In partnership with The Nottingham Building Society
I can hardly believe that we are approaching our third year as homeowners. I couldn't even imagine past the first month, but here we are! That's three challenging but extremely rewarding years of memories pumped right into our 3-bed semi-detached house in a small working-class town in Lancashire. I realised that I haven't actually shared loads about "where we're at", the classic life updates have been few and far between - that's been an organic reaction to how we create and consume content on social media platforms. Instagam is indeed that, instant content - so while I may be concentrating my day-to-day more on IG it's still mega rewarding to bash out a few hundred words every now and again on my blog.
So much has changed in our house in (nearly) three years. There's a heck of a lot to be proud of; we redecorated our lounge, bedroom and downstairs bathroom, converted the wrecked garage into a functioning utility and the biggest achievement of all, we totally transformed our overgrown, tired back garden into a space that we are unbelievably happy with. Still a work-in-progress though.
Next on our list is to renovate our open-plan living room / kitchen / dining room area - but that all comes with time. We're just planning and saving for the right moment.
How we Afforded our First House
I'd like to start this piece by explaining our circumstances. We decided to buy a house in a small town instead of moving to one of
the bigger cities in the UK. This enabled us to afford the type of property we
just wouldn't have been able to afford otherwise. Hollie works full time as a university lecturer, and I work full time as a freelancer creative in the fashion and lifestyle industry.
There's somewhat murky grounds with how much (and generally just "how") freelancers in the creative industry earn, and how they afford to live their lifestyle. It's not a subject widely discussed. If we skip back to the time me + Hollie were applying for our mortgage, it quickly became clear just how unknown my job role was to people outside of the same industry. The conversations we had with our mortgage broker + several banks would make for interesting listening...but we did get accepted! A somewhat milestone achievement at the time, for what is now commonly known as "an influencer".
We put a good sized deposit down on our first house (around 15%), one that I'd had in a savings account - similar to The Nottingham's 18-39 Lifetime ISA - since I was 18-years-old at art collage, then moved in shortly after. We had very little furniture and appliances, but we made it work. Being scrupulous with money is a quality that has been past down to me from my grandad, who was my main father figure when growing up. I didn't realise it at the time, but a lot of his mannerisms and personality traits rubbed off on me, and as boring as it sounds I now consider my attentiveness with saving and budgeting to be one of my strong points.
