How long did it take you to save/ how did you do it? - from starter to next home

[mrsmusic]

We have only been in our first bought home for 2.5 years and aren't looking to move just yet. It's in a lovely area that we love but is a tiny 2-bed (worth about £123k); we would like to start ttc in the next 12 months and, planning ahead I know (!) would move into a 3-bed property in the same area (around 150k mark) when baby would be around a year (ie. still in a cot!).

I earn 40k a year (still paying off student loan - is it just me paying it off still aged 30?) and my OH is self employed; we are saving but as we only put down a 10% deposit on where we are, it just seems impossible - once you factor in the added costs of moving, I reckon we'd have to have at least 25k in the bank to do it.

So I suppose I'm just being nosy and asking how long did it take anyone to move up a step like this in terms of their home.

TIA x

I should have added 'ideally' at the end of the first paragraph.

About 5 years and yes we saved £30k or so, to cover stamp duty, fees etc.

I had a save-as-you-earn share scheme at work and shoved the proceeds into an ISA regularly.

I could only move from a flat to a house by moving to a cheaper area. The 3 bedroom house I bought cost less than my flat. I couldn't have bought a house otherwise.

We saved and cut our outgoings to the bone. Financially the best thing we've ever done - can't believe how much we used to spend on nothing.

We are in a first flat hoping to move to a 2/3 bed house in 2 or so years. We have £20k equity because it is the South east, but we are saving like mad because unless we want to buy a dive, there's a 70k jump between a flat and a house

We've had to move to a cheaper area to go from a flat to a house that just about meets our needs space wise. The plan is to come back this way when our space needs decrease again (my eldest is almost 18) but not sure if I'm kidding myself about that (or perhaps I should be thinking it will take much longer than I imagine and should be phrasing it 'when we retire...')

We were lucky - because our flat was in a prime area in London it increased in value a lot in the 5 years we had owned it so we had enough equity for a good deposit to buy our new house.

However we did move out of London to a cheaper area to be able to afford to go from shoe-box sized flat to 3 bed house