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!

For me there would have been no point in saving for my maternity leave. I was richer on maternity than when I went back to work and was paying £100 a day childcare. We had to learn to live on one wage basically.

Registry wedding. Buy a unit first.

Prior to husband changing careers, we would've just about maybe afforded to have one child. Just. We would've had zero help though with childcare, my wage was utter shite and I would've been working 8am until 6pm, including some weekend plus bank holidays, just to afford childcare with zero disposable income. We probably wouldn't have even had a kid, to be honest.

Another avid planner here. First house at 23 and 26. Married at 24 and 27. Second house at 25 and 28. Still no babies, fertility isn't our friend it seems. If we hadn't gotten together so young there is no way we'd have what we do now. Depends where you live too, we earn well between us I would say but in Sussex for example, we wouldn't be able to buy anywhere near the house we have where we are.

This is how my friend did it:

1. Cut spending to the absolute bone: no Sky, cheapest possible phones, old banger car, no holidays, no packed lunches/eating out, buying clothes on Ebay and eating as cheaply as possible while avoiding getting scurvy. I used to trim her hair for her with my dog grooming scissors (and I'm not even a dog groomer, never mind a hairdresser). This got them a £15k deposit. Her parents agreed to lend them another £5k, but in the end it took so long for the sale to go through that they'd saved that before the purchase completed and never needed the loan. They got the max possible mortgage.

1. Furnished house entirely 2nd hand. Friend got so good at upcycling that she actually started to make a few quid from it.

1. Very cheap wedding. Her DPs paid for the wedding car, his paid for half the buffet at the reception, they paid for the other half, her mum made the bridesmaid's dresses and altered her 2nd hand bridal gown. She decorated the village hall, did wedding favours and table flowers herself. Photos were done by a friend, DJ was another friend and it was a wonderful wedding! Asked for money towards honeymoon instead of gifts.

1. She got pregnant on honeymoon. She was lucky in that she got 6 months on 90% salary on top of statutory minimum. She's a really astute bargain hunter and got almost everything for the baby 2nd hand, including a top of the range travel system.

1. She reduced her hours on coming back to work and he compressed his, so they only needed 2 days pw childcare. This meant that her earnings were below the threshold for student loan repayments, they qualified for CTC for childcare and their net income was actually a little more than when she was full time, plus their travel costs were less.

They weren't on fantastic salaries (about £22k and £26k) and they were able to buy a small house in Tunbridge Wells, which is a pretty expensive area.

This was about 4 years ago.

The bottom line seems to be 'be realistic in your expectations', it's sad to read so many stories of couples, usually the woman, wanting a Hello magazine wedding just because their favourite celebrity had one and getting into all kinds of debt to achieve it.
It used to be the norm that when a son/daughter married their parents had an excuse to buy lots of new furniture!

My parents gave us a good chunk of our deposit, we got pregnant unplanned and young but we also had no serious bills to pay either. Also my grandparents are or childcare. We’re having a smallish wedding. Under £3000 for everything.

Wedding paid for by my tax rebate (working abroad)

House deposit from husbands tax rebate, saving hard for three years plus an unexpected inheritance that paid the stamp duty and let us get on when we did.

Delayed having children until we were on the housing ladder. Would probably have had them a couple of years earlier but needed both salaries to get the mortgage.

So a mix of luck, saving and planning.

If I did it again I would prioritise getting a house and spend less on the wedding, although we didn’t know where we wanted to settle when we got married and it was a bloody good shindig

We bought our house first, then 3 years later we had a small cheapish wedding in Vegas and then a baby a year later. I live in a cheap part of the country and only needed to save about £7000 for a deposit and solicitor fees ontop of that. We also lived quite comfortably off my dh wages as I was a sahm.

Obviously you are welcome to come on MN and have a little moan, but if you are really asking ???
There are so many different combinations of circumstances :
People earn more than others
People inherit money
People are given money (by parents or other relations)
People live in areas where housing is a LOT cheaper than other areas
People are prepared to accept smaller, cheaper options (housing, weddings, and things like a shorter maternity leave)
People have been saving since their first 'pocket money' job
People start working at an earlier age than others
People (who have gone to university) work through all of term time and work through all holidays
People don't spend on things other people think are 'normal, every day expenses'
People work two (or more) jobs to save up
People go back and live with parents rather than paying rent
People walk / get a bus pass rather than buying a car

etc.etc.etc.

We had to space it all out. DH and I also had a cheap wedding (by current expectations). We bought a house a fair few years later with some help from my dad, we would have had to save for probably 2 more years to match it.

I use MoneyBox to round up my purchases to save in a Stocks and Shares ISA. I don't really notice the rounding up so it's sort of 'free' savings. Might be worth considering something similar. We paid off all our credit cards, stripped everything back to save the maximum amount we could. Hot on budgeting!

Remember too that you don't need to have a grand wedding. Some of the best weddings we've been to have been all about the wedding, relaxed and fun.

Time, good job and parents help.
Bought in London in 2008 when mortgages were easy to come by (pre-crash). Had a big wedding in 2011, mostly paid for by us but with help from both sets of parents. Upsized to forever home in 2013 with help from my parents, later extended with help from DH parents. Children in 2015 and 2018. Both working full-time on good salaries. So it's been 10 years from 1st home to completed family. We earn well but our last holiday abroad was our honeymoon. It's all about priorities, time to build savings and help family if it's available.

*help from family

My husband and I are the same age. We bought our 3 bed house in London at 29, got married (big wedding) at 32 and had our first baby at 34 last year.

My husband earns a decent wage (certainly not massive). I earn approx half as much basic rate but I did a lot of overtime in the run up to buying our house and getting married. We've both prioritised having a job we enjoy over higher paid jobs. We're sensible with money but certainly don't scrimp. We have meals out regularly and take long haul holidays.

I definitely think it's possible if you're sensible and are willing to work a bit harder for a couple of years to get some decent savings under your belt.

I don't mean to sound like I'm boasting, I'm not, but we didn't get any help from anyone and worked very hard to get to our current position. I'm proud of what we've achieved.

My wedding cost £6k
My deposit for a house was £27k (gifted £20k by my PILs).
I earn £32kpa but now work part time
My dh earns £28kpa so finding the ££ for a house and wedding was ok.
We now have 3 kids so have just bought a bigger house and have a big mortgage. Kind of scary but I think we'll be ok.
I think we were lucky with timings and of course the help from PIL to buy. Is there anyone you can borrow from interest free? I would help a sibling out now if they asked.

House first before wedding and children. Make sacrifices e,g no holidays/treats while you focus on saving your 10% deposit.

Buy a cheap house to get on the property ladder. Lower your expectations and be pragmatic - almost everyone hankers after a property in an area that they can't afford. Very few people can afford their dream house as a FTB.

We had a house deposit from a compensation claim but didn't stretch ourselves and bought a small (2 bed) house. Wedding was maybe £5k/£6k in total and some parts were paid for by parents and a lot done DIY. We chose to only have one child so only one lot of maternity leave/childcare fees/going down to part time hours etc.

We got married on a very small budget, actually eloped to Vegas.

Bought a house well within our means

Had 1 child several years after buying our house.

We are sticking at one child as can't comfortable afford a bigger house and another round of maternity leave/childcare.

We had a registry wedding, no honeymoon, rented poky 2 bedroom flats.

You prioritise, we got married, saved

Rented while we saved then bought a property, saved until we were financially secure and then had our children

We both worked FT, and outside of our employment had businesses (and in doing this at the beginning we continued our education degree and masters)

Work hard is my motto, you won’t get immediate results but in the long term you will, I’m only mid 30.

We bought aged 27 having saved £20k each. We were fortunate to have well paying jobs. Mortgage was around £1000 a month.

Our wedding cost £10,000. My parents & pil gave us £5,000 each. That was for a civil ceremony in a lovely venue, followed by drinks, 3 course dinner, party and band for 110 people. We cut corners on cars, favours etc to be as generous as we could with food & drink for our guests. We were 29

We were fortunate to inherit some money before our first baby came along reducing mortgage payments to about £700 a month.

DH works full time, I work part time in an ok paying job. Childcare is about £600 a month.

We left the UK, about ten years ago. We are late 30s and are almost mortgage free. We do live pretty simply though. It is tough in Blighty.

Ok so this will probably be an unpopular opinion but I’m going to say it. For context this is the view of a 39 year old. I think
Nowadays people want too much. So with the government help to buy scheme first time buyers are buying 4 bedroom houses. When I brought at 25 it was a 3 bed typical terrace house that needed work doing to it. First time buyers don’t seem to want these houses now. And part of me does see the point of going for a 4 bed straight away as you will probably never move however you can’t have it all. We are also very fixed in buying in this country, which I think needs to change to a better rental situations but that’s longer term.

As previous posters have said you can get married for a couple of grand- we did and the day was no less special that if we had spent 1000s.

As for kids i wouldn’t bother thinking about it as otherwise no one would ever have them 😂😂