How To: Get Your Finances Back On Track After Buying A House
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First of all, if you’re reading this then I’m guessing it’s because you’ve either just bought a house, or are saving for one so CONGRATULATIONS!! Having saved for our home for nearly two years, I *know what an amazing achievement it is, and how bloody hard it is too!
If you are wondering how life post saving-for-a-house is looking in terms of finances, then you’ve come to the right place! Ben and I saved for nearly two years for our home, with our deposit and fees coming in at around £35,000 (I know, makes me feel nauseous too haha!), when we were saving all we could see was the end goal: buying the house.
But now we’re in and settled, it’s time to think ahead about what we’re saving for next and just HOW we’re going to do that alongside our mortgage and bills!
A few things that we’re now saving and planning towards;
Home improvements: We’re looking to do an extension to make the kitchen and dining area bigger and more open (I’d love to have a big table and breakfast bar so we can host friends), and potentially a loft conversion one day to add a fourth bedroom in the house.Travel!: Probably the biggest one for us, Ben and I love to travel but for so long we’ve wanted to do a fairly big backpacking trip. Our goal is to save enough to spend a few months away at some point and to rent the house out whilst we’re away.Paying off my car: My car is currently on a four year lease, but it was always my plan to pay off the balloon payment so I have just under two years to save the remainder of the payment! One of those slightly less exciting things to save for, but one that needs to be paid all the same!Saving for a rainy day: If we wanted to take a break and book a spontaneous night away, go for a date night or if say the boiler were to break (whoooo #AdultProblems), it’s also good to have a bit of money in the bank for a rainy day!
Now we have a few goals to save towards, it’s time to figure out just HOW we’re going to save for those things, especially now that we have a mortgage and home bills to cover. Let’s dive in and figure out a way to get saving again!...
1.) Day to day budgeting tips: CUT BACK! Once you’ve moved in and you are broke AF, you realise that the daily coffees, spontaneous ASOS orders, really aren’t a necessity and you learn to cut back. One thing I’ve found since buying a house, is you pretty quickly differentiate between what is a want and what is a need!
Even the smallest of things can make a difference, like making your lunch from home instead of eating out (get a takeaway coffee cup too and make your daily coffees instead of buying one). Take your carrier bags to the supermarket instead of buying them every time, stock up on products you need when they’re on offer and walk instead of getting Ubers etc – are just a few ways we’ve cut back on expenses.
2.) Checking my FREE Experian Credit Score:Experian has been a great source to us throughout our house buying process (we used it to check our credit scores before applying for our mortgage), and it’s still proving to be a great help now we’ve bought our home.
Applying for a mortgage can affect your credit score so we’ve both kept our Experian accounts so we can keep track of our credit score, if we want to borrow again for a home improvements loan or a 0% balance transfer credit card then we need to make sure we’re eligible.
A few ways to improve your credit score: if you’ve changed your address but not updated this on the electoral register then this could have a negative impact on your Experian Credit Score so make sure your details are up to date to avoid any negative drops. If you have a high credit card balance then this could also affect your Experian Credit Score so try to keep those balances as low as possible.
4.) Saving smart: When signing up for your joint bank account or setting up your bills, look for the best offers! Some will offer cashback, or there will be incentives and perks of switching / signing up to certain accounts. When you’re saving, every little really does help so be sure to scout out the best money saving deals!
5.) Getting creative without breaking the bank: Now we don’t have as much disposable income, I’m trying to think of creative and fun ways that we can spend time together without breaking the bank. Like having an indoor picnic rather than splashing out on lunch, buying some popcorn and having a movie night rather than going to the cinema, or we’ve now started having a date night once a month rather than just going out when we fancy it!
There we have it guys, my top five tips for getting your finances back on track after buying a house, and a few things that Ben and I are saving towards this year! If you’re in the process of saving for a house, I’ll be writing a blog post on tips on how to save, which I’ll be sharing soon so keep your eyes peeled for that!
One piece of advice: KEEP GOING! It’s so, so hard to save such a big chunk of money, and it can also be quite de-motivating, we found it really hard to break past the £20K mark with our savings as things needed paying and held us back from saving for a while but we made it in the end, and you can too!
Did you find this post helpful? What are you saving for currently? Do you have any tips for saving after buying a house? Have you signed up to Experian? Did you find it helpful in the house buying process and helping to keep your finances on track?
[ AD - This post was sponsored by Experian. All images and opinions, as always are my own. ]
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