Finding the means to save just a little bit each day could be the key to saving for your first deposit on your home loan. But just how much of an effect does 10 minutes of making a sandwich really make?
Time to crunch some numbers, using Numbeo averages for the city of Sydney.
How much do you spend?
Let’s say you spend about $10 a day on lunch when you’re at work. That’s five times a week, 52 weeks a year. All up, that adds to a whopping $2,600 a year, just on lunch! But what does that translate to in terms of your home loan?
Property Value, a subsidiary of CoreLogic RP Data, gives us a median sale price of just over $400,000 for a unit in New South Wales. If you’re looking to take out a loan with a 20 per cent deposit, buying your lunch is costing you 3.25 per cent of that every 12 months.
How much do you save?
So you’re blowing a lot on buying that sandwich. So what if you spend 10 minutes making one instead?
Numbeo gives us an average of about $14 a week for enough bread and cheese to make a cheese sandwich every day. That’s just under $3 a day instead of $10. You would end up spending only $780 a year, a huge saving of $1820, only costing 0.9 per cent of your savings for a deposit! In fact, spending 10 minutes a day making your lunch instead of buying it would be earning you just over $42 an hour over the course of a year – that’s huge.
If you’re finding it hard to get enough capital together for the deposit on your first home loan, why not try spending a little time to save a lot of cash?