RAISING your kids alone is tough enough as it is – but it’s even harder if you’re saving up to buy a house too.
Single dad-of-one Gregory Tymaow found ways of slashing the cost of childcare for his three-year-old son, Lucius, to help him raise enough cash to buy his £257,000 first home.
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Gas engineer Gregory, 34, switched gyms to take advantage of the childcare benefits on offer – halving the amount he was spending on kids’ activities per month.
Lucius’s grandparents are also able to help look after him – which meant Gregory could work overtime on Saturdays, bagging him £100 extra a month to put towards the £9,000 deposit needed for his flat.
Doing free activities with Lucius like camping in grandma’s garden, and swapping the cinema for fun nature walks helped save even more.
But saving as a single parent is often much more difficult than saving as part of a couple.
Not only are you relying on one salary to save for a deposit, but those buying a home on their own can’t borrow as much for a mortgage.
It will take the average single first time buyer a decade to save up for a 15% deposit, according to Which?.
Gregory had to spend more than half his wage on his £1,050 a month rent bill, meaning he had little care to spare.
That’s one of the reasons why he used the Shared Ownership scheme to make it affordable to get a home of his own.
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The Shared Ownership scheme lets buyers purchase a portion of the equity in a property if they can’t afford to take out a mortgage for the total value of the home.
You then pay rent on the remaining portion of the house that is owned by the housing association who runs the scheme.
Gregory didn’t get any financial help for the deposit from friends or family, and moved into his house in February after years of saving.
The Sun picked his brains on how he saved for a home for him and his little boy for our My First Home series.
What is your home like?
It’s a two bed flat in a four-storey development – I’m on the first floor.
There’s a open plan living room, kitchen and dining room.
I have one bathroom, and a lovely Juliette balcony – I open up the big doors to cool the living room down.
I found my house through Rightmove.
How did you decide on the location?
I needed to stay in Stevenage to be close to both of Lucius’s grandmas, who live 10 minutes away.
They help with childcare as I’m bringing up Lucius by myself.
I also needed to be close to the A1 and M1 for work – I’m a self-employed gas engineer and travel all over Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire.
How much did you pay for it?
The house was £257,000, and I used the Shared Ownership scheme to buy 35% of it at £90,000.
You only have to put down a deposit – a minimum of 5% – on the portion of the house you are looking to buy.
I decided to put down a 10% deposit of £9,000 which means my mortgage repayments smaller.
My mortgage is £81,000 at a fixed interest rate of 4% for five years.
Each month I pay £313 in mortgage repayments and £364 in rent to my housing association, Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing Association.
At first, I was reluctant to buy a property using the Shared Ownership scheme.
I heard that it’s harder to sell when you want to move on, because you have to find a buyer who is eligible for the scheme.
I also wanted to own all of my home.
But speaking to friends who had bought their home five years ago through the scheme changed my mind.
I’m hoping to staircase (which is where you buy more equity in the property) eventually and buy all of the house.
How did you save for it?
Putting money aside was tricky, as I was renting while I was saving.
Each month I would pay £1,050 in rent, which meant I only had a little money spare after paying for all the bills and food.
My earnings worked out at around £1,500 to £1,900 a month.
I made myself a rule to put aside something into my savings account each week – even if it was just a tenner – to get into the habit of saving.
As a self-employed worker, I don’t have a set wage – which made making a firm savings budget harder.
One of the main ways I saved money was by cutting childcare costs.
Lucius’ grandparents look after him a couple of days a week, which really helps me out while I’m working.
It meant I could pick up some extra work on Saturday, and I was making £100 a month extra from this.
I also quit my gym and joined another one which had lots of kids’ activities.
So instead of paying £120 a month on days out with Lucius like trampolining, I would take him to the activities at the local gym.
At £53 a month, my new gym membership actually cost more than my old one, which was £30, but it actually halved my spending because I got so much value from the extra activities on offer.
It offered free kids’ classes like Lego building and swimming lessons. There was a creche there too, which really helped me with childcare.
Swapping expensive activities for free ones helped me save.
And luckily, Lucius would always choose going to Grandma’s house and playing with bugs in the garden over going to the cinema.
We even camped out in her garden – he talked about it for months.
Planning meals before I went shopping helped me cut the cost of going to the supermarket.
I was spending more than I needed to because I wasn’t sticking to a list before – so I saved £40 in total per week, slashing my bill from £100 to £60.
Were there any complications buying the house?
I’m self-employed, which made it harder to get a mortgage.
I struggled getting a deal with a high street lender and ended up taking a loan out with a specialist mortgage provider.
I have to pay a higher interest rate than many other borrowers might be able to get.
The process was incredibly frustrating – especially as there was a problem with my paperwork which delayed me from exchanging for a couple of months.
My mortgage lender put down the wrong address on my forms and it meant I had to live with my mum in her spare bedroom because I’d already handed in my notice at the flat I was renting.
Advice for other first time buyers?
It takes a long time to save if you are a single parent.
But even if you put a little aside each week or month, it all helps.
My biggest motivation was having something to leave behind to my little boy.
Make sure you have your own goal in mind to keep you going.
Here’s how one first time buyer used a simple savings challenge to help her save for her £270,000 home.
Another buyer worked a second job at McDonald’s to help pay for her £252,000 first home.
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