Don’t get me wrong, I know that the above title isn’t completely true. I know saving for a house is not completely pointless. But lately, we’ve just been feeling, well, a bit…stuck.
I’m going to be completely transparent right now. The visa process completely wiped out the little savings that I had in America. I basically had to start from scratch when I moved here last year, living off of the money I was making while working remotely for my old employer in America (which was not much). Steve had some savings, but was in between jobs last year, so my income was the only income we had. Which meant no savings. Steve started working for a new school in September, so we’ve only really started trying to build things back up then.
We don’t shamelessly spend a huge amount of money. We don’t go out THAT often, and when we do, we are a bit conscious of what we spend. And we have put money away everything month. We’ve managed to save a few grand on top of the savings that Steve already had. But still…it’s nowhere near enough.
As every other married couple does, we talk about our finances. A lot. Mainly because we really want our own place. We’re constantly looking at what’s for sale around us, and daydreaming about what our place would be like. (Okay, the daydreaming is mostly on my part, but in my defense I have a whole Pinterest board of ideas just waiting to be implemented).
So, despite our current financial situation, you’d think that we would be somewhat optimistic about chances of buying a house in the somewhat near future, right? Well, we are sometimes. Until we remember, once again, that will live in the Southeast just a stone’s throw away from London.
To put things into perspective, the average house price in our area for a semi-attached house is about £600,000; for a flat it’s about £300,000 (but let’s be honest – who wants to BUY a flat?). To be able to afford one of these properties, you would need a pretty sizeable down-payment. Which, on our current wages is near impossible at the moment.
It’s no secret that the Southeast is expensive. We completely get that. But sometimes when we sit down and talk about it (which is, like, all the time), we sometimes wonder why we’re even bothering right now. Should we just just ditch the idea of owning our own home for now, and focus on other things? Should we just rent and use what disposable income we have after bills to do things like travel, go out more, etc.?
Well, no, we shouldn’t – at least not exactly. We don’t want to rent, because then we REALLY won’t be able to save properly. We want a house, with a yard, with room to grow in a nice area to start a family – not a two bed flat (which seems to be EVERY flat that is listed for sale – seriously, what couple with multiple kids will jump at that?). And we’re not the type of people to just put something as important as this aside until sometime unbeknownst to us in the future. So we’re stuck a bit between a rock and a hard place.
So for now, though it may seem like we have no clue if what we’re doing right now is going to help us in anyway, we’ll just keep on doing what we’re doing. Because it’s still better than doing nothing, right?
xx Lauren
I live in the SE too and it’s craxy how expensive houses are! I wouldn’t want to buy a flat either xx
Right?! I feel like it’s so hard to get on the property ladder here!