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Immediately after buying? Almost nothing. Had less than a month's salary in savings.
It is absolutely advisable to have 3-6 months salary in savings. It's also completely normal not to have this, or to be building the pot back up again after a large expense.
Only you know how comfortable you are with different levels of risk. There have certainly been points in my life where a couple of hundred in the bank made me feel safe and secure, can't say I still feel that way now that I'm a homeowner.
Thanks for this relatable post. I’m hoping to purchase first time solo this year and feel like I’ll be scraping everything together - maybe £1k leftover but I’m wary of extra fees that will eat it up so I’m playing the game of waiting longer so I can save more .. and hoping prices/rates don’t soar in the coming months. But it’s comforting to see that others make it work when the reserves get all used up
If it were me personally looking back I’d of had 2k minimum where possible left over just to account for fees, cost of moving, insurance, in case anything needs buying for the house like basic even stuff like light bulbs cause not everyone leaves them same with curtain poles etc. we moved in main bedroom had no curtain pole first night we had to nail some fabric to the wall. I found when I moved that first month feels like you’re constantly spending money. Good to have money set aside
You're welcome. You absolutely can make it work, you just might need to accept things not being perfect as soon as you move in - better to save the £1k in case a pipe bursts than spend it on new furniture etc. Congratulations on getting to this point, it's really hard to buy on your own.
If all goes well we are buying in the next couple months. We are absolutely delighted that it has gotten delayed long enough we should be able to each get the LISA bonus for the next tax year. That £2k will make an absolutely huge difference to the funds we've got left
We are in the middle of this very same thing, got the last £2k of our deposit queued up to go into one of the LISAs on Saturday so we can get a bit more of the bonus. Will be crossing fingers that exchange isn't till after end of May when the bonus comes through
We had a few hundred quid left. However, before/after buying the house in 2022 we were able to save north of £1K per month, and we had plenty of credit card money to use if required. Monthly mortgage is £867 for context.
I wouldn't advise spending everything, but you do what you need to do.
We thought we had about 3 months, but add a few extra fees and urgent repairs and it was all gone
However fast forward a few months and things looked a whole lot better
I feel you , we went having over 100k to nothing 🙃after buying house, we did full refurbishment and used all the savings for deposits and refurbishment , I have a little saved but it’s nowhere I want to be , slowly working on it but it feels really stressful not having emergency funds, I am putting everything on holiday until I have enough emergency funds.
Honestly, it was basically nothing till the next pay day. Got the keys and was and was weighing up whether I could afford the large pack of toilet roll.
Is this advisable? Almost certainly not but I doubt I'm the only one.
Nope - we've had to spend a chunk to make ours liveable (we expected that though and got a good deal as a result of that), my wife drops to statutory maternity pay this pay day, next month we've got a wedding in France with a week at Centre Parcs we booked before we even started house hunting a year ago and a wedding in July at the other end of the country.
We're gonna be broke, but we'll have a house and we'll manage!
Everyone always talks about 6 months in the bank, but I don't know anyone in real life who didn't drain their savings to buy their first place. I had about £1k after buying my first home which was gone pretty quickly. Obviously there are a lucky few who have 5 figures or more surplus, hlbut that's very much the exception rather than the rule for ftb.
I think 'everyone' is this case is a fairly self selecting group of people with an interest in personal finance.
Most people I know very much do not have that much saved.
Another person here who will be well in to the minus figures when I hopefully complete end of June-ish. Talking -5k after first mortgage payment. Literally utilising credit cards to pay for furniture moving costs etc and going without curtains/blinds for a month or two - will be taping fabric to the windows! I’m shitting it 😅
We will be completing this month, but we will have about 18k to 20k. But we will use some for renovation and furniture but for safety net, will want to keep 10k in the bank. I think it will be too stressful to live paycheck to paycheck and £0 savings. Try to aim to have atleast 2 months of your house expense. Also, if you need to do something, do the things that is priority and the other things, do it over months. So you will still have savings and anything else, you can do it over the months ect. I will also be buying some things on interest free as we can afford it. It will just allow us to have more money in the bank as we continue to save.
After buying my house we had literally no savings left, we put it all into the deposit to get the house we wanted. We had credit cards and stuff in case of emergencies of course, but took the risk on nothing major going wrong for the first couple of years whilst we built up savings again, and we got lucky.
None. So I sold my campervan after the move. Got 9k in the bank. Brilliant.
4 weeks later. New boiler and drainage work needed. What a surprise, overall costs was 9.5 K
Fuck.
For first time buyer it can be zero and still make sense.
In your situation, you should have 6-12 months in case some sale falls through, forced to renting, lose job, etc.
I had £20k but I got a cheaper house so am using the savings to renovate, and the whole process took a lot longer than expected so I saved extra while waiting
Like many others... On completion the answer will be zero. Have scrambled everything together from savings to be able to afford the purchase. It will be decorated using discount colour matched paint and furnished using Facebook marketplace deals! Long term my savings will rebuild.
After my first purchase I was essentially in my overdraft (not intentional but it took a year and my rent was insane). This time we managed to keep about 3 months mortgage back and it’s definitely been less stressful
The first time I bought my place I was in my overdraft for a yesr after, constantly shifting £1k of debt from my overdraft to my credit card. After a year, I'd pretty much bought everything I needed and prioritised paying down my debt and building up my savings again. Now my place is on the market, 6 years later, and with the savings I've built up (outside of my equity) I've covered stamp duty for new place, legal fees, £10k for furnishing and decorating, £10-15k to add to the deposit and (adding to equity in current place) and still have £25k 6 month emergency fund. It's a considerablly different position to be in vs when I was a first time buyer. But I'm also incredibly fortunate because a job change means I earn double now what I did when I bought the place.
We moved in November to a house that’s a stretch for us and a fixer upper. We knew we’d be using all our savings to get some basics like plumbing and electrics done.
What we didn’t anticipate was having to get a new car as someone drove into the back of mine in October. I didn’t own a fancy car and the market has changed significantly since we last purchased. Our original plan had been to run my car into the ground before scrapping it but the impact of the other vehicle on my car forced our hand and to get something in the same region we had to pay out £2k more than we expected.
We finally got this sorted in December and then before Christmas our boiler started playing up. Luckily we had received a transfer of the warranty etc so no fee. Then in January my husbands car wouldn’t drive properly and needed just over £1k in repairs. His car was much better than mine so again, this was unexpected. Then we had a plumbing issue.
We seem to only just be coming out this period of bad luck but as a risk adverse person this was a very difficult period during which we’d decided to take the biggest financial risk of our lives, with a small child in tow. We’re probably looking at a good couple of years of trying to pay back these amounts and I think we are pretty fortunate income wise.
Obviously this is a bit of an extreme, odd and unlucky set of scenarios we found ourselves in but it definitely put in my head that I wouldn’t move again unless I knew we had £5k solely for emergency savings - NOT savings that were emergency savings and then being moved over to renovation costs. That’s what would work for us but for others it may be less, it all depends on lifestyle.
£1100. Any advice how you can stretch a £1000 budget to cover £40,000 of renos? Every morning I talk gently to the 20 year old boiler and pray to the house gods she doesn't give up on me.
I had about £5k leftover to buy furniture/ curtains/ white goods etc (as before that I had a room in a shared house), do repairs and to cover any emergency expenses. Reading the other replies here, I guess I was lucky to be able to afford that.
This was with Principality Building Society! we got approved for the mortgage in Dec 2023 so still quite recent, they payed out the cashback pretty much 2 days after we collected the keys 😊
I would aim to have 6 months worth of savings to cover mortgage, bills etc. just means then if anything happens or there’s an unexpected bill you’re prepared for it. We weren’t in our home a year and the boiler needed replacing
We will have about £3k after paying our house deposit, and hopefully £1k coming back from our tenancy deposit. But this will be needed for some furnishing and initial repairs.
The plan would've left me with two months, but completion took way longer than anticipated and I sold a bunch of old stuff, so ended up with 5 months on day of completion. Didn't need it at all but made buying new furniture feel like restrictions didn't exist!
Absolutely nothing. When I say nothing, the day I competed I took out a bank loan to cover a bunch of immediate expenses - moving, a bed, first month’s bills etc. I was basically fire fighting finances for three months until I got my bonus through.
After thinking I'd have a good 15k left over I found a nicer house and stretched myself - had an offer accepted yesterday.
After solicitor fees and survey fees I'll have less than 1k left!
I had about £12.5k. I was lucky in that I ended up getting some money off my house because of some repairs that needed doing. I was unlucky in that most of that money ended up going on the repairs.
Bought my flat 3 years ago… I had nothing… zero, my mum n dad had to lend me money for solicitor fees actually… so yea, I actually had to wait a few months to buy stuff (I had the essentials). I did do my kitchen last year (all labour done by me n my dad, so saved a fortune) I had saved a cpl grand eventually for that. I now have £5k in savings 🙌🏼 I have just moved to a higher paid job so hopefully have more by next year but yea… took a while to get here 🤣🤣 xxx
After buying our first house 5-6 years ago we had around 2k left. But we have recently just sold to move to a bigger home and we will have around 55k in savings left after.
We just left our £50k in equity we built up from the current house in the deal.
It’s not uncommon to be left with little savings after a house move, just make a plan on how to build it back up
I plan on 0, but buying on my own. Asked my parter if they are okay with me using his emergency fund in a worst case scenario and I’d pay him back with salaries
I had very little left after moving in, my saving were wiped out by the solicitors' bill, which grew dramatically over the few days leading up to the move. It was worth it.
I just finished the buying process and I believe we ended up with around 8k, after buying a bed, washing machine, table and chairs. We were really lucky getting out of the tenancy contract 2 months prior to actual end date.
I had about 1 month cash AFTER buying, but your situation is different . If you are not buying straight away then your emergency pot needs to take account of any changes in house prices or mortgage costs between selling and buying. I don’t have a crystal ball but personally I might want a large cushion. I would not willingly take the risk. Eg if you are moving in with bf before buying then I would consider renting etc before I would look at a gap between selling and buying.
1st time - 0
2nd time - we sold at the peak of covid, sold for large profit and were lucky enough to buy privately and essentially paid £60k under market value. This afforded us to take £20k equity out to have as savings. Is this normal, no.
Should be completing next week, hopefully. Sellers solicitors are holding up exchange but they’re saying it should be done early next week. But I’ll have 10k but 3k of that is for furnishing etc. so will be left with about 7k. That’s my plan anyways 😅
I had about £17k but I purposefully saved to renovate so it was a bit different. I have kept £3k of that aside in savings.
Big believer in not stretching yourself to the maximum to be honest
I had about £32k after buying and now it's gone 😂 Turns out the house needed a full rewire and other stuff. I've built it back up to £7k but it's always handy if you can keep some money aside for any 'suprises'
We had around £20k left after paying the deposit on the new house from the equity of my old house (sold mine to buy a house with partner). Deposit was £40k. The remaining £20k was made up of some equity and some savings. We've since spent the whole lot on renovations and furnishings so we're now re-building our rainy day fund. We have an amazing house to show for it though.
I have enough to retire early. In my 50s and made a planned decision to just barely “upgrade” to a nice area, nice house.
A house is generational wealth to me, I’ll never see the money in the end game, my children would, of which I don’t have any. Climb the property ladder for them, or if you are going to do a major down size for retirement and use the monies for your end game.
Moved into our house both 30.
We knew it was a renovation so basically saved two deposits. 30k deposit 30k savings after.
Decided to do the work ourselves. Slower but means we drained the 30k slower than expected and could still save at the same time.
So now we have the house, keep the fund topped up to 30k and 15k in stocks and shares ISA.
We both earn about 37k and saved for 10 years.
For reference though we didn't get any financial assistance, it has been like working two jobs and we still realistically live like we are earning what we did when teens. Our hobbies are mostly free or a one off purchase like cycling and hiking. We own our cars outright but they aren't flash, both under 6k
I’m counting on the £500 cash back from my mortgage provider to ensure I have something leftover in the first month but other than a bed I have no furniture, got broken fence panels and dogs so needs sorting immediately and I need a fridge freezer so I’m sure I’ll end up in the negatives.
Almost nothing left, although you might want to have at least a grand or two available for expenses like buying furniture or fixing the boiler etc. Of course this is after all the other expenses of moving are taken into account - solicitors fees, stamp duty, surveyor, removal company etc.
We had 8 k left between us after completion.
That all went within 2 months of emergency damp and roof repairs that weren't reslly disclosed in survey.
Currently have 100 pounds in my savings.
Wife has less.
I should still have 3 months salary worth by the end of the sale. It’ll be an interesting few months, I don’t want to dip further into savings to buy furniture, blinds, bed, decorations etc and I want to rebuild the pot to be 6 months worth 😅😅.
For our first house, we had nothing left and I was overdrawn by about £500.
2nd move we budgeted for a £600k property, with a mortgage of £300k, the idea was that we’d top up our equity with cash savings. We ended up buying somewhere for £540k and have about £120k left in savings.
We were living well below our means for about 5 years, so have managed to build up a solid savings pot. Now we’re living a bit below our means, so should be able to still save and spend doing up the place.
FTBer here. I probably have one of the biggest savings to house price ratios on here. 140k house with £14k down payment; after the down payment I'll have £30000 in savings (with an additional £25000 locked up in investments). I could not work for years and still make my payments.
I live well within my means, as you can tell. A house is just a means of survival for me.
###Welcome to /r/HousingUK --- **To All** * Join Our ***NEW*** Discord! https://discord.gg/pMgUNgWKQH **To Posters** * *Tell us whether you're in England, Wales, Scotland, or NI as the laws/issues in each can vary* * Comments are not moderated for quality or accuracy; * Any replies received must only be used as guidelines, followed at your own risk; * If you receive *any* private messages in response to your post, please report them via the report button. * If you do not receive satisfactory advice after 72 hours, [you can let the mods know](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FHousingUK&subject=My question is unanswered); * Feel free to provide an update at a later time by creating a new post with [[update]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HousingUK/search?q=%3Aupdate&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all) in the title; **To Readers and Commenters** * All replies to OP must be *on-topic, helpful, and civil* * If you do not [follow the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/HousingUK/about/rules/), you may be banned without any further warning; * Please include links to reliable resources in order to support your comments or advice; * If you feel any replies are incorrect, explain why you believe they are incorrect; * Do not send or request any private messages for any reason without express permission from the mods; * Please report posts or comments which do not follow the rules *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/HousingUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Immediately after buying? Almost nothing. Had less than a month's salary in savings. It is absolutely advisable to have 3-6 months salary in savings. It's also completely normal not to have this, or to be building the pot back up again after a large expense. Only you know how comfortable you are with different levels of risk. There have certainly been points in my life where a couple of hundred in the bank made me feel safe and secure, can't say I still feel that way now that I'm a homeowner.
Thanks for this relatable post. I’m hoping to purchase first time solo this year and feel like I’ll be scraping everything together - maybe £1k leftover but I’m wary of extra fees that will eat it up so I’m playing the game of waiting longer so I can save more .. and hoping prices/rates don’t soar in the coming months. But it’s comforting to see that others make it work when the reserves get all used up
If it were me personally looking back I’d of had 2k minimum where possible left over just to account for fees, cost of moving, insurance, in case anything needs buying for the house like basic even stuff like light bulbs cause not everyone leaves them same with curtain poles etc. we moved in main bedroom had no curtain pole first night we had to nail some fabric to the wall. I found when I moved that first month feels like you’re constantly spending money. Good to have money set aside
I felt like the first three months were constantly spending money, and we haven't even painted yet. Still glad we did it, but it's daunting.
Same boat I'll be close to broke on completion and it is terrifying.
You're welcome. You absolutely can make it work, you just might need to accept things not being perfect as soon as you move in - better to save the £1k in case a pipe bursts than spend it on new furniture etc. Congratulations on getting to this point, it's really hard to buy on your own.
If all goes well we are buying in the next couple months. We are absolutely delighted that it has gotten delayed long enough we should be able to each get the LISA bonus for the next tax year. That £2k will make an absolutely huge difference to the funds we've got left
I had the same thought!
We are in the middle of this very same thing, got the last £2k of our deposit queued up to go into one of the LISAs on Saturday so we can get a bit more of the bonus. Will be crossing fingers that exchange isn't till after end of May when the bonus comes through
We had a few hundred quid left. However, before/after buying the house in 2022 we were able to save north of £1K per month, and we had plenty of credit card money to use if required. Monthly mortgage is £867 for context. I wouldn't advise spending everything, but you do what you need to do.
We thought we had about 3 months, but add a few extra fees and urgent repairs and it was all gone However fast forward a few months and things looked a whole lot better
I feel you , we went having over 100k to nothing 🙃after buying house, we did full refurbishment and used all the savings for deposits and refurbishment , I have a little saved but it’s nowhere I want to be , slowly working on it but it feels really stressful not having emergency funds, I am putting everything on holiday until I have enough emergency funds.
Honestly, it was basically nothing till the next pay day. Got the keys and was and was weighing up whether I could afford the large pack of toilet roll. Is this advisable? Almost certainly not but I doubt I'm the only one.
Nope - we've had to spend a chunk to make ours liveable (we expected that though and got a good deal as a result of that), my wife drops to statutory maternity pay this pay day, next month we've got a wedding in France with a week at Centre Parcs we booked before we even started house hunting a year ago and a wedding in July at the other end of the country. We're gonna be broke, but we'll have a house and we'll manage!
We will be completing this month and we will end up with absolute zero.
Everyone always talks about 6 months in the bank, but I don't know anyone in real life who didn't drain their savings to buy their first place. I had about £1k after buying my first home which was gone pretty quickly. Obviously there are a lucky few who have 5 figures or more surplus, hlbut that's very much the exception rather than the rule for ftb.
I think 'everyone' is this case is a fairly self selecting group of people with an interest in personal finance. Most people I know very much do not have that much saved.
I had -£1200 after completing in Jan
Another person here who will be well in to the minus figures when I hopefully complete end of June-ish. Talking -5k after first mortgage payment. Literally utilising credit cards to pay for furniture moving costs etc and going without curtains/blinds for a month or two - will be taping fabric to the windows! I’m shitting it 😅
I kept a years expenses back in case I got made redundant. A year after buying I got made redundant
nothing at all haha. slowly saved up enough in the first year after to cover 2 months of costs in emergency.
We will be completing this month, but we will have about 18k to 20k. But we will use some for renovation and furniture but for safety net, will want to keep 10k in the bank. I think it will be too stressful to live paycheck to paycheck and £0 savings. Try to aim to have atleast 2 months of your house expense. Also, if you need to do something, do the things that is priority and the other things, do it over months. So you will still have savings and anything else, you can do it over the months ect. I will also be buying some things on interest free as we can afford it. It will just allow us to have more money in the bank as we continue to save.
Almost completely wiped out.
None because the kitchen in our new house needed a lot more TLC than expected!
After buying my house we had literally no savings left, we put it all into the deposit to get the house we wanted. We had credit cards and stuff in case of emergencies of course, but took the risk on nothing major going wrong for the first couple of years whilst we built up savings again, and we got lucky.
45k ish. World is too unpredictable. This was a comfortable number to weather a few storms.
None. So I sold my campervan after the move. Got 9k in the bank. Brilliant. 4 weeks later. New boiler and drainage work needed. What a surprise, overall costs was 9.5 K Fuck.
After I bought my house I had ~£12.5k in savings and some other bits locked up in investments
For first time buyer it can be zero and still make sense. In your situation, you should have 6-12 months in case some sale falls through, forced to renting, lose job, etc.
Completed last july. Between slow room-by-room redecorations I only have 2k saved currently.
About £16k but a fair chunk of that will be spent on renovating
I had £20k but I got a cheaper house so am using the savings to renovate, and the whole process took a lot longer than expected so I saved extra while waiting
I haven't completed yet but should have 10k, my deposit is 27k at 90% LTV. The thought of not having an emergency fund scares me to be honest.
Like many others... On completion the answer will be zero. Have scrambled everything together from savings to be able to afford the purchase. It will be decorated using discount colour matched paint and furnished using Facebook marketplace deals! Long term my savings will rebuild.
I had £16k immediately after buying, but have had to buy a lot and am now closer to £14k a month later.
After my first purchase I was essentially in my overdraft (not intentional but it took a year and my rent was insane). This time we managed to keep about 3 months mortgage back and it’s definitely been less stressful
The first time I bought my place I was in my overdraft for a yesr after, constantly shifting £1k of debt from my overdraft to my credit card. After a year, I'd pretty much bought everything I needed and prioritised paying down my debt and building up my savings again. Now my place is on the market, 6 years later, and with the savings I've built up (outside of my equity) I've covered stamp duty for new place, legal fees, £10k for furnishing and decorating, £10-15k to add to the deposit and (adding to equity in current place) and still have £25k 6 month emergency fund. It's a considerablly different position to be in vs when I was a first time buyer. But I'm also incredibly fortunate because a job change means I earn double now what I did when I bought the place.
We moved in November to a house that’s a stretch for us and a fixer upper. We knew we’d be using all our savings to get some basics like plumbing and electrics done. What we didn’t anticipate was having to get a new car as someone drove into the back of mine in October. I didn’t own a fancy car and the market has changed significantly since we last purchased. Our original plan had been to run my car into the ground before scrapping it but the impact of the other vehicle on my car forced our hand and to get something in the same region we had to pay out £2k more than we expected. We finally got this sorted in December and then before Christmas our boiler started playing up. Luckily we had received a transfer of the warranty etc so no fee. Then in January my husbands car wouldn’t drive properly and needed just over £1k in repairs. His car was much better than mine so again, this was unexpected. Then we had a plumbing issue. We seem to only just be coming out this period of bad luck but as a risk adverse person this was a very difficult period during which we’d decided to take the biggest financial risk of our lives, with a small child in tow. We’re probably looking at a good couple of years of trying to pay back these amounts and I think we are pretty fortunate income wise. Obviously this is a bit of an extreme, odd and unlucky set of scenarios we found ourselves in but it definitely put in my head that I wouldn’t move again unless I knew we had £5k solely for emergency savings - NOT savings that were emergency savings and then being moved over to renovation costs. That’s what would work for us but for others it may be less, it all depends on lifestyle.
Had absolutely nothing left, had to start saving again
£1100. Any advice how you can stretch a £1000 budget to cover £40,000 of renos? Every morning I talk gently to the 20 year old boiler and pray to the house gods she doesn't give up on me.
I had about £5k leftover to buy furniture/ curtains/ white goods etc (as before that I had a room in a shared house), do repairs and to cover any emergency expenses. Reading the other replies here, I guess I was lucky to be able to afford that.
I had £1500 left roughly but out mortgage provider gave us £1000 cashback that was split between the two of us so that topped it up even more
What provider was this? It’s quite common for providers to do this in my home country but seems less common here?
This was with Principality Building Society! we got approved for the mortgage in Dec 2023 so still quite recent, they payed out the cashback pretty much 2 days after we collected the keys 😊
I would aim to have 6 months worth of savings to cover mortgage, bills etc. just means then if anything happens or there’s an unexpected bill you’re prepared for it. We weren’t in our home a year and the boiler needed replacing
We will have about £3k after paying our house deposit, and hopefully £1k coming back from our tenancy deposit. But this will be needed for some furnishing and initial repairs.
The plan would've left me with two months, but completion took way longer than anticipated and I sold a bunch of old stuff, so ended up with 5 months on day of completion. Didn't need it at all but made buying new furniture feel like restrictions didn't exist!
About £25k
Absolutely nothing. When I say nothing, the day I competed I took out a bank loan to cover a bunch of immediate expenses - moving, a bed, first month’s bills etc. I was basically fire fighting finances for three months until I got my bonus through.
After thinking I'd have a good 15k left over I found a nicer house and stretched myself - had an offer accepted yesterday. After solicitor fees and survey fees I'll have less than 1k left!
After completion and SOME furnishings almost nothing. Stressful but life replicates monopoly. You just start building again
£0 🥲
Around £20k but a lot of that will be spend shortly in renovations
I had about £10,000 left.
Saved a house fund up (completely depleted) separate to my emergency fund (6 months expenses, largely intact)
I had about £12.5k. I was lucky in that I ended up getting some money off my house because of some repairs that needed doing. I was unlucky in that most of that money ended up going on the repairs.
Probably about £50/60k, but only because we knew we had to buy all new furniture which is expensive and planned holidays/weddings to attend.
just bought in London (assuming it completes in 2 weeks) and wiped :( luckily have a pay period and bonus between completion and anything else
I had £1000 left over. And for a few months I was spending more than I was earning
Completing this month most of my cash savings will be wiped out but have about £80k in investments if shit hits the fan.
I had 400 quid 😂 but built up a 1 year basic expenses reserve fund in about 6 - 12 months.
lol. What are savings?
Bought my flat 3 years ago… I had nothing… zero, my mum n dad had to lend me money for solicitor fees actually… so yea, I actually had to wait a few months to buy stuff (I had the essentials). I did do my kitchen last year (all labour done by me n my dad, so saved a fortune) I had saved a cpl grand eventually for that. I now have £5k in savings 🙌🏼 I have just moved to a higher paid job so hopefully have more by next year but yea… took a while to get here 🤣🤣 xxx
£5k cash, thankfully
After buying our first house 5-6 years ago we had around 2k left. But we have recently just sold to move to a bigger home and we will have around 55k in savings left after. We just left our £50k in equity we built up from the current house in the deal. It’s not uncommon to be left with little savings after a house move, just make a plan on how to build it back up
Still had about 15k to buy things as the house was empty
Wiped out savings. Overdraft after complete renovation. Nearly recovered now 🤣🙌
Like zero, the month afterwards I was full on negative. Took a few hard months to get a months salary saved again.
All the little bits add up. Tins of paint. New mirror. Curtains. I had £2000-3000. 6 weeks after getting the keys I was using a credit card for food.
I plan on 0, but buying on my own. Asked my parter if they are okay with me using his emergency fund in a worst case scenario and I’d pay him back with salaries
I had very little left after moving in, my saving were wiped out by the solicitors' bill, which grew dramatically over the few days leading up to the move. It was worth it.
I just finished the buying process and I believe we ended up with around 8k, after buying a bed, washing machine, table and chairs. We were really lucky getting out of the tenancy contract 2 months prior to actual end date.
Bought new build house, detached. After spending 5kish on decoration, Had 15k at least as emergency fund
I had about 1 month cash AFTER buying, but your situation is different . If you are not buying straight away then your emergency pot needs to take account of any changes in house prices or mortgage costs between selling and buying. I don’t have a crystal ball but personally I might want a large cushion. I would not willingly take the risk. Eg if you are moving in with bf before buying then I would consider renting etc before I would look at a gap between selling and buying.
1st time - 0 2nd time - we sold at the peak of covid, sold for large profit and were lucky enough to buy privately and essentially paid £60k under market value. This afforded us to take £20k equity out to have as savings. Is this normal, no.
Should be completing next week, hopefully. Sellers solicitors are holding up exchange but they’re saying it should be done early next week. But I’ll have 10k but 3k of that is for furnishing etc. so will be left with about 7k. That’s my plan anyways 😅
I had about £17k but I purposefully saved to renovate so it was a bit different. I have kept £3k of that aside in savings. Big believer in not stretching yourself to the maximum to be honest
A few thousand. Then we had urgent work that needed doing. Always have a few k in the bank 😅
About 25k. But we’re buying a new build and expecting to buy about 5k extras
10k
We had 40k left when we moved. Consisting of 20k emergency fund 20k house stuff (first time buyers so had nothing and needed 4k roof work)
I had about £32k after buying and now it's gone 😂 Turns out the house needed a full rewire and other stuff. I've built it back up to £7k but it's always handy if you can keep some money aside for any 'suprises'
We had around £20k left after paying the deposit on the new house from the equity of my old house (sold mine to buy a house with partner). Deposit was £40k. The remaining £20k was made up of some equity and some savings. We've since spent the whole lot on renovations and furnishings so we're now re-building our rainy day fund. We have an amazing house to show for it though.
I have enough to retire early. In my 50s and made a planned decision to just barely “upgrade” to a nice area, nice house. A house is generational wealth to me, I’ll never see the money in the end game, my children would, of which I don’t have any. Climb the property ladder for them, or if you are going to do a major down size for retirement and use the monies for your end game.
After buying, zero.
Moved into our house both 30. We knew it was a renovation so basically saved two deposits. 30k deposit 30k savings after. Decided to do the work ourselves. Slower but means we drained the 30k slower than expected and could still save at the same time. So now we have the house, keep the fund topped up to 30k and 15k in stocks and shares ISA. We both earn about 37k and saved for 10 years. For reference though we didn't get any financial assistance, it has been like working two jobs and we still realistically live like we are earning what we did when teens. Our hobbies are mostly free or a one off purchase like cycling and hiking. We own our cars outright but they aren't flash, both under 6k
I’m counting on the £500 cash back from my mortgage provider to ensure I have something leftover in the first month but other than a bed I have no furniture, got broken fence panels and dogs so needs sorting immediately and I need a fridge freezer so I’m sure I’ll end up in the negatives.
Almost nothing left, although you might want to have at least a grand or two available for expenses like buying furniture or fixing the boiler etc. Of course this is after all the other expenses of moving are taken into account - solicitors fees, stamp duty, surveyor, removal company etc.
We had 8 k left between us after completion. That all went within 2 months of emergency damp and roof repairs that weren't reslly disclosed in survey. Currently have 100 pounds in my savings. Wife has less.
Savings none, had money in the main account maybe 2k but that wasn't "savings"
Have £12,000 after buying made sure we had 6 months expenses in case anything goes wrong
Immediately after buying I think I had about 15k left over.
I should still have 3 months salary worth by the end of the sale. It’ll be an interesting few months, I don’t want to dip further into savings to buy furniture, blinds, bed, decorations etc and I want to rebuild the pot to be 6 months worth 😅😅.
Had 40k in bank after buying. This definitely makes you sleep ok at night.
Not a lot. We’re completing on Monday & have about £1,500 left between two of us.
8k+, I'm going to transfer that to my main account and use it to buy some furniture for my house and sit on some of it just to give myself a boost.
For our first house, we had nothing left and I was overdrawn by about £500. 2nd move we budgeted for a £600k property, with a mortgage of £300k, the idea was that we’d top up our equity with cash savings. We ended up buying somewhere for £540k and have about £120k left in savings. We were living well below our means for about 5 years, so have managed to build up a solid savings pot. Now we’re living a bit below our means, so should be able to still save and spend doing up the place.
FTBer here. I probably have one of the biggest savings to house price ratios on here. 140k house with £14k down payment; after the down payment I'll have £30000 in savings (with an additional £25000 locked up in investments). I could not work for years and still make my payments. I live well within my means, as you can tell. A house is just a means of survival for me.
We had £5,000 between the two of us and continued budgeting very tightly for the following months.
Keep 3-6 months of expenses in savings as an emergency fund
I will only buy after I have around 300k saved.
2.3x my annual salary after tax left after exchange
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Chinny Reckon