I’m 22 and trying to save for a house but it seems impossible!

Coming out of university, I was determined to land myself a job and start saving for a house as I ventured into the world of adulthood.

Yet what I once thought was a simple journey to get onto the property ladder has proved mightily difficult and near enough impossible for young people like me.

After studying a journalism course, I was dead set on breaking into the industry and, after a few months of searching, I was able to land myself a role as a Digital Reporter for the Lancashire Post and Blackpool Gazette.

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Whilst I was overjoyed with securing my first role in the journalism industry, I knew that this was the start of a long, arduous journey of saving for an eventual home.

Additionally, I had to relocate from Liverpool to Preston as part of the job so I was faced with a new challenge which was finding a flat to rent.

At first, I thought finding somewhere would be easy, I had rented student accommodation in the past and I was a young professional looking to live alone so surely a landlord would accept my offers.

However this wasn’t the case, what started as days of searching dragged into weeks as, for some reason, landlords preferred anyone else to a young person wanting to live alone.

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It was nearly at the point of giving up that I was thrown a lifeline by one of the property agents I had spoken to before who said they had a flat available for me.

Without hesitation, I paid the holding deposit and signed all the contacts to finally end the drawn out process.

On one hand I was happy to be renting and to be able to start my job yet living alone to try and build some renting experience for the future has proved to be very costly.

With it being my first job, I can’t say I am paid a large salary which has made dealing with expensive rent plus ever-increasing bills hard to deal with.

This has meant most of the money I do earn, I don’t actually see, leaving me little by the way of savings.

This paired with the fact house prices always seem to be on the rise makes saving for a home of my own look like an impossible task.

I try to do what I can in terms of putting money in savings for the future but with many others my age going through the same problems, moving out of the family home becomes a less viable option.

National World launched Project Peter Pan in March 2024 to give a voice to a “lost generation” unable to afford housing.

Watch the Project Peter Pan documentary here: https://www.shotstv.com/watch/vod/52462878