Scared - will I ever afford my own home?

Curious_Moose

Dreaming wrote: »

All the same, I'm definately putting some aside, aiming for a couple of thousand each year as I do live quite frugally compared to a lot of students...

Students should not be saving money You should be out spending it and enjoying yourself while you are young, free and not yet decrepit.

Once you have paid your basic overheads, the rest should be spent on beer, going out, loose women, poker and none illegal substances such as low grade beaver tranquillizers.

Feanor

I am going to go against the grain here and sympathise with the OP. When i was a student (left uni a yr ago), all of my housemates used to think about property. Especially when there were 5 of us all paying £250 a month to someone else, it really made us think we could have had the mortgage ourselves and easily paid it!

We are in the process of buying a flat now, but it is something i was very aware of when i was at uni. For me..i feel like everyone i knew was always saying 'oh its a shame you have to waste all that money on rent whilst your studying' etc..

No one has really ever told me that renting is ok, its always been dead money etc etc..

Anyway i think if its something you want to aspire to then dont let all this you should be out enjoying yourself business get you down. Yes, uni is for enjoyment..but i also think its good to plan for your future. So so so many of my student friend bitterly regret all the unnecessary debt they got themselves into with credit cards/loans etc now they are trying to get a mortgage after uni. So i think if you can line yourself up to be in the best possible situation for when you leave uni, you'll be fine. i think buying with your brother could be worth looking into, so maybe a visit with him to a fee free whole of market broker would be worth a go, you'll be able to see al your options and how much you can borrow etc and then you will have a much clearer understanding of if its possible or not.

Oh i do have to say though, maybe i am wrong as i dont know too much about accountants, but 26k starting salary for a graduate even in London is pretty high, so dont have too high expectations. I started on 16.5k and my Oh started on 17k, and we both had 1st class hons degrees. It does go up fairly quickly though.

Good luck in whatever you decide anyway!

phlash

Feanor wrote: »

Oh i do have to say though, maybe i am wrong as i dont know too much about accountants, but 26k starting salary for a graduate even in London is pretty high, so dont have too high expectations. I started on 16.5k and my Oh started on 17k, and we both had 1st class hons degrees. It does go up fairly quickly though.

Good luck in whatever you decide anyway!

Yes you can expect that starting salary in London with one of the Big Four. (PWC, Deloitte, Ernst and Young, KPMG) The starting salaries amongst these firms are up 7.1% for 2007 summer starters. See....

http://www.personneltoday.com/Articles/2007/01/15/38845/graduate-recruitment-opportunities-set-to-increase-this.html

(Graduate Accountant)

Ps. I'm in a similar position, but I wouldn't worry, as Mervyn king the Head of the Bank of England has subtly warned, "House prices and Income always come back into alignment". So the 204% average growth in house prices and the 92% average growth in earnings over the past 10 years will have to correct somehow.... the long armed law of economic cycles will prevail.

Pps Warren Buffet: 'When the majority of people say something is a good investment, your probably too late, it isn't anymore.'

advent1122

Havent you heard - House prices are due to *crash/boom.


*delete as applicable (or which newspaper headline you read)

Last month in the Daily Express on the Thursday the Headline was
"PROPERTY PRICES IN 60% LEAP - BRITAIN’S property boom is seemingly unstoppable."
3 days later the headline was
"UK FACES £459BN HOUSING CRASH".

I think I will stick to reading the Sun about Jordans tits.

Kez100

Do bear this in mind - When you graduate you'll, no doubt, want to qualify with one of the main institutes. That will add another three years to your training time and your fully qualified income won't start with immediate effect. You need to stay mobile so you can take the best training offer you can. You don't want to have to take whatever is local. Moving house costs a lot.

Generali

Do you learn about compound interest as an accountancy undergrad? If not get a maths student to explain it. Then work out what happens when wages rise at 5% pa and house prices at 10% over say 5, 10, 20 and 50 years. Then you'll be able to see why the current situation is unsustainable.

If you want to get rich, or at least very well off, get yourself a 2:1 or a 1st then get a job with the big 4 or one of the big City banks. Have a look on the Robert Walters salary survey, page 21 for example.

Those wages don't include perks/pension (add 15% say) and bonus (add a lot - 20-150% depending on what you do, more potentially if you're a profit centre).

devils_advocate

Don't worry.

if you qualify as an accountant, you will understand about money and finance. Then you will realise that "renting is dead money" is a far bigger lie than "of course I'll still love you in the morning" and "I'm from compliance, I'm here to help you".

How many of Britain's top companies actually own their head offices? I'd reckon less than 1%, and that's probably due to a historical accident. It can't be because they can't afford their mortgage payments or that they've failed their credit checks!

Guy_Montag

devils_advocate wrote: »

Don't worry.

if you qualify as an accountant, you will understand about money and finance. Then you will realise that "renting is dead money" is a far bigger lie than "of course I'll still love you in the morning" and "I'm from compliance, I'm here to help you".

How many of Britain's top companies actually own their head offices? I'd reckon less than 1%, and that's probably due to a historical accident. It can't be because they can't afford their mortgage payments or that they've failed their credit checks!

In fact a few major companies have recently sold their HQs, HSBC & Swiss Re spring to mind - do you think they view renting as dead money?

Melissa177

Dreaming wrote: »

Ah, thanks for your comments everyone. It seems to be propaganda indeed. Rest assured I am enjoying life and for a student, live quite well. But if when I graduate I get a salary of 26 (I think thats a good starting wage for a graduate in london) and the average house prices have gone up to 300 I'll need a mortgage of 12 times my income.

I'm a York grad like you, and I think you're over-reacting massively.

1. FTBs do not buy houses in London for 300K.

2. It's a great idea to put money away. York isn't cheap, but it's a lot less expensive than other Uni towns, and putting money away is a good idea. 500 pounds a term is 50 pounds a week - I just about managed this in my first year, but 70 pounds a week is probably more realistic. Especially if you do Ziggys on a Wednesday night and drink those horrible VK Ice things they used to do for a pound

3. It's a pain to live with parents during term time, but can't you stay in York over the summer and get a job locally? I don't know what year you're in, but you certainly won't qualify for Uni accommodation all three/four years that you are at Uni. I paid about 200 pounds a month rent in 2002-3 when I lived off campus. I think it's quite a bit more now mind.



Typical York student, always panicking over something

What are you studying by the way?

Melissa177

Just to add to that: unless you're looking at inv. banking, 26K is a pretty high starting salary for London. Grads are ten a penny, and there is a lot of competition.

That said, the firm I work for (Procter & Gamble) has a graduate starting salary of 27K, rising to 29.5K after six months. BUT, we get 12,000 applicants for 80 places a year :eek: