Saving for our 1st house - help appreciated :)

jacklin11

HisDoris wrote: »

Hi all!

Hope you have all had a lovely weekend!

I spent my Saturday in London with my friend for her birthday and managed to keep my spending down to £35 and still had an amazing day! I will definately be going back there as soon as I have my target in savings!

Me and OH got our photos done last night and we're paying £50 for them to be put onto a DVD - we'll then try and find the cheapest way to get them processed - originally we wanted them on canvas but after realising how much that costs we have thought more about just buying some nice frames unless something comes up on groupon or living social soon!

I put some things on ebay last night and have some more things that i'm going to put on tonight - i'm trying to put everything on that I dont need in order to raise as much as I can in savings - i'm aiming for about £80 in ebay sales by the end of this month so need to get digging and get as much on as possible!

Thanks for the advice on the savings front Kidmugsy! I'll definately look into that as that is great rates!

I will keep posting progress on here for anyone that is interested and so that I have something to look back on when i'm struggling hopefully to see how far i'm come with the svaings! :-)

Great, London is nice place to stay.

HisDoris

Blackdog wrote: »

Come on Doris give us an update on the giving up smoking front!

Sorry Blackdog - I was on yesterday and thought I had posted! I must have written it out and not clicked 'post' Doh!

The no smoking is going OK so far - I tried the electronic cigarettes that I bought and they taste like battery acid in my mouth so I'm on the cold turkey atm! The OH is back this weekend and I havent told him yet that I've stopped so i'm going to wait and see if he realises! lol.

£200 went into savings yesterday! Seem's we're getting there fast but I think thats only because of the £1000 starting point we had originally so i'm sure it'll seem slower from now on! Still on track for the first target though And i'm away with the TA on the 24th of June for 2 days so I will get an extra £70-£80 for that so that'll be going straight into the savings pot too :T

HisDoris

ermine wrote: »

Dunno how much your deposit was but it sounds like a fair old hit on new furniture. Freecycle can be your friend, go secondhand, I was 28 before i bought my first piece of new furniture, for IKEA as it happens. Never bought new in rented accommodation. You're young and in love, you don't need new furniture a this stage of life

We've got all our furniture now Ermine We wanted new as we had the money to do it and hopefully the furniture will follow us around when we move - we got most of ours from Ikea so that £3k stretched pretty far and that included our TV too!

serious_saver

We have almost the exact same joint income as you and are saving just a bit more (no debts to pay off).

I noticed on your original post you mention that you buy breakfast and lunch at work. Where does this fit into you budget? Does it come out of 'your money'. It's useful to account for this as it one of the things that people spend a lot of money on without realising. Check out the MSE Demotivator tool to see just how much it is costing you.

We've been actively saving for a few years (myself more than OH) and we now have approx £35,000 available to us for a deposit plus some more for fees/renovation cost etc. I don't think your target is that unrealistic provided you can stick to your budgets.

Some people have mentioned that you should chuck all of your savings onto the debts to pay them off. do this for high interest debts but I wouldn't necessarily do this with your 0% straight away. I'm a big believer in having a contingency fund to hand in case your circumstances change. If one of you lost your job and you had no savings you may end up unable to pay rent / bills without taking out further debt. If you're unemployed you may not get the same good interest rate. Instead work on over paying your debt on a month by month basis so it's gone sooner.

My main savings tip is to keep your current account nice and low. Every month after pay day I split my money up into our various savings accounts and leave the 'my money' in my current account. If I know the money isn't there I simply don't spend it as I've removed the temptation to get an extra tenner out of the cash machine or buy that nice new top on my debit card.

HisDoris

serious_saver wrote: »

We have almost the exact same joint income as you and are saving just a bit more (no debts to pay off).

I noticed on your original post you mention that you buy breakfast and lunch at work. Where does this fit into you budget? Does it come out of 'your money'. It's useful to account for this as it one of the things that people spend a lot of money on without realising. Check out the MSE Demotivator tool to see just how much it is costing you.

My breaskfast and lunch is provided by work - free of charge So i'm lucky with that!

We've been actively saving for a few years (myself more than OH) and we now have approx £35,000 available to us for a deposit plus some more for fees/renovation cost etc. I don't think your target is that unrealistic provided you can stick to your budgets.

Thats great! Well done to you both! I would actually like to have a higher amount available before we go to buy somehwere so we're talking about maybe waiting until the end of 2013 so that we can try and get about £20k in savings - hopefully we can be patient enough because I think it would defintely pay off in the long term!

Some people have mentioned that you should chuck all of your savings onto the debts to pay them off. do this for high interest debts but I wouldn't necessarily do this with your 0% straight away. I'm a big believer in having a contingency fund to hand in case your circumstances change. If one of you lost your job and you had no savings you may end up unable to pay rent / bills without taking out further debt. If you're unemployed you may not get the same good interest rate. Instead work on over paying your debt on a month by month basis so it's gone sooner.

The debt with interest on it finishes in August so there is only 2 more payments left so we'll just leave that one to run its course - we may then think about putting an extra £100 a month into the 0% interest loan - just so that we can get it paid off a little bit quicker - just so that we don't feel like we're constantly living off OH's grandparents. I also like to have some money in savings for the exact reasons you've said - after all - you never know what's round the corner!

