A reader writes:
I came to England from Westmoreland when I was nineteen. I had one suitcase and an address for a cousin in Luton. I have been driving buses for most of the years since.
For thirty-nine years I rented. First a room in my cousin’s house, then rooms in other people’s houses, then a flat with my wife when we married, then a bedsit when we divorced. I counted once. I have had eleven different addresses in this country and not one of them was mine.
I am not going to pretend it was all bad luck. Some of it was me. When I was young I sent almost everything home. My mother needed it and I was proud to send it, but I never kept anything back for myself. In my thirties I liked a nice car more than I should have. When the marriage ended, at forty-seven, I lost the flat and most of what we had, and I was angry for a long time. I owed money on two cards and a catalogue. I used to say, “People like me don’t buy houses.” I said it so often I believed it.
What changed was not dramatic. A deacon at my church, a quiet man who used to work in accounts, started a little money class on Tuesday nights. I went because my sister made me. The first night he asked us to write down everything we spent for one month. I thought it was foolishness. When I did it, I found I was spending on takeaways and lottery tickets nearly what I was paying off the cards each month. I felt ashamed, but I also felt something else. I felt like somebody had finally given me the rules.
It took me four years to clear the debts. I stopped the lottery. I cooked on Sunday for the week. I took extra shifts. Then I started saving, and that was harder in a way, because there was nothing to push against, just a number going up slowly while I got older.
At fifty-five I went to see a mortgage adviser. I nearly didn’t go in. I stood outside the office for about ten minutes. She was younger than my daughter, and very straight with me. She explained that at my age the term would be shorter, so the payments would be higher, and that I needed to think carefully about how long I could keep working and what my pension would be. She didn’t tell me no. She told me what it would take. I went away and saved for three more years.
In the end I bought a one-bedroom flat on the ground floor of a small block, ten minutes from the depot and fifteen from church. It is not big. The kitchen is so small I can reach the kettle and the cooker without moving my feet. There is a little patch of garden at the back where I have put a scotch bonnet plant and a chair.
The first night, I did not sleep. I kept getting up and touching the walls. I know that sounds foolish. I said the Lord’s Prayer standing in the middle of the empty front room with the box of my things by the door, and I cried, which I had not done since my mother’s funeral.
I want to be honest about the mixed feelings too. I am sixty-one now and I will be paying the mortgage into my late sixties. Some days I feel foolish that it took me so long. When I see young men at church spending the way I used to, I want to shake them. And I carry some sadness that my daughter grew up visiting me in bedsits. She came for dinner the first Sunday I had the flat, and she walked around it twice and then said, “Daddy, it’s lovely,” and I could see she meant it. That helped.
The deacon told us once that the rules in the Bible are not there to beat us but to love us, that when we keep God’s word, His love is made complete in us (1 John 2:5). I used to think rules and love were opposites. With the money, they were not. The rules were how I finally took care of myself, and of the people who depend on me.
If you are fifty and renting and you think it is too late, I am not going to tell you it is easy. I am going to tell you to write down what you spend for one month, and go and see someone who can tell you the truth. Then decide.
— Errol, Luton
Editor’s note
Errol’s story is not a promise that everyone can buy at fifty-eight. For many people, especially on low incomes, renting well and securely may be the wiser path. What stands out is how he got to a clear decision: tracking his spending honestly, dealing with debt first, and sitting with an adviser who explained what a later-life mortgage would really involve. Just as striking is the shift in how he saw God’s instructions, not as a burden but as care. Whatever your age, that kind of honest look at your finances is never wasted.
This article is general information only and is not financial, legal, tax or other professional advice. Please speak to a qualified professional about your own circumstances.
Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.
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