I spent all my money on buying a house. Buying a house is a feat of Herculean effort. It is also luck - my parents partially contributed to my deposit. I actually don’t know how people buy property without this leg-up, because it still took every penny I have… and some pennies I technically don’t. If you’ve genuinely done it alone, especially as a single parent, then you deserve a crown. With rubies in it. And a parade in your honour. I’ll make the party bags.
Because I work for myself, all my income funnels into my business, and my business pays me a monthly wage. I control this. Obviously the more I pay myself, the quicker the business balance will deplete, so it’s in my best interest to pay myself modestly so that the cash lasts.
To buy a house though, I spent a couple of years over-paying myself (according to my own rules), to qualify for a mortgage big enough to buy more than a garage on the outskirts of Slough or similar. That’s the thing I don’t understand about mortgages: you can repay £5,000 a month for a medium-sized house, or £500 a month for a postage stamp, and both solutions suck. Are you able to figure this out? Because I can’t! The frustration was enough to make me think it was better to stay in my rented place, which was fine, but also not mine, and I’m British: we like to own our houses. It’s a cultural thing. I envy the Italians, for whom this is less of an obsession. I also envy the French, who take most of August off. Can you IMAGINE.
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