Let's do the math for Kirsty regarding an affordable home

[kirstyalslap]

I'm sure everyone has heard that kirsty Allsopp has came out saying that people can afford homes if they only cut out netflix, the gym and takeaway coffees.

I just worked out a meal deal costs £3 a day. X that by 5 days a week 52 weeks a year is £720. Netflix is £8 for 2 screens (?) so times that by 12 months is £96 a year.
Let's add a £20 takeaway every 2 weeks for good measure. £520. Gym costs £14 a month so £168 a year.

So in one year of cutting back on netflix, lunch for work and takeaways I can save £1504
Wow
Now I need 14000 for a deposit so I'm only 10 years away (probably a little but more actually including fees.)

Right now let's think about increase in property value.
My parents bought their house 8 years ago for £90 thousand. A massive 2 reception with 4 bed and 2 huge gardens with a drive.
Bad condition.
Last year the neighbours sold for £230k
This year the other neighbours has been valued at £280k. My parents are thinking of selling for approx £290k.
So in 8 years their house has increased by £200k
(this hurts me as I started saving 8 years ago, nearly 9 and was looking at saving for a smaller house for about 80k needed 4k at the time and had a 5 year plan to get there. No family helping with deposit)

£90k now would get you nothing at all.
Also you need a 10% deposit.
Also rents back then was £500pcm for 2 bed flat. Now they are £700+pcm for same flat.

So how can we do it? How? Please tell me!

Oh also, everyone I know saving for a house has already cut out take away, meal deals, gym (first to go come on!) and much much more.
Batch cooking, shopping around for deals, having friends round rather than going out.
Every thing is rising in price now, I don't know how my children will afford to live away from us, it is scary because as much as we are okay now, we won't be able to have 3 grown adults living in one bedroom until they are in their 30s! Or will it be 40s or 50s by then?

I think Kirstie suggested moving to a cheaper area. My son literally just did this. We live in Midlands and he could not buy here on his average salary. He had saved up a small deposit. He moved up to the North of England taking a net £750 per month pay cut but could still buy a nice 2 bedroom terrace in city. He seems happy. He can no longer afford his indulgences but can at least pay his bills.

[quote starfro]Since the financial crash, Central Banks have purposefully pumped asset prices to insane levels.

The winners: those with assets like houses, shares etc
The losers: the bottom 90%

Covid policies have been this on steroids. So non-asset holders get poorer and less able to buy a house, whilst asset holders have got richer during the Pandemic.

www.bbc.com/news/uk-60114588[/quote]
This is the real issue right here. Bank of England PUMPING cash (QE) into action, rising inflation, assets go up and all those youngers struggle to buy, getting screwed over. I'm currently educating myself on Crypto to avoid fiat currency debasement, but, regret (and I'm a half full kinda gal) as a women going down the path of life not educating myself enough in life economics. I'm now obsessed and listen, read everything I can get my hands on. I have the assets but need to be in a position to educate my kids for the struggles ahead.

allMzHz is right.. I don't think KA literally meant stop paying for netflix and you can afford a house. It's just looking at your expenses and seeing where you can get the most out of your money. I'm sure there are a lot of people who was several quid a day on coffee/greggs/pop/crap they don't need.

A takeaway a week is fine but if you are getting a greggs breakfast a few times a week or a maccies then thats your takeaway for the week.

thankfully i dont eat that crap so its not an expense for me

HTB LISA really helped me get the extras 20% when buying a house
put your money somewhere were you will get the most % back.

I still think its sad that you are expected to live a completely joyless life JUST so you can take on a massive debt to have secure housing.

I'm distantly related to Kirsty "head in the clouds" Allsopp. I'm so sorry, everyone. :(

I am a homeowner, but it wasn't easy, it's never been easy and I had to do it all by myself. I scrimped and saved but I did have a Netflix subscription, I'm afraid. Staying in with Netflix is a helluvalot cheaper than most other hobbies.

