How to Budget for Your Dream Home

Do you hate paying house rent every month? Do you feel like a captive in your rented house when you realize that the freedom to alter the house according to your wish is something that you can never enjoy in this setting? A rented house is a compromise where the pressure of having low funds wins over the pleasure of staying in your own house.

Nevertheless, you can afford and possess your own house sooner or later. However, if you want this development to happen really quickly, then the first step to get started is to have funds!

You need to start saving money in order to spend it on something that has been on your wish list since months or even years.

Easier Ways to Buy Your Own House

• Sell away all that you have (by ‘all’, I mean, literally ‘everything’).
• Loan (and pay EMIs for years to come). There’s a good chance that even your grandkids might have to do this for you.
• Wait for 10 years and based on the savings that you have, buy a house, which might or might not be your dream house!

Or else, you can make simple lifestyle related changes and take small conscious decisions which will help you save for the future and let you buy your dream house.

List of Do’s Before You Start Saving

Decide on a city, place or area where you wish to live in the future and visit a couple of houses in that area from the point of view of buying. Take a fair idea of the property rates in those area and estimate the appreciation or depreciation that would occur in the coming years and how much would your dream house cost, based on that.

• Take a picture of your dream house and pin it to your refrigerator door or on your office desk, so that your goal is in front of your eyes all the time.
• Fix an amount that you need to save based on the amount of money that you would need to buy your dream house.

Strategies to Budget Your Today

• Make a savings account and schedule a recurring fund transfer of a fixed amount every month to that special account.
• Don’t spend any of the cash cards, cash gifts, etc. that you receive. Put them all under one roof – your savings account.
• Put in a few extra hours at work and save all that money for the future.
• Refrain from spending on your wishes and stick to spending only on your needs. Don’t eat out when you can cook at home. Don’t drive when you can walk. Don’t hire a domestic help when you can finish off chores on your own.
• Try to cut down on your bills – talk less on the phone, take smaller plans for the internet, save electricity by using less of it; read newspapers, magazines and books online and avoid spending on their hard copies.
• Take good care of your health and adopt as many precautionary measures as you can so that you don’t waste money on healthcare. All the money that you save at the end of the year can make way into your savings account.
• Sell off one car, if you have two. The maintenance costs a bit and your expenses will go down considerably if you adjust with using just one car.
• Use more of scooters, bicycles and public transport in order to save on fuel expenses.
• Limit the number and duration of family vacations that you take in a year.
• Avoid out-of-town or out-of-country travel that is not very important or mandatory.
• Cut down on beauty treatments and try to do with the basic ones, because beautifying ourselves costs a lot.
• Generate new sources of income and try to save money accumulated from it. Take up another temporary job, any part-time, work-from-home or a freelance engagement is also good to raise money for your house.
• Sell off things in the house that are not required any more, are high maintenance or are doubled up in the house. Put all the money accumulated from it in the savings account.
• Be updated with all the websites that give good deals, discount coupons and offers in your city or area. Make good use of them while buying anything and save the money that you could have spent, but didn’t.

These and many such saving strategies can be of real good help when you are trying to budget your today to buy your dream home tomorrow. But, make sure that you don’t overdo these by neglecting your health, not socializing much and getting overtly conscious about saving, as it can ruin the happiness of your present day life.

Be watchful, be careful and save happily for a happier future.