Nikki Lumsden – I bought £205k flat by cutting back on luxuries

Nikki Lumsden – giving up manicures and cutting down on cigarettes helped assistant sales manager Nikki Lumsden save £4,750 in 18 months for her first home.

Changing her lifestyle helped the 46-year-old finally get the keys to her £205,000 two-bed ground floor flat in Maidstone, Kent, last December.

Nikki, who works for an estate agent, would previously smoke a pack of 20 cigarettes a day, costing her £10 a time or roughly £300 a month.

By curbing this habit and cutting down to roughly one pack every two days, she saved herself £100 a month.

Nikki also saved money by quitting the gym and ditching expensive manicures, giving her an extra £70 a month in total.

Nights out were also non-existent, saving her up to £100 to put towards her first home.

In total, Nikki saved £4,750 of her own cash and she was gifted £4,500 from her mum Jan, 67, giving her the £9,250 she needed for her deposit.

Nikki bought her home through the shared ownership scheme.

She currently owns 45 per cent of the property, meaning she pays £340 a month rent to a housing association that owns the remaining 55 per cent.

Nikki plans on eventually owning a bigger portion of equity by “staircasing” to increase her share, although she says she’s in no rush to do this.

We caught up with Nikki for our My First Home series to see what life is like in her new pad.

I live in a two-bed ground floor flat. The property is three years old.

The lounge and kitchen is open plan and there’s a good size bathroom. There’s also wheelchair access, so the layout is a bit bigger.

There’s a green space at the front but no garden – although I’ve got a parking space which was more important. Both bedrooms are doubles.

I completed on December 20 2019. I’m loving the flat, but I’m not loving the drive into work.

It’s a 30-mile commute to Forest Hill in London but it takes two-and-a-half hours because I drive during rush hour.

Buying in London wasn’t an option for me – it’s not affordable.

I’d be looking at spending another £60,000 and I’d still be saving now.

I’d lived in Maidstone years ago, plus one of my parents and my brother are in this direction.

How long did you save for?

I saved for around 18 months. I managed to save £4,750 and my mum gifted me another £4,500 – she helped me buy a lot sooner.

Before moving in, I lived in London with my mum and her husband for nine years – but they moved to Egypt last May.

Once she said she was going, I knew I had to start saving.

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I’d been thinking about buying for a while anyway, and living with my mum gave me the opportunity to put money away.

The three of us looked at it as a houseshare so we paid a third of everything each – I’d pay around £750 including rent, bills and food.

When they went, the amount I paid obviously went up a bit, and what I saved each month varied because of the commission I’d make.

Source – https://www.thesun.co.uk/