newbie needing advice on renting/saving for a mortgage

rachel._3-2

Hi, I was just wondering if anyone could possibly offer me their opinions or pearls of wisdom.

I’m 24 and my boyfriend is 27, we are both mature graduates (just finished uni) and back living at his parents house who live in a popular area Surrey. I’ve just got a job earning 20k per year and my boyfriend is still looking. We have no savings what so ever but from now on we will be saving as much as we can.

My boyfriends parents are amazing people but I am finding it very difficult to be living back with them and in all honesty it’s really getting me down and if I hadn’t gotten my job so soon after finishing uni I don’t know how I’d be coping now. I desperately, desperately want to get our own place but my boyfriend isn’t so enthusiastic on renting (which I can understand) so much as he said it’s throwing money away but he understands we need to move out for our own sanity (well mainly mine).

Assuming my boyfriends starting wage is similar to mine we’d have a salary of around £35k – £40k before tax and if we rented a studio or 1 bed house in the area it’d cost around £650 - £800 for just rent alone so probably around 25% of our earnings if not more.

Just wondering if anyone who has been renting and saving could offer any advice, insight opinions or reassurance that renting and saving money can be done? Hindsight is a horrible thing and I never feel like I’m doing the right thing in life, I feel like we’ll be saving for years and years for a decent deposit when in the back of my mind I’ll be beating myself up about not staying at my boyfriends parents for another 3 years where we could have saved an extra 10k+ per year.

Obviously I’m not expecting to move out to rent right this second as my boyfriend needs to get a job first, but by just planning things mentally it at least offers me some weird sense of hope!

Sorry for rambling on, any replies are very much appreciated.

clairey179

You need to save as much as you can: as your staying with a set of parents at the moment, all that many that you' be paying in rent could be going in a piggy bank - £800 is quite a lot! I'd guess you're making some sort of financial contribution?
So your monthly sums might look a bit like:
rent - £800
council tax - £100
gas/electric - £70
TV licence - £12
Insurances - £10
cars - ????

So you're looking at over £1000 a month just to have somewhere to stay etc....
Although it's really difficult, if you're really serious about saving, you really would be better off financially to stay where you are, as you seem to live in an expensive part of the world! Where I am you can rent an ok 1 bed flat for £350! Can you live in a cheaper area? Otherwise I think you'll struggle to save much at all.
sorry that's probably not what you want to hear, but hope it helps