Jess Keough

Earlier this year, my partner Zak and I bought our dream first home together, a three-bedroom semi-detached house with a nice sized garden in Essex. It was great that we felt ready to take the next steps together as neither of us would have been able to afford a place like this on our own.

I set up my Lifetime ISA back in 2017, I was motivated by the generous bonus of up to £1,000 you can get each year. This is a huge help as it means you can put down a bigger deposit. I don’t think you’d be able to get this kind of boost from another type of account.  I’m grateful I heard about this opportunity when I did as I know lots of other people still aren’t aware of it.

Receiving a bonus of this size if you max out your contributions is just incredible. Over several years, it can make such a difference to your house deposit, which is helpful when you’re a first-time buyer like we both were.

Working for a charity means doing really incredible and meaningful work, but sometimes it’s not as well paid as other careers. This was one of my biggest challenges when saving for my first home, so the Lifetime ISA bonus was a great help. I saved in chunks throughout the year, always making sure to max out the amount before the deadline.

After university, I moved back home when I was 21 and lived with my mum for over three years to save extra money for my share of the deposit. I was lucky to have a welcoming home environment when I wasn’t ready financially or emotionally to move out for good after university. Moving back home felt like a no-brainer, it gave me the chance to save properly and figure out my career too.

Zak lived with friends for a little while, then moved back in with his parents to save. We both feel very lucky to have such warm, welcoming parents who would happily have us stay for as long as we needed. We’re both very aware not everyone is in that position, and we don’t take it for granted.

If I’d stayed renting with friends, I would have been spending around £600 a month.  I was then able to put the money I saved by living at home towards my deposit. Without the opportunity to move home and saving into our LISAs, we wouldn’t have been able to buy the house we have or do it in the timeline we managed.

From speaking to people in older generations, it seems like in some ways it was easier for them to buy their first home. House prices were more affordable and in line with salaries back then. Today, wages haven’t kept up with property costs, which makes saving harder. That’s why tools like the Lifetime ISA are so important for my generation, we have to take advantage of every opportunity to save.

It’s harder for Gen Z to reach big financial milestones, like owning a home, starting a family, or building a career, especially with the cost-of-living crisis.  Most people, regardless of age, want to own a home. But I’d say a lot of young people today also value life experiences like travel more than perhaps older generations did. Sometimes we’re seen as lazy or lucky to live at home longer, but for many of us, it’s just not affordable to move out yet.

Gen Z often gets called “snowflakes” or they say we’re tech obsessed, but many of us are working hard, we’re just facing different challenges than those before us and trying to have some fun along the way too.