I’m 28 and have my own place it was really tough and I’m not feeling the benefits just now but down the line hopefully… it’s disappointing when you’re forced to take in a tenant just to be able to afford to pay the mortgage, you don’t even have the place to yourself!
The biggest way