are no 'fees' as such to get married in the Catholic Church. Reception was in a pub. I turned 40 recently. I couldn't save very much when I started work as rents where I worked did not match teachers' starting salary at the time. So, I had to wait basically.

Nowadays I have no idea how people can afford houses as the house prices are way above what a normal working class person can afford.
We bought our first house in 2001 when 100% mortgages were available.
We got married and went on our honeymoon for under £1500.
Our children are older now - 16, 14 and 6. So we no longer have to pay childcare, but it used to be so expensive when the eldest two were at nursery together - £800 per month. I went part time once the eldest reached school age.

Marriage my parents paid for half and we paid for the other half with savings. Large deposit on our house was mostly gifted to us from very generous pil. Kids are expensive in terms of childcare/loss of earnings. My dh is well paid so whilst I work part time we are still able to enjoy a good quality of life.

Started young. Got together at 21. Bought a house at 25. Got married at 27, but we’re very lucky that our parents footed a lot of the bill for that, so we’re able to have a decent sized wedding. Moved house at 31. Had a child at 33. Had to save for fertility treatment (same sex couple) and also wanted to be well established career wise. We have help with childcare one day a week but this is a nice to have rather than needed, we could afford to pay for four days a week if necessary (DW dropped a day a week so only need childcare for 4 days).

So we weren’t looking to do it all at once, which helped a lot.

My DH is quite a bit older than me and stayed at his mum's while he saved for a deposit (managed to do it on one, very average wage!). Bought a house which had a small mortgage on it. I eventually moved in and we worked very hard and paid the mortgage off in full (again, average wages).

Then we sold it at quite a substantial profit and coupled with savings we were able to buy our current, lovely house outright.

Got married a couple of years later. We had a nice wedding but it wasn't huge and the costs weren't huge either.

Continues saving and had a child 5 years ago. We are sticking with one child for a variety of reasons but finances are part of the reason.

We have never had financial help from family and paid for full time childcare until DS started school but we are both very good at saving and so managed that way.

Well, I married somebody already on the property ladder.

We budgeted for a small wedding but then my dad received a substantial inheritance from a distant cousin and paid for it all.

In terms of children, we saved until we had just enough to get through maternity leave on SMP.

If it weren’t a mixture of the above then I think it would have taken us longer to achieve. As it was we are only just there in our late 30s / early 40s.

DH starting putting money away for school fees when he got his first job!

So I would say forward planning is essential!

We just did 5% deposit for our house in 2016, then we had a baby in 2018 (not expensive yet) and now we are engaged and planning to get married in 2020. Never struggled for money (earn £55k between us now, but was as low as £40k at the start of our relationship). We've always known the order we wanted to do everything and haven't waited any longer than absolutely necessary.