Looking to save deposit for house

To be honest I think unless you make a lot of changes to the above figures in particular it's going to take you a long time to save 22k(5% of 450k). None of the above are essential and you could easily be putting away €1,220 a month if you just changed your lifestyle for a while. It's not going to be forever. It's just a case of deciding what's most important. Best of luck with it.
 
I can see some savings from my morning coffee habit, but very little of the rest I think can be trimmed.

Dry Cleaning, essential. I work in a formal environment and am required to wear trousers and a jacket occasionally.
Clothes, this isn't fashion following spending. This is mostly for work, setting aside money for trousers and shirts. We also buy some clothes, but have not done too much recently.
 
Are you availing of bus tickets, monthly tickets work out much cheaper than looking for change everyday, your employer might also have the tax saver scheme in place www.dublinbus.ie some of these tickets also include nightlink too.

If you are serious for saving for a deposit, you will have to curtail and change the socalising. rent DVDs instead of going to the cineama, have friends over to watch. For about a year when I made the decision to buy, I only went about on a Saturday night about once every 3 months, worth it in the end.
 
Hi AmIok,

this is just my tuppence worth but didn't like to not reply. I think if you are realistically trying to save the deposit for a house then you need to tighten the purse strings and I can't really see where you have done this. When myself and my partner were saving (plus lots of friends and relatives when you had to have the 8% deposit and things seem to be heading this way again) we literally had no life. We were paying a mortgage on an apartment the same as your rent and as soon as we got paid we each saved 1k, bought very little new clothes (my partner works in the same environment as yourself and found he had plenty of clothes to do him which I am sure you have if you have been buying them every month) brought our luches to work, nights out were usually socialising in friends houses with one of us driving, ready to go phone where we get free texts and cost us max 20 euro a month each. Then at the end of the month if there was anything left over that went straight into the savings aswell. Plus we weren't earning as much as you and your partner. It sounds bleak but it really wasn't and we could see the savings growing so much each month so that was the incentive. As soon as we got into our house we had the socialising and regular spending back as the mortgage was nothing compared to what we had been saving. I note that your outgoings amount to 3365 per month (unless I have added incorrectly) one thing you could do is save the entire 3000 wage and work off the other one and anything left over at the end of the month could go into savings also. You would have a great deposit in no time!
 
Last edited:

Actually the monthly / weekly tickets work out more expensive. My fare is €1.50 each way, so that's €3 a day. Equals €60 per month. I only use the bus for work commutes and those tickets are not valid on Nightlink services.
 
AmIok said:
Actually the monthly / weekly tickets work out more expensive. My fare is €1.50 each way, so that's €3 a day. Equals €60 per month. I only use the bus for work commutes and those tickets are not valid on Nightlink services.
Click to expand...

I guess the yearly ticket works out to be about the same as you currently spend but do you think you'd save money by not breaking notes to buy tickets etc. My partner gets the annual ticket through his employer and they deduct the cost of it from his monthly wages. He is definitely saving by not breaking notes all the time.
 
contact a professional financial advisor (accountant, broker etc.) have them set you a plan , start saving all you can, take on a second job.
 
In your Budget you have a car and paying off a loan for it,so your Budget should also include insurance,tax maintainance,nct.
But if your fuel bill is only 40 euro per month then it costs more to keep the car compared to the useage it gets.Get rid of it if its only unless totally needed
Your grocery bill you have down as food what about the rest of the neccesities.
A proper annual Budget is required for every cost you have then you can see where cuts can be made
 
Based on the figures supplied you should have a monthly surplus of over 3k before your borrowings.

In fairness you are making very little effort to cut back, and it shows - your borrowing has dropped in the last 4 months but not by the amount it should have, even worse when you add the bonus.

Speaking from experience you would have a large lump sum saved if you wanted to.

I also suspect your 'misc' is a lot more than 200, and covers the items missing here in particular costs of running a car (tax, insurance etc), TV licence etc.
 

You can rationalise these things if it makes you feel better, but most of the posters here also work in formal environments, and I'd be curious to know how many (male or female) spend EUR100 a month on work clothes.

How often do you wear stuff before dry cleaning? What is occasionally?
 

Few things on this. Firstly the annual ticket is the same cost as ten monthy tickets so there is a considerable reduction on monthly tickets there. Secondly, and most importantly, if you do get these tickets through the taxsaver scheme (which I suspect Newbie's partner is), this is deducted before tax and PRSI which means that you effectively spend about €31 of your post tax income instead of €60 on a monthly ticket. I would suggest you look into Taxsaver tickets promptly and start using your commuter ticket for journeys other than just work to gain even more value for money from it.

I work in a formal environment "occassionally" as you put it, and I too have to have clothing and dry cleaning to match but when I needed to limit it, I certainly didn't spend €100pm on clothing.

In general:
1) Save yourself the cost of an accountant or a financial advisor and do the following two things: Research the best deposit accounts to save your money and set up your budget so that savings come out first not last (otherwise you just fritter and frankly your spending seems to show that). Set the bar high, have at least €1000 euro coming out first thing your wages come in (twice what you have managed to accumulate in 4 months!) - in a year you will have €12000 in savings. You will notice it the first month but you will adjust your spending pretty rapidly to suit your diminished current account. That also gives you a clue as to what sort of savings you need to be thinking in terms of to actually build up the money you need to have to put down the deposit. As you haven't exactly excelled in saving up to this point you have a long way to go and if you want to get there quickly you need to start looking at "trimming" more than your expensive coffee habit.
2) You aren't forswearing socialising, holidaying and treats forever and joining an enclosed order in a convent or something! Just for a short period of time in order to build up a good amount of money you need to curtail your social and indulgent spending. Stop viewing it as a trial and look at it as a short term challenge. Oh and find ways to socialise without spending money (go for a walk in the evening with your partner instead of eating out).

I really do think that you want, in the common phrase, to have your cake and eat it. You want to build up your savings from, frankly, scratch without making any sort of sacrifice. The fact that you have no savings to speak of given you are both earning a good income is quite honestly surprising and foolish on your part - it presupposes a continuance of income, you'd be in trouble if one of you didn't earn anything for a month. And it isn't even as if the sacrifices you would need to make are all that onerous. You have a good (some would say excellent) combined income, more than sufficient for your needs and definitely more than sufficient to allow you to live comfortably and save reasonably or even save extravagantly to build up that deposit (and don't forget, savings for furnishings are better than an additional loan at the point when your spending will be stretching your income for benefit rather than indulgence).
 
the annual bus tickets do work on the nitelink and also the airlink buses, i would think the monthly tickets do as well but as pointed out the annual ticket is much better value
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register