Also, to this "moving somewhere cheaper" guff... Um yes. But then one of us would be working part time. We rely on our support network for childcare, like millions of ordinary people do!

[quote onlychildhamster]@frustratedbiscuit2 also if everyone moves to the 'cheaper' smaller towns, they are not going to be cheap anymore, are they? I mean house prices in London have stagnated since 2015 particularly for flats, enabling me to buy but from what I have heard, a lot of young people in the SE commuter towns are struggling due to London salaries. Also people in Birmingham and other popular ex londoner locations. She is just amplifying the housing shortage by suggesting people move down north. The north has a low pay problem; its very unfair to add a housing inflation problem when they haven't even levelled up... What they do not need is lots of Londoners with savings from London salaries moving down to the north.

unless you are telling me the government is building lots of new small towns like they did post WW2. they are not.[/quote]
Quite. Wages are lower up North. And people here have indeed been finding that they are getting outbid massively by people moving in from more affluent areas. I'm not saying people ought not to come here, that would be unfair. But we shouldn't underestimate the impact of people coming in from higher property value areas and just offering tens of thousands more than asking before even a bidding war starts because houses were so much cheaper here, as was happening in the pandemic.

Here’s what Kirsty said about women, babies, buying a flat and going to university. She really has no fucking clue []amp.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/jun/02/kirstie-allsop-young-women-ditch-university-baby-by-27]]

50 years ago it was standard for people to live with family until they got married.

IL and DP are coming up 50 years of marriage- both upset/suprised their respective families by starting married life in their own properties - DMum mum was most put out as it was still the done thing in their neigbourhood to stay a few years with parents and have the back room after getting married.

But I agree everyone was with their parents till they emigrated for work or married and according to parents and ILs they had to hand over all their wages over to their DMums and got given a bit back.

My DPs let us keep what we earned and didn't charage us board and supported for as long as we wanted education wise - more than DMums parents did but beyond that expected us to be gone when we started full time work.

@mumofEandE

My DS and his g/f were both 21 when they bought a 2 bedroom flat - in the SE - commutable to London. No Bank of mum and dad.

Usually I can't stand Kirsty Allsop and she has phrased things badly AND it is grating when a v v privileged person lectures the rest of us but....

There are ways:
Buy with somebody else
Don't buy a 'forever home' straightaway (or expect to)
Have a job where there is a lot of potential for overtime
Think carefully about what you will do as a job after Uni / do you really need to go to Uni

The year they bought their place they were still going out / foreign holidays (although I must admit he uses MY Netflix log in)

What are their jobs, what do they earn, how much was the flat and how much was their rent when they were saving?

"50 years ago it was standard for people to live with family until they got married."

They got married much younger...

@JuergenSchwarzwald

Lets all remember that Kirsty thinks women should focus on looking pretty, getting married and having a baby, she doesn’t value education or financial independence

What she actually said was that women are having babies too late. Which is probably true. Not sure I'd have wanted one at 24 but it would have been better in many ways than having one at 44 and having a 5 year old now (I didn't, I had mine at 30).

'The woman who fronts Location, Location, Location with Phil Spencer has told the Telegraph that if she had a daughter, her advice would be: "Darling, do you know what? Don't go to university. Start work straight after school, stay at home, save up your deposit – I'll help you, let's get you into a flat. And then we can find you a nice boyfriend and you can have a baby by the time you're 27."'

fine advice for a fellow posh Kirstie who's dad is the chairman of Christie's and whose mum has her own interior design business, but maybe not fabulous advice for a non-posh Kirstie.

Does anyone ever take this woman seriously? - she is a bag of hot air.

…and far fewer went to university, there was hardly any childcare provision, women were expected to give up work if they got pregnant etc etc etc.

@KarenTheGammonRemoaner

Having a mortgage is not owning a home, it's being liable for a debt.

