Long-time renter and sick of it - but what do we do?

tripled

There seem to be some one bed flats around the 700 mark in Brighton. On your salaries you should have no problem chucking £400 per month in a help to buy isa and having a good bit spare. Do you have a budget for your expenses?

ruggedtoast

You might work in Brighton but you certainly don't have to live there. You could live out in Hastings and in one direction or off Bognor Regis way and be be able to commute to Brighton quite easily.

It might not be the lifestyle that you want but it would allow you to save.

jennifernil

What are you willing to do for a better life?

Have you considered what you may think of as a radical move .....to the north of England,or even Scotland? Life is good up here, and much less expensive.

My OH is/was a civil engineer, we have had a good life in Scotland on just one income. We are retired now on a very good pension. We have a house we designed/built ourselves worth some £500k.

Our 2 children are now well set up here, both went to independant schools, not that expensive up here.

DS is 46, in IT, and earns approaching £100k, his wife is a teacher working part time on £20k.

DD is in her early 30s, also in IT and earns £37k while her husband is a teacher on a similar salary.

They both have had their own homes since leaving Uni, in fact both in their second/third properties. DS in an old farmhouse south of Glasgow worth some £750k, DD in Glasgow in a 4 bed townhouse worth £300k. She also still has her first flat in the west end of Glasgow that she now rents out, as does her husband.

Glasgow is a great place to live, plenty of jobs for professionals, good choice of housing, and lovely countryside right on your doorstep.

moneysolvesnothing

You could try looking at buying in Littlehampton - not the best area, but cheaper property and easy to commute by car, train or bus to Brighton in 40mins. Or Eastbourne in the other direction, again cheaper property to buy. Both are cheaper to rent than Bton also and the cost of commuting with rent is still likely to be better.

We are in the process of buying at the moment in Sussex and it's been a long slog tbh. We had a help to buy isa each and so have got a £1000 bonus towards our deposit, we rented somewhere not as nice and the size of a shoebox to save money and I have been doing additional shifts as and when I can. It's been tough and it's taken us a few years to get to be in the position we are in now.

I feel your pain! Good luck with it all :-)

cadon

£7k in savings for two graduates of my generation is very very low.

Appreciate you've been through redundancy and that would have put a strain on your finances for a short period of time, but I suspect your starting point is you're spending too much. It should be cheaper pooling living costs with another person, but your savings don't reflect this.

I would suggest heading over to the DFW board, posting an SOA and asking the kind people over there to tell you where you're overspending. You may not be in debt (other than your student loans), but your first point to getting out of renting is cutting your costs and saving more, and those are the people to tell you how. You'd be surprised at the ways they can find to save you money each month!

sofarbehind

I feel your pain and frustration. You're not alone in this. I'm in a very similar situation - the same age, in the SE and in a niche career but single.
I re-trained a few years ago and over the last three years that has started to really pay off financially and I've been able to save properly. I have no car, visit family for holidays and live in a grotty shared house. I'm to embarrassed to invite anyone over and it has really got me down at times but it's getting me where I need to be.

I think as you've found the savings will start to rapidly rise now you are earning more and when your partner qualifies. If you can tolerate it rent a room together and really focus on saving for a year. (I have a savings wall chart next to my bed that reminds me why I'm here.)

I'm at the point now where I could buy a flat here but I've finally found a job in the North West and I'm going to move because in the long term I think I will have a better quality of life. Starting again away from friends and family is hard but I'm going to do it. I would keep looking for jobs in places like Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds while you save. One will come up eventually and if it does you can think about relocation.

Good luck. Have you joined the save 12k in 2016 challenge? It has helped me keep my focus and I can't recommend it enough. You will get there eventually.

ruggedtoast

moneysolvesnothing wrote: »

You could try looking at buying in Littlehampton - not the best area, but cheaper property and easy to commute by car, train or bus to Brighton in 40mins. Or Eastbourne in the other direction, again cheaper property to buy. Both are cheaper to rent than Bton also and the cost of commuting with rent is still likely to be better.

We are in the process of buying at the moment in Sussex and it's been a long slog tbh. We had a help to buy isa each and so have got a £1000 bonus towards our deposit, we rented somewhere not as nice and the size of a shoebox to save money and I have been doing additional shifts as and when I can. It's been tough and it's taken us a few years to get to be in the position we are in now.

I feel your pain! Good luck with it all :-)

Nowhere in Sussex is especially cheap, even "LA" any more. Practically all of it is cheaper than Brighton though. I would love to live in Brighton. I am aware that it will never happen.

jennifernil

I would agree with cadon, our DD left Uni in 2007, after 4 years, with no debt but rather £15k in savings from her part time/vacation job.

We have helped by passing on old cars or furniture, but otherwise the children have worked and saved hard and not expected to have everything we have without working and saving for it.

All the youngsters these days have their i pads and/or i phones, we have neither though we can afford them as we do not feel they are necessary for us. We do have phones and laptops.

I think it is just a generational difference, but if you want these things, you should not complain too much when you cannot then afford other things your parents had.

Person_one

Your situation sucks because you are in the South East. If this is where your families and friends and roots are then you shouldn't have to move away in order to be able to own a modest home on one decent and one lower income.

In reality though, you could buy somewhere nice in Greater Manchester easily on your wages alone and there are plenty of design jobs up here.

I'd be asking yourselves how important it is to you that you stay in the SE. If its crucial, then you'll have to start making the kind of crazy sacrifices others have listed in this thread, and living like students in house shares for a bit. If you think you could be happy somewhere else, start looking for work in cheaper cities.

rtho782

Me and my fiancee live in Suffolk, I work in IT and I earn 27.5k, plus about 9k self employed, I only have GSCEs. She is a newly qualified Nurse, graduated last year, she earns 33k in the private (non-NHS) sector.

We pay £825 in rent, we've lived here a year since she qualified.

In that time we've paid off all her student debt except her SLC student loan, and saved a house deposit with no help from parents. We're about to buy our first house, 4 bed for £230k, completing next week.

We were saving £2,500 a month. We run 2 cars and a motorbike, we have 5 pets (4 cats, 1 rabbit). We don't have Sky, her mobile is £10 a month (GiffGaff), mine is paid by work. We don't go out much or spend much on anything, house deposit is our entire focus.

If you really push yourself, you should be able to save more.

You don't need to live in either Brighton or London, I'm sorry but designers are needed in more places than those two alone.

Yes, our generation has been and continues to be screwed by the baby boomers. Yes, we will be paying £1500 a month in mortgage for the first 2 years to try to pay down the capital so that we can afford to ever have children. But it's pointless whining about it, you need to do what is necessary for you and your partner to achieve your goals.