My main savings tip is to keep your current account nice and low. Every month after pay day I split my money up into our various savings accounts and leave the 'my money' in my current account. If I know the money isn't there I simply don't spend it as I've removed the temptation to get an extra tenner out of the cash machine or buy that nice new top on my debit card.

I'm quite good with the savings (or atleast I think so! lol) - I'm more bothered about my savings account looking good rather than having money left to spend! lol. Thanks for your advice, its much appreciated .

ermine

We wanted new as we had the money to do it

Not wishing to rain on your parade but the money you had to do it came out of the pot that also held the money that is going towards your house deposit. So buying the furniture new set your house purchase plans back somewhat.

That's great as long as you thought about it first and came to the conclusion that having new as opposed to old furniture gives you more enhancement of quality of life than buying your house earlier in life.

My parents started their married life in rented accommodation with upturned orange-boxes for tables. They had each other I started (single at the time) life in rented accommodation with secondhand furniture, and a secondhand TV too. That gave me more money to allocate to different things.

In your original post you asked:

Do you have any tips that you think may help us save some more?

reducing outgoings (buying secondhand, or living without) is one of the most sure-fire ways of helping yourselves save some more. Compared with increasing income, it is a lot easier.

We are aiming to have £15k in savings by December 2012. Do you think this is realistic?

I'm not sure spending £3k on new furniture was an illustrious start, but there's still time to make it up. Saving £600 a month will get you to £15k in a shade under two years (June 2013). So I would say you're probably unrealistic for that exact target date, but not a million miles off if you can rein in spending. Good luck with the project!

HisDoris

ermine wrote: »

Not wishing to rain on your parade but the money you had to do it came out of the pot that also held the money that is going towards your house deposit. So buying the furniture new set your house purchase plans back somewhat.

That's great as long as you thought about it first and came to the conclusion that having new as opposed to old furniture gives you more enhancement of quality of life than buying your house earlier in life.

My parents started their married life in rented accommodation with upturned orange-boxes for tables. They had each other I started (single at the time) life in rented accommodation with secondhand furniture, and a secondhand TV too. That gave me more money to allocate to different things.

In your original post you asked:

reducing outgoings (buying secondhand, or living without) is one of the most sure-fire ways of helping yourselves save some more. Compared with increasing income, it is a lot easier.

I'm not sure spending £3k on new furniture was an illustrious start, but there's still time to make it up. Saving £600 a month will get you to £15k in a shade under two years (June 2013). So I would say you're probably unrealistic for that exact target date, but not a million miles off if you can rein in spending. Good luck with the project!

We bought the furniture and things before really thinking about how quickly we wanted to save. The things we bought should last a long time - the money was spent on things we felt we needed to buy to live a comfortable life. I wouldn't say £3k is alot of money on furnishing a flat properly.

I am happy for your advice and you're right I DID ask for ways to help us save money - I asked for this advice AFTER we had bought our furniture so there's no point in thinking about that now really as it's done. Yes, I probably would have thought about spending less had I of thought about it properly but I didn't so theres nothing I can do about it now.

The £15k looks unrealistic in the terms of seeing what we are saving per month at the moment I know but in August (Dependant on what we decide to do with other loan) the saving will go up by £100 a month, then in April the saving will go up by another £200 a month. I get an xmas bonus from work of about £700 which will go straight into savings. I'm part of the TA which I will hopefully be getting about £100 a month from in the next 4/5 months. My OH also gets a small payrise every year so hopefully our savings will go up again in April. We pay everything over 10months so we will have 2 months in the year where we can save a little more. All of these things put together make me think that £15k is not so unrealisitc.

I don't mean to sound nasty and I really do appreciate your advice but I do thin i'm being sensible with the situation.

serious_saver

One more thing. Get you OH to check his tax code. At £24,000 he should be taking home around £1550 not £1350 (depending on pensions/salary sacrifice etc). If he's on basic rate he may be due a rebate which could be a nice little boost to your savings.

It may not be the case but it doesn't hurt to check.

HisDoris

serious_saver wrote: »

One more thing. Get you OH to check his tax code. At £24,000 he should be taking home around £1550 not £1350 (depending on pensions/salary sacrifice etc). If he's on basic rate he may be due a rebate which could be a nice little boost to your savings.

It may not be the case but it doesn't hurt to check.

He's in the Army so he pays out a pension and for lodgings and food too thats why it seems lower than it should be - wouldn't mind a nice tax rebate but I check all the time to make sure we're not owed anything and never are unfortuantely lol. Thanks though!

HisDoris

Another pay day :j Another £70 into the pot! :j That now brings me to over 30% of the way to the first target! And over 10% of the way to the final target! :j

OH is home this weekend - should get back around 10.30pm. We're having a quiet weekend and staying in for the best part of it - so that we dont spend anything and dont feel inclined to spend anything either! We have lots of alcohol in the fridge so i'm sure a few drinks in the house will keep us happy :beer:. If the weather is as nice as it has been (which I doubt!) then we might go to a park for a walk around - we'll leave our card's at home though so they can't be touched.

Hope everyone has a great weekend! See you all with an update next week

Thanks for all your help as always! :T