I can still remember it so vividly. Frog was about 6 months old. I’d been at home with her all day, stewing. Something in our house had broken and it wasn’t the first time. We couldn’t fix it, because the cottage was rented. It was another reminder that we didn’t own our own home. We couldn’t paint the walls or fix a leaking tap without asking permission first.

Fast forward a few months and we had the conversation. “We need to accept we’ll never be able to buy our own place,” said the (self-proclaimed) Northern Love Machine. I reluctantly agreed. With a small baby, a teacher’s salary, a fledgling freelance career, living in one of the most expensive parts of the UK, I had to accept he was right.

We didn’t have super rich parents. We didn’t have any inheritance. We only had what we earned, which covered our rent, petrol, living and childcare costs. We were lucky if we could scrape a spare fifty quid at the end of the month to chuck into savings. A 25% deposit on a house in our village stood before us like a mountain, impossible to scale.  Continue reading »