IF you're saving for a house but you don't live at home, seeing your money drain away on bills can be disheartening.
But it didn't stop first-time buyer Jade Hennessey-Smith from putting almost half of her monthly salary into a savings account to buy her £275,000 first home.
Jade and her husband Samuel, both 28, were paying around £700 in rent for a three-bedroom house in Margate, Kent.
Samuel paid the rent, while Jade managed to put £1,000 from her wage into savings.
She then set aside £800 for household bills, including TV and broadband, gas and electricity, and nursery fees.
Jade even managed to haggle down her Sky TV and broadband package for £84 to £65, to save even more cash.
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But the pair knew they'd need to do even more to keep a tight budget and raise the £5,000 deposit they needed.
Jade used some savvy supermarket tricks, such as making a list and ditching big brands to cut costs and buy her first home.
And with three-year-old daughter Skylar in tow, they knew they would have to be savvy with finding savings.
The couple swapped their weekly shop from Asda to Aldi and managed to save a whopping £200 a month.
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Jade, who works in insurance, also shopped at discount stores Home Bargains and B&M to bag big brands at a knock-down price.
She said this saved her a further £30 a month on essentials like shampoo and washing powder.
At the beginning of their house hunting mission, Jade and fire marshal Sam started seeing adverts for shared ownership – a scheme for first-time buyers which allows you to buy with a lower deposit.
The scheme means that you co-own your home with a housing association – you buy a portion of the property and then pay rent on the part that you don’t own.
You can put down a deposit of just 5% for these properties – so it's helpful for first-time buyers.
Buyers must purchase between 10% and 75% of the property to use the initiative, and they can then “staircase” – buy more shares in instalments – until they own 100% of it.
You can find local shared ownership properties on the Share to Buy website, or contact your local housing association.
One of the issues with shared ownership is that you don’t have as much freedom when it comes to selling your home, compared to if you hadn’t used the scheme.
There are also fewer lenders offering shared ownership mortgages compared with standard ones.
But it can be a good alternative for first-time buyers needing a bit of support to get on the housing ladder.
Jade and Samuel put down a 5% deposit of £5,000 to buy a 40% share in their £275,000 home.
They had an offer accepted on their home in Margate, Kent, in April 2021, and moved in November of the same year.
The Sun picked Jade's brains on how she managed to get on the property ladder for our My First Home series.
Tell me about your house
It's a three-bed detached home in Margate, Kent.
There is one large bathroom upstairs and an ensuite in the master bedroom.
Downstairs, there is an open-plan kitchen and dining room, with patio doors leading to the back garden.
We're lucky enough to have a front garden too and a driveway.
How much did you pay for it?
We used the shared ownership scheme to buy our home.
The house cost £275,000 and we own 40% of it.
We took out a shared ownership mortgage of £102,000 for 35 years with a fixed rate of 3.5% for two years.
Our mortgage payments were roughly £420, but they recently went up to around £530 when our fix ended.
We now have a variable rate mortgage as we are thinking of moving home, and didn't want to commit.
Our rent is around £400 a month too.
Our deposit was 5% at £5,000 – you pay a deposit on the portion of the house that you are buying.
How did you save for it?
In August 2019 we decided that we wanted our own home to raise our daughter Skylar.
We were paying around £700 in rent, which my husband paid.
We wanted to save up the deposit quite quickly, so I decided to look at ways we could save and stay on track.
I would put £1,000 into a savings account and set £800 aside to pay for bills such as nursery fees, gas and electricity, TV and broadband and food shopping.
I managed to reduce the cost of our Sky package by calling up customer services and asking for a better deal when our contract was set to expire.
After telling the operative that we had been loyal customers, and that we would be likely to leave if the bill wasn't reduced, they cut our monthly payments by £19.
Over the five months we were saving, this added £95 to our deposit.
We also saved money by switching our weekly shop from Aldi to Asda.
This is because we weren't getting drawn in to picking big, branded items, just because they were familiar.
By doing this, we managed to save around £200 a month – slashing my bill to £50 a week.
Swapping to Aldi nappies from brands like Pampers, for example, saved me between £3 and £5 each week.
But for some household staples, like washing powder and shampoo, I wanted to stick with brands I knew.
I found the best savings on items like this were to be found in Home Bargains and B&M.
I could save around a fiver each time I shopped, compared to buying the same brands at Asda.
We also started writing lists before we went shopping, to make sure we only got what we needed.
At the beginning of our search, we started seeing adverts for shared ownership.
This meant we could put together a smaller deposit and it gave us a more achievable target.
How did you afford to furnish it?
We were lucky because we already had furniture from our rental home.
It was a three-bedroom property – the same as our current home – so everything fit in really nicely.
Using our previous furniture meant we didn't have to worry about saving any extra cash beyond our deposit.
What’s your advice for other first-time buyers?
Buying a house can seem unattainable, but it definitely is.
Finding the Shared Ownership scheme definitely helped us, so make sure to look at all the options available to you.
Some people are put off the scheme because they see it as too similar to renting, but it's not.
You still own a share of the home and you can gain equity – you aren't just lining a landlord's property.
Here's how one saver put themselves on a takeaway ban and used a money-saving app to buy a £312,000 flat.
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