THIS! Nowadays it appears that we have to go to extraordinary measures (I don't mean cancel gym membership, on a previous thread someone suggested that I leave my DS 3 to work in Dubai for a few years in order to save up a deposit?!) just to prove to a bank that we a worthy of being in debt for decades. I understand that you own a house at the end of that time (all being well) but when you take into consideration the interest on your mortgage how much have you actually paid for that house?

Or your parents took advantage of the Government's Trust Fund scheme and started saving a deposit for you from the minute you were born.

I agree that she doesn't actually understand just how difficult it is.
But I also don't think that everyone who is struggling to buy is actually in a situation where it is impossible (obviously for many it sadly is due to the horrendous inequality in this country).

As an example. I had NOTHING. As in literally nothing. Lived SE and worked two minimum wage jobs, both full time. Shared a rented room with another tenant (not my friend or partner). Have never had a car. Bought a £10 bike and used that and the bus even when it was freezing. Used to cycle 40mins to shop at Lidl didn't want to waste money at Sainsbury's. No gym, no bought lunches, no Netflix/Sky/heck even no BBC as did not want to pay for a TV license. Cheap second hand phone, £12 contract. Only buy clothes in charity shop/ebay. Sell absolutely everything I don't use anymore. Did a degree whilst working full-time and volunteering alongside that to get experience and increase my earnings. Got a better job (after sending literally hundreds of applications and doing more free 'work experience' whilst surviving on three evening/weekend jobs). Got a new job. Earn more, but not changed outgoing, other than moving into tiny studio flat. Saved £20000. Realised buying in SE is a pipe dream. Even though it was hard as my job, my support network etc are there, I realised if I want a home that is mine and a secure place to raise my family, that is another sacrifice I need to make. Found a job up north. Moved into cheap rental. Continued to save. Still don't have a car. Still saving over half my monthly wages. Bought my first house for just over £150000. It is beautiful. It is mine. I can finally afford a family now.

So yeah not as simple as no gym and coffee. But also not impossible. Everyone has different obstacles. For me the most painful and difficult sacrifice was waiting so long to have a baby. And moving away from everyone I knew. But to me having a secure home was important before having children, so as hard as it was - that is what I felt I had to do.

@Lockheart

Thing is, people can bitch and moan about "young" people (which in this instance includes people into their 40s!!) being feckless and spending money, but they're ignoring the serious problems coming down the line that a lack of home ownership among younger people will create.

People will have fewer children, and later in life. You can't start a family in a flatshare. This is going to have major consequences for the economy and society in the future.

More people will be retiring without owning a home. The current prices of rent mean that this is a truly scary prospect. How can you pay £150-200/week rent on a state pension of £150/week?

People live longer and need more care. This is often paid for in part by the sale of houses. But if they have nothing to sell, the state will have to foot the whole bill.

It is going to cost our Treasury (and by extension, us) a phenomenal amount of money if we don't address the serious lack of home ownership in the younger generations.

This^. Young people are paying far and away more of their income on rent/housing than we oldies had to. That's just plain fact, and I wish some people would accept it and at least try to understand the problem, rather than crowing about how they got their own houses. Quite apart from student loans, and soaring energy prices, etc.

@Pyriah

50 years ago it was standard for people to live with family until they got married. Widowed parents often moved in with a child too. Nowadays single people want their own homes once they get into their 20s and there just aren’t enough properties for that. Bear in mind as well there are more single people because we’re getting married later or not at all. Obviously Kirsty is an idiot with her comments but taking a broader view it’s impossible for all these people to have houses, there aren’t enough and it’s pushing prices up. We will have to go back to multiple occupancy but it’s not an unusual way of living - what’s unusual is all of the people who currently expect to live alone.

50 years ago my parents bought their first house for under £1000. They both worked in a factory getting what would definitely have been less than the equivalent of minimum wage today. My MIL, who doesn't agree with the welfare state, loved to remind us that she and FIL started off in a flat and had to save very hard to buy an actual house. She was a SAHM and they had bought their five bed forever home in a lovely area by the time she was 34 and FIL was 32. There is absolutely no comparison with 50yrs ago and today. Even with 25yrs ago and today. 20yrs ago I could have bought a small flat in my area of London earning what I earn now (senior NHS position). The same flat would now be nearly 10 times my salary.

Things have changed and it's our kids that will suffer.

Pyriah yes I know my parents were unusual living in a mortgaged house as newlyweds, most of their friends lived with parents until first baby and beyond. My grandma lived with her mother until my dad was 13.
People used to live with parents or if they needed to move for work would be in a boarding house set up - think call the midwife or Brooklyn.
Conversations about different ways to live are useful. We have a double garage that could be converted to a small home (it’s same size as new 1 bed retirement bungalows built locally) I doubt we’d get planning permission but that type of multi generation living would suit lots of families - elderly relatives or 20s returning from Uni.

‘ They got married much younger...’

Exactly. People want to change their lifestyles by living alone and marrying later, but the number of houses hasn’t increased enough to facilitate this. The number of houses available is enough for 2-3 people to share a house. We would need to double the housing stock to have enough for everyone who wants to live alone. What happens in practice is that housing is more in demand so prices go up.

@Comefromaway

The portions are massive. I share a fish and chips between us and there are still some chips left over to put with a ham sandwich the next day.

Ahh there you go! That's obviously where the young are going wrong. Make one takeaway do 4 meals.

And @Pyriah my DC's will be welcome to live with me for as long as they need to. But we don't have room for two couples plus children.

Not sure where the the £3 meal deal comes in because the OP was talking about cutting takeaway coffees - by that I thought she meant things like Costa and Starbucks - at least £3 each where I live and a few people I know have at least two a day. At that rate it puts it near £2000 a year, and the average cost of gym membership in the UK is around £30 so you can double the estimate for that saving. You’re missing the point. The price of properties when our parents bought them was relevant to pay and cost of living at the time, and if my own experience is anything to go by, our building society wouldn’t let us borrow more than 2.5 times our combined salaries - it’s much more than that now. As previous posters have pointed out, pretty much the only way to save what you need is to live with parents while you save. We had to do it and the figures might not seem much by comparison but it was a big deal back then. I feel so sorry for the younger generation who struggle but a lot of my generation had to set our sights lower and go for lower priced properties to get on the ladder. I well remember being told by the building society adviser that they would only advance us the mortgage for the new build we wanted, if we went for the two bedroom instead of the three and did without the central heating.

‘ 50 years ago my parents bought their first house for under £1000’
Firstly money has changed. £1000 in 1970 would be about £16k today.

Secondly houses were cheap because they weren’t so much in demand. People were living with parents until they married and sometimes beyond. When people start wanting to live alone, housing is more in demand and prices go up.

I used to work with a young lad on a decent wage (c. £50k) who sunk over £1k in rent for a fancy flat (before adding on all the extra costs - council tax, energy, internet, etc), always had the latest phone, had an expensive gym membership (over £100), always ate out for lunch (c. £10/day), ate out/had takeaways/went to the pub regularly and always splashed the cash on his latest girlfriend (would think nothing of a casual £100 gift after only dating for a few months)

It's entirely his fault why he hasn't bought a property yet

He didn't want to live in a house share because they weren't good enough for him, he didn't want to downgrade to a more basic gym, couldn't be bothered making packed lunches and never saved anything. As far as he was concerned, all income was disposable income...

There have always been people who waste money though. In the 1980s my mum was always complaining her brother was always borrowing money from her even though he earned more than her.
But for everyone like this there are probably 10 people who dont eat out every day, have a fancy car, or pay £100/month for a gym.
Reality is property prices have risen far more quickly than wages and that's why so many people are struggling to buy. They're not all "entitled" or no good at budgeting.
And with sacrificing stuff and living more meagerly it's usually for a limited or finite period of time. (Another poster mentioned they saved for 3 years) but today's generation would probably have to live like that for 10 or 20 years to be in the same position.