Buying a house or apartment is often the first big investment project you will plan. Indeed, owning a home provides stability and potential financial gains in the long-term when you will sell it. Thus, it’s normal to have plenty of questions when debuting this process.

In this article, I am going to provide actionable advice to help you save money in order to buy a house.

First, calculate your borrowing capacity and overall purchasing budget

In order to know how much money you will need to save for your future house, you will first need to know how much you can afford by calculating your borrowing capacity, mortgage cost and other fees (taxes, notary, etc..).

Generally speaking, the monthly cost of your loan shouldn’t be above 30% of your monthly incomes. Indeed, this general rule protects you by making sure that you will have enough money to live and pay the other bills.

Other factors might also influences your borrowing capacity such as your credit score, the amount of your down payment, etc …

I recommend taking different appointments with various banks and even brokers as they will propose you different offers so you will be able to choose the best one for buying your future home.

Saving money by reducing the amount of money you spend on your hobbies

While hobbies are important, your first priority and focus should be buying your house.

Thus, calculate the amount of money you spend each month for your hobbies and then reduce it.

As a general advice, for example if you monthly budget for hobbies is 300 dollars, I recommend cutting it at least of 50%. 70% would be even better. In this exemple, I would try to reduce it to 100 dollars so that’s 200 dollars more that you will be able to save for your investment project.

In my case, I sat on a Sunday afternoon and calculated all my monthly hobbies spending’s and reduced them by 70% so I was able to save more money and to buy my house earlier.

Reduce your budget for food and restaurants

I’m not talking about eating bad quality food but rather to reduce your overall food budget. Indeed, you may not realize it but if you calculate your monthly spending related to food you might be pretty surprised. Nowadays, restaurants and mostly apps tend to increase the amount of dollars people spend on food.

An easy way to make more savings is to reduce this budget and to buy more groceries in order to cook at home.

By doing so you will be able to save more money while also eating better as you will cook at home.

Depending on your spending, I recommend cutting it between 25% to 50% if possible.

Do automatic money transfers to your savings account

Another tips that I want to give you is to set up automatic transfers to your savings account.

For example, if you earn 7 000 dollars each month, you should at least transfer 2 000 dollars to your savings account each month, but I recommend transferring more if possible.

As a general rule, it is recommended to automatically transfer between 20% up to 50% depending on your profile. Some people with low expenses even manage to transfer close to 70% of their paycheck to their savings account.


I hope that all of these financial tips helped you to save more for your future house.

Discover more tips by reading our other articles.


Founder & Editor

About the Author

Passionate about personal finance, I created this magazine in order to help millennials build wealth. I mostly write about personal finances tips and gold & silver coins.

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