Budgeting tips: Saving for your first home loan deposit

Purchasing a home is more a test in endurance than anything. After all, taking the time to save up for the initial deposit on your home loan can seem like a cruel, excruciating experience.

However, the feeling of owning your own home is rivalled by little and makes everything worthwhile in the end. So how do you get there? Well, here are a number of tips to help you save for your home loan deposit and get you that much closer to the goal of property ownership.

Save 10 per cent of your paycheck

This may seem like an obvious place to start, it's one of the hardest to follow through with. All too often it's simply a case of digging into your savings for small purchases, chipping away at your saving effort and undermining the entire process.

Set up another, separate account that cannot be accessed easily and put aside a set amount of your income each pay. While this may force you to cut down on superfluous spending for a period of time, it will ultimately help you to purchase a home.

Pay off existing debt

While it may not seem like the best idea to spend money, sometimes paying off your existing debts can help you to increase your savings in the long run. By paying off your debts, you remove the extra repayments on interest that would accumulate over time.

Being out of pocket in the short term could pay off big time heading into the future, where you won't be paying off any extra debts and cutting into money that could potentially be going towards your home loan deposit.