CALLIE Martin turned her passion for painting into a lucrative side-hustle, raising an extra £2,000 to put towards a deposit on her first home.
The 23-year-old sustainability advisor took commissions for pet portraits during lockdown to boost her savings.
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The keen artist was able to pocket between £60 and £160 per portrait, taking on around one a week over two years.
This helped her to earn an extra £2,000 in total and get her and her partner Cameron, 25, on to the property ladder quicker.
They got the keys to their £165,000 two-bedroom flat in Newcastle in December 2022.
Setting themselves a goal to buy their first home as soon as possible, the pair set strict limits on their spending at the end of 2021.
Cameron, an electrical engineer, worked overtime while Callie saved half of her wages by not buying clothes and cutting back on nights out.
Between them, they managed to tuck away around £2,000 every month to build up the sum needed to get their own digs.
They soon had built up the £16,500 they needed to put down a deposit.
We sat down with Callie to discuss how she became a homeowner for The Sun’s My First Home series.
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Tell me about your home
It’s a two-bedroom ground-floor flat in Heaton, Newcastle.
One is a double bedroom and the other we use as an office space and spare bedroom.
There is a little yard area at the back of the house and we have a parking space at the front.
We also have a separate kitchen, living room and bathroom.
How did you decide on the location?
I went to University in Newcastle so I knew the area pretty well already.
Heaton is quite an up-and-coming area, with lots of cafes, bars and restaurants.
It’s a really nice, vibrant place to live with good access to the centre of town.
I used to live in Northumberland and you have to travel quite far to get to a town centre, so I like living in the centre of things.
How much was it?
Our flat was £165,000 and we put down a 10% deposit of £16,500.
We took out a mortgage of £148,000 for 30 years with a five-year fixed rate of 3.87%.
Going for a longer mortgage meant we could make our repayments a bit more manageable.
Our repayments are around £600 a month.
How did you save for it?
We first started saving with the goal of buying a house in late 2021.
Cameron and I already had a nest egg of around £10,000 each.
We had always been quite good at saving but we then set strict limits on our spending.
I had a part-time job while at University – one in retail and another working at a tourist attraction – earning between £400 and £500 a month.
All of my wages from these jobs would go straight into my savings account.
Cameron didn’t go to University so had a stable, full-time job for longer so he was able to save from around the age of 18.
Living with our parents meant we didn’t have much to pay for much while living at home, so we could save more of our wages.
I was paying around £300 a month and Cameron was paying around £150.
During lockdown in 2020, I then started painting and getting commissions to do pet portraits.
Over the couple of years I was doing it, I earned between £1,500 and £2,000 – all of which went into savings, giving me a total pot of £12,000.
All of this meant that by the time I got a full-time job in 2021 , I was already in quite a good position with my savings.
We started house hunting at the start of 2022 but nothing really came of it until we found the property we are in now in June.
We fell in love with it, but at this point I had spent £8,000 of my savings on a car. This left me with around £4,000.
I knew I needed to double my savings to afford my half of the deposit.
I did this by putting £1,000 – around half of my wages – into my savings account as soon as I was paid.
We cut back pretty much everything and were only really paying for essentials.
We weren’t getting any other help with our deposit so needed to put away as much away as possible.
I stopped buying luxuries like clothes or electronics and if I was going on a night out, I would set a budget rather than just tapping my card.
Cameron took on some overtime and managed to save just over £1,000 a month too.
By the time we came to exchange six months later in December, we had managed to save an extra £4,000 together, giving us enough for our £16,500 deposit.
How did you afford to furnish it?
We saved a little more than I needed to for a deposit to account for buying furniture for my apartment.
I have been buying everything in stages, and I still have some stuff to get as I only recently moved in.
Facebook Marketplace was really useful for finding some good quality, second-hand furniture.
For example, we found a big, wooden dining table on the marketplace for £60.
It was in good condition and would have definitely cost a few hundred pounds brand new.
The previous owners also left a lot of their white goods and furniture behind, which were still in good working order and less than 18 months old.
This meant we managed to get a washing machine, dryer, fridge-freezer, sofa-bed, wardrobe and bed – saving us around £1,000.
We were also really lucky that friends and family helped us with decorating, so we didn’t need to pay for professionals.
This undoubtedly also saved us a few hundred pounds.
What advice would you give to other first-time buyers?
Be patient because it is a really long process, so remember to pace yourself.
Take breaks away from it and don’t let it become too overwhelming – you still need to live your life at the same time.
I found joining Facebook groups for first-time buyers really helpful too.
You can talk to people who have been through the process, or are going through it too, and ask for their advice.
Meanwhile, one first-time buyer beat holiday home buyers to secure her dream place – here’s how she did it.
Plus, another savvy saver explains how he managed to get £2,000 FREE to put towards his £183,000 first-home.
Do you have a money problem that needs sorting? Get in touch by emailing [email protected]
