Owning your own home

@BleakReference, I read your post on your situation from a few pages ago. Sounds like you're in exactly the same boat I was a couple of years ago. I sympathize man. I spent my late 20s getting into debt, my 30s getting out and had all but given up on the idea of ever being able to buy. Eventually between me and my lady we scratched together a meager deposit and was looking at part-buy schemes. Luckily for me, a benevolent relative gave us an early inheritance and we were able to offer a better down-payment than we otherwise would have. Either way, buying really was a life changer. Beyond bumping off a granny I can only recommend scraping together as much as humanly possible and going for it.

It used to piss me off so much when my folks bemoaned the money I "wasted on rent" every month, when I didn't have a fucking choice! I never saw it as wasted and always cited the rest of the world's culture of long term renting and saw it as a necessary and unavoidable cost of living. I have to say though, having finally done it (albeit with help from a relative) I can sort of see where they were coming from. For better of worse the UK housing marking isn't set up for the kind of long term renting you get on the continent or in the US. It's set up to make money for homeowners and investors. it's vile and fucked and yadda yadda but I think you can avoid being on Team Fucked without having to join Team Fucker. You do this by buying a home and living in it.

Honestly, it changed my life overnight. In a stroke we had financial security, a home we could finally make our own, our outgoings were slashed and we had more disposable income to make something like a life.

Knowing what I know now about how profound that change is, I would have been much more proactive about getting out of the rent cycle. Staying with parents, saving my arse off, taking a second job etc etc. Anything to break the cycle of rent, debt and nothing to show for any if it.

Best of luck man.