5 Spending Habits to Ditch If You Want To Save For Your First Home Deposit
Saving for your first home deposit is no mean feat. With the median house price in Perth currently sitting at over $500,000, the thought of saving enough to be able to afford a half a million dollar home is enough to make anyone question whether it’s really possible. However, if you look closely at how you actually save and spend on a monthly basis, there will be ways you can help save for your first home deposit.
Here are 5 spending habits to ditch if you want to save for your first home deposit (plus a bonus habit to break).
1. Buying Lunch Every Day
If you buy lunch for work, 5 days a week at $10 a pop, that’s $50 a week. And if you, like many Australians, work around 48 weeks a year, that’s $2,400 over a year!
Wouldn’t you rather that went towards your house than your stomach? Make your own lunch and get into your first home quicker.
2. Your Daily Coffee Fix
Similarly to buying your lunch every day, getting that morning coffee to get your through the day could cost you $4-5 a day (more if you’re buying more than 1 coffee!).
Ditching the daily take away coffee could save you $1,200 a year, which could be going straight into your first home deposit.
3. Hold The Smashed Avo
Love going for brekkie with friends or family? Heading out with mates for a weekend brunch catch up could easily cost you $25 per person for a meal and coffee. Times that by 2 if you’re in a couple and that’s $50 a weekend on brekkie! Over a year, having breakfast out once a week could cost you $2,600 – and that’s a fairly conservative estimate too.
4. Friday After-Work Drinks
If you’re always heading to the pub for those Friday drinks with your work colleagues, you may not even realise what you’re spending. Habits become habits when we stop paying attention to them and a couple of drinks at the end of the week could cost you $20 or so each time you clock off on a Friday.
That’s nearly $1,000 based on working 48 weeks a year.
5. Putting It On Credit
If you’re trying to save but haven’t got a lot of disposable income, you may be tempted to put things on your credit card. But the best thing to do is cut it up. Live by the mantra, “if you don’t have the cash, don’t buy it”.
6. Bonus Habit To Break – Saving What’s Left
Lots of people make the fatal mistake of seeing what money is left at the end of each month and then saving that. If you do this, you’ll never reach your goal of saving for your first home deposit.
Always put away a set amount as soon as you get paid. Working on a saving of around 10% is a good start but this will vary depending on how much you want to save and when you want to achieve your goal of saving enough for your first home deposit.
Speak to our mortgage broker in Joondalup today about how to save for your first home deposit. We can help you create a realistic monthly budget, and work out exactly what you need to save each month to be able to afford your first home.
Call our mortgage team on 08 9300 2553 or contact us online to find out more now.