A reader writes:
I started saving for a house the year my daughter started nursery. She is in secondary school now. That is how long it took.
I am writing because when I was in the middle of it I used to read stories about people who bought their first home and they always seemed to have a husband, or a parent with money, or some lucky break I did not have. I wanted to read about somebody who just did it slowly, with one wage and a child and a lot of tiredness. So this is me.
When my daughter’s father left, we were in a one-bedroom flat above a takeaway. The smell of chips came up through the floorboards every night. I was working in a care home, doing extra shifts whenever they would give them to me. One night I sat at the little table with a biro and worked out what it would take to get a deposit together, and I nearly laughed. It looked like a number for somebody else’s life.
My grandmother used to keep money in brown envelopes with names written on the front: rent, light, church, school shoes. I copied her. Every payday I cashed a little and put it in envelopes, and whatever I was trying to save went straight into a separate savings account the same day, before I could see it. At the start it was so small it was almost embarrassing. Some months it was nothing at all. The year the boiler went and my daughter needed glasses, I actually took money back out, and I cried in the car park at work because it felt like going backwards up a hill.
I will not pretend I was always cheerful or holy about it. I got bitter at times. I got tired of saying no to school trips and birthday parties, and I was jealous of friends who went on holiday. There was a season, maybe year four, when I stopped going to church for a while because I was working Sundays and, if I am honest, because I was angry with God. It felt like I was doing everything right and nothing was moving.
What brought me back was not a sermon. It was a sister from church, Mrs Clarke, who noticed I had disappeared and started dropping round on Saturday with a dish of rice and peas, and sitting with my daughter so I could sleep after a night shift. She never once asked me about my savings. She just made the load lighter. I have thought since that God does not always answer by dropping money in your lap. Sometimes He sends a woman with a foil dish.
Around year six I did something I should have done at the start. I made an appointment with a mortgage adviser, fully expecting to be laughed out of the room. Instead she went through everything with me and told me what lenders would look at. It turned out my credit file had an old catalogue debt on it that I had forgotten about, and a phone contract from the flat that was showing as missed. Sorting those out took months, but it meant that when I did apply, I was not starting with problems I did not know about. I tell everybody now: go and talk to somebody properly early, even if you think you are years away.
I also had to change what I was looking for. In my head I wanted a three-bedroom house with a garden and a driveway. What I could actually afford was a small two-bedroom terrace on a street I had never paid any attention to, with a kitchen the size of a wardrobe. The first time I viewed it I was disappointed. The second time I saw my daughter standing in the back bedroom looking out the window and she said, “Is this one mine?” and that was the end of that.
There were more setbacks at the end. The first sale fell through when the seller changed her mind. The survey on the second one showed damp and I had to walk away, which broke my heart after coming so far. The third one, the house we are in now, went through slowly and with more phone calls to the solicitor than I can count. I kept a notebook of every call because I was so frightened of missing something.
On the day I got the keys I did not have a party. I went in by myself first, before I fetched my daughter from school, and I sat on the floor of the empty front room and just listened. No chips smell. No music from downstairs. Just a fridge I did not own yet humming in the kitchen because the seller left it. I said thank you out loud. I did not have much more than that to say.
We have been here two years now. The kitchen is still tiny. The mortgage is a serious amount every month and I still do the envelopes because I know how quickly things go wrong. But my daughter has a door she can close, and there is a little patch of garden where we grow tomatoes that the slugs mostly eat.
If you are on year two or year five of saving and it feels like the number never moves, I am not going to tell you it will definitely happen, because I do not know your situation. But I will tell you that small amounts do add up, that asking for proper advice early saves heartache, and that you are allowed to be tired and angry and still keep going. Let people help you. I nearly didn’t.
— Paulette, Birmingham
Editor’s note
Paulette’s story is a good corrective to the idea that blessing always arrives quickly or loudly. Her home came through years of small, faithful choices and through a church sister who gave what she had: time, food and a listening ear. Jesus spoke of a generous measure “pressed down, shaken together and running over” (Luke 6:38), and it is worth noticing that in Paulette’s story the generosity flowed both ways. Two practical lessons stand out: check your credit file and speak to a qualified adviser long before you think you are ready, and be willing to let the dream house become the house you can actually sustain.
Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.
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.
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