As some of you may remember from these posts, we’ve come a long way in 6 months.
Literally.

Our move home to the UK from Australia has largely been a smooth one. Neither of us have felt much grief or to be honest, even thought much about it. It’s almost like those 6 years and glorious beaches never really happened. Although I did have a wee wobble last week when I was on a boring phone call to Google for over an hour (I work in marketing) looking out the window of an industrial estate onto a cold grey sky and misty rain. The pang passed pretty quickly when I remembered we had two lovely long weekends coming up, one in Cardiff and one in Edinburgh. Things I would not have had on the horizon had I still been living in Aus.

All in all, I can report that we are super happy carving out a home in Scotland. I’m adoring watching the seasons change (is it just me or has Autumn just landed overnight?!), loving my new little weekly routines (hallelujah three-day work week) and the fact that I’m only ever a 30 min trip away from being home in Ireland to see my family.

So what’s next? Well, at the ripe old age of 30 & 37, we’ve decided to buy our first home. Admittedly we do feel a bit late to the party, but I suppose we’ve loved the last 6 years or so of gallivanting around the world, so no regrets there. However, this whole financial advisor/mortgage broker/solicitor thing all feels very grown up and a little scary to my free-spirited heart if I’m being honest.

At the moment, we’re living with Gavin’s parents in order to build as big a deposit as is physically possible. If you were to See more here about the various procedures we go through, after having constructed a house, you’d know that our planning is quite meticulous. We’re also saving for the fact that we literally have only a few sticks of furniture and some boxes of worldly possessions, however, there’s not a single washing machine or fridge between us. So when we do buy a place, there is going to be a large outlay for whitewoods, furniture and grown-up necessities like a laundry basket and some good knives.

The saving part is feeling good. I’m getting great satisfaction out of watching the ££ slowly build and I’m using some software called YNAB which has made the whole money monitoring process, dare I say it, actually enjoyable(?!) The living with the in-laws situation is going much better than I had hoped, although that is a whole other post.

But at the moment, we’re in that weird place of waiting and saving and saving and waiting.

We went to view a house last night, which was a big mistake because I loved it. Unfortunately, although we could have afforded to put in an offer, we have some hoops to jump through and time to kill regarding how long we’ve been receiving UK paycheques since living abroad, so like I said, we’re waiting.

It’s likely that we won’t be able to actually start looking until after Christmas which I suppose will give us time to save more, but it’s also more than a bit frustrating as I’m SO ready to put down some roots and paint some walls. But most importantly, to give my wee nomadic boy a nice solid and stable home where he doesn’t have to think about which bed he’s sleeping in or what size of suitcase his toys fit into.

We have an idea of an area we want, and a vague idea of things we’d like to have, although I feel as though we should probably make a list of our non-negotiables and nice-to-haves to make sure we don’t just get wooed by a lovely home but actually buy something that fits our lifestyle.

So for those of you who own a home… Do you have any sage advice? Anything you wish someone had told you before buying? Money, legalities, pitfalls… I’m all ears.

And for those of you in the process of buying who are maybe saving and waiting like me… How are you coping?!

Because I’m as impatient as a kid waiting for cake.

xo