The 'We're saving for a deposit' thread

mouche

Am a bit miffed though trying not to get too angryuntil I know the whole story.

In April this year, friends of OH came to him and told him they had to pay some urgent bills and that they weren't being able to get a bank loan. They asked him to take a £5000 loan in his name and lend them the money. They would pay it back with interest. I didn't like the sound of it at all but OH wanted to do something to help them. So we told them we couldn't get a bank loan either and offered them a £1000 interest free loan from our own savings. These friends had taken care of OH when he was ill (before we were married) so we felt morally obliged to help in some way. They said they would pay it back in December. Both are employed at reasonably good jobs.

Two days ago they asked if we could meet today (we've recently moved to the opposite end of London so don't haven't seen each other since August). We agreed assuming they wanted to exchange Xmas gifts & return the money. 10 minutes ago OH received a text from them saying "I'm very sorry, I know I was supposed to return your money in December. I'll tell you what happened when we meet". Which, I'm guessing means we're not getting that money today anyway.

It just makes me so mad. If it had been me, I would have returned the money BEFORE December and certainly by the 1st.

At least this ought to convince OH not to lend £1000 to his brother (he's been asking for it and is even less likely to return it than his friends). I don't mean to be a Scrooge but we worked hard to save this money. OH works min 80 hours a week, I work full time and bargain hunt, quidco and AQA like mad. Why should other people take advantage of that? It's not as if they are unemployed or unable to work. They just choose to spend their money while we choose to save ours. And then when emergencies come up, they have no "choice" but to borrow from us. Well, they do have a choice and so do we!!! I'm not lending to them anymore and I don't care what OH says.

Ok, I feel better now. Sorry for venting here but I had to.

jamtart6

mouche - that is really bad, i feel so sorry for you. I wouldnt lend any money to friends as in other peoples experience it just turns out badly


Hi guys! just thought id give a bit of an update! We now have the keys to our house and in true MSE style bought a bathroom in the B+Q half price sale (plus an extra 15% off sale prices!) so we got the whole bathroom and fittings for less money than we would have paid for the bath alone today! Very happy bunny!!! It is really exciting and I am SO glad I saved up!! Thanks to this thread and just wanted to encourage you all to save save save !!:D

alexsean

Hi board

Were just beginning our long task of saving for a deposit. Hopefully we should reach our target at the end of 2009. We can save about £1000 a month if were good.
Hopefully we'll catch the market at the bottom of its decline and snap up a place we can call home. None of this "oh my property has tripled in price", we just want somewhere to settle down and start a family, etc.
Should be fun anyway!

mouche

jamtart6 wrote: »

mouche - that is really bad, i feel so sorry for you. I wouldnt lend any money to friends as in other peoples experience it just turns out badly


Hi guys! just thought id give a bit of an update! We now have the keys to our house and in true MSE style bought a bathroom in the B+Q half price sale (plus an extra 15% off sale prices!) so we got the whole bathroom and fittings for less money than we would have paid for the bath alone today! Very happy bunny!!! It is really exciting and I am SO glad I saved up!! Thanks to this thread and just wanted to encourage you all to save save save !!:D

Congratulations!!! That's fantastic and good on you for getting such a good deal on the bathroom.

In case you're interested, the 'friends' didn't say a word about returning the money when we met and we were too embarrassed to ask. They have recently bought a car though. :mad:

Mr_Matey

Hi all,
I'm looking to buy my first home with my OH, most likely in Australia, in 2-5 years for around £240k at current exchange rates. Hopefully then Aus will have its long overdue property crash.
I'm about to turn 30 :eek: and have been working full time for 6 years. My OH is 24 and we are debt free.

Currently we have around £90k saved and my parents will chip in about £20k.

We're aiming to put away £30k p.a. for the next 2 years which should give us a total of £170k + investment income. A weaker AUD would help and a strong GBP would mean cheaper holidays.

So the aim is to save £60k in 2 years and have a £170k deposit.

sarah_elton

OK, so I'm now saving up at about the monthly rate my flat is falling in value. As a result, I'm not actually getting nearer the negative equity I need to save, bah.

We want to move to a new town at the end of 2009, and rent there the first six months of 2010 to make sure we like it there, during which time we'll look for something to buy (so buying again early to mid 2010).

New plan is to get my flat on the market ASAP (having new carpet fitted on Friday which is badly needed in the lounge due to tea and Guiness stains lol, then agents round next weekend).

So, I'm currently about £5-6k behind on the negative equity, which is mounting up at approx £1k a month and I can only save £900-1200. It's going on the market sooner rather than later. If it sells quickly (first half 2009) we'll do a six month rental in our current town to take us through to year end. In that six months the flat would fall another £6k, while renting would cost us about £1000 more than owning, so we're up by £5k. OH is happy to lend me the £5-6k neg equity shortfall and I can repay him while we're renting quite comfortably. I feel quite lousy about not saving up and getting us out of this all by myself. But with the forecasted house price falls, I'll stay £5-6k behind what I need throughout 2009 and couldn't put it on the market till mid 2010 probably. This £5-6k would come out of his deposit money and be paid back before we buy which is something.

I feel like a fraud being on this thread now, as effectively I'm taking on debt rather than saving like I said I would. But whatever way I look at it it makes sense financially to offload a depreciating asset ASAP. What we'll lose is the interest on the portion of OH's savings that he lends me but that's so much less than the loss in the value of the flat. Still, can't help feeling a bit poo.

I'm really hoping we can shift it in the first half of 2009, and therefore do a six month rental in old town and a six month rental in new town. This would enable me to both repay OH and have some cash saved up ready for when we buy. The deposit will still be all him which is bad enough but at least then we can split fees, any new furniture required, etc. If it takes all year to sell my place then we'll just have the one rental and all I'll be able to do is repay him.

Having said that, we're not going to go silly when we buy - to the max of what they'd lend us or anything. We're both in well paid jobs right now but with this economy and the possibility of going down to one salary in the future (if one of us stays home when we have kids), we'll be buying something where the bills are affordable on one wage only.

Oh well, once I'm on the market I'll have to graduate to one of the 'trying to sell in this market' threads.

EDIT: oooh but I did forget the one piece of good news. Got a letter from HSBC on Christmas Eve. My three year fixed rate ends on Jan 23rd. My repayments were £616 at a fixed rate of 4.99%. Their SVR is now down to 3 or 3.25% (forget which) and my new repayments will be £497. That's £120 a month extra for my savings. That was a lovely early Christmas present.

kunekune

I posted on this thread a long time ago, but fell off the wagon a little.

OH and myself are in our late 40s and have primary-school aged children. We had houses in New Zealand before coming back here 2 1/2 years ago. For various reasons (including a previous house price crash there and also sheer stupidity on our part) we didn't have a lot of capital. We decided to wait out the 'correction' in rented accommodation and save, which we are still doing. Some months go better than others - the autumn wasn't good, since we have three birthdays and christmas in december. But we need to get serious again, without getting silly, as we'll probably start looking in the spring and I am going to visit the bank about an agreement in principle sooner, in case a bargain appears. We have a 15% deposit at the moment, and can probably get it to 20% by late spring. The only fly in the ointment is that DH has had to cut his hours for medical reasons, so we have a drop in income - it's not a problem for mortgage purposes because we were only ever going to use my income for that, but it makes saving a little harder and it doesn't come with any childcare cost savings. On the other hand, we need to demonstrate (to ourselves if no-one else) that we could afford the mortgage we want on my income alone (DH may also be made redundant). So it's mince and vegetarian meals, rather than some of the more exotic things I usually produce, and I was sensible with the sales (two items for daughter, for next summer!). We will go on holiday, though - that doesn't come out of regular salary, I earn another £3000 or so through contract work, and even at 40% tax that should provide a couple of weeks somewhere.

January goals:

1) If we only had my income plus CB and DLA, we wouldn't be paying childcare either and OH would have carers allowance for our son, so our monthly income would be £3200. The planned mortgage would be about £1000. We want to live on £2200 this month excluding childcare and my tax bill (small because most of my extras were in the current tax year).
2) That means we should be able to save £2000 plus money I get for contract work (though mostly I'm being paid in books this time) but I'm setting it lower because it's a new goal.
3) To get there, the first thing we need to do is cut groceries (yes, I use OS) to £450 and also cut the booze bill (I won't publish details of this in a public forum!!!!!)

jamtart6

mouche wrote: »

Congratulations!!! That's fantastic and good on you for getting such a good deal on the bathroom.

In case you're interested, the 'friends' didn't say a word about returning the money when we met and we were too embarrassed to ask. They have recently bought a car though. :mad:

that is terrible, I dont know how they can be so cheeky! I would ring them or write a letter asking for the cash back. If they are cheeky enough to TELL you about the car then I'd feel totally within my right to ask for the money back. If you lose the friendship then they werent real friends in the first place and its there fault that it happened because you should not treat friends in that way.

silverchair

mouche, thats really horrible, especially as you have probably chosen to go without (not have dinners out/ holidays) so that you can save money instead. I really hope you get the money back. I suppose it could have been 5,000 pounds & that would have been an extremely expensive lesson learned.

BTW what is AQA?

Anyway I'd like to join the saving for a deposit thread. OH & myself have 12,000 so far in an ISA ( was in ICESAVE so thought we had lost it).
Hopefully we can save about 100 a month. But I'll do the proper calculations later.

Good luck everyone!

mouche

silverchair wrote: »

BTW what is AQA?

Welcome silverchair. I'm so glad you got your iceSave money back. I had some money in Kauphthing when it went under. I've withdrawn everything from my savings account but have left the fixed deposit with ING (they bought kauphthing). It matures in early Jan and ING is a big bank so I took the risk of leaving it there for the interest. Fingers crossed!

AQA is Any Question Answered, a text message question answering service. People text in any question they like and a team of freelance researchers answer them. Lots of people on these forums work for them because you work from home and as much or as little as you like. It won't make you a millionaire but it's handy pocket money for me and I know some people make a living at it.

This is their website: http://www.issuebits.com/index.htm

No UK vacancies currently though.