Just out of interest, how old are you and how's your pension plans working out for you?
He isn't wrong though. My parents got a house far sooner than I did. It cost something like £6,000. But we were hard up and struggling to get by. But we had a roof over our heads. But they had been saving for years while they were courting to get a 25% deposit. They went without. No holidays, no social life, no spending other than on absolute essentials.
My house cost over 20 times that much, am I bitter?
Of course not because I accept that all the time I spent at home earning a nice little wage I should have been saving for a deposit. But I didn't. I squandered it all on gadgets and toys, and holidays and a social life - just like most of the young people of my generation who struggle to buy a home, and like the current generation who do the same and are now struggling to get on the property ladder. I couldn't see past the immediate, the here and now and I paid for it big time in the long run.
I suspect many of those folk who say they cant afford a deposit still go on holiday for 2 weeks a year, are still down the pub on the weekends and drive a nice financed car etc etc.
It is about priorities, and unfortunately many people want their cake and eat it.
I am nearly 34 and bought the house when I was 30, and I do not have a pension - but I still live in a detached house on a nice estate and we bought our house without hand outs and very late in life compared to my parents - starting from scratch. We made sacrifices and lived a simple life for a while. I was on 26k and my now wife was on 10k, so not big money.
Why didn't we buy sooner? Because we had both wasted money in our youth instead of thinking of our future. So it can be done, but you have to go without while you save.
Out of the people in this thread, how many can honestly say they are making real financial sacrifices? No holidays, no social life, no Sky TV, no takeaways, buying own brand stuff on the shopping because it is cheaper, wearing jumpers instead of using the heating because it saves money and so on and so forth.
If you want a bigger house you save and go without for longer. If the bigger house stretches your budget, then you go without once you have bought it like we did. We have been abroad only once since we bought the house and that was for our honeymoon and only possible due to generous cash donations from family and friends for our wedding. We hadnt originally planned a honeymoon because we couldn't afford it. Our holidays have been sharing a holiday let with my brother and his family and my best friend and his. One in Devon and one in Wales. Thats it.
How many holidays have the rest of the posters been on, and where to?
But compared to the life my parents had after they bought a house, even when we were making cut backs we were still positively well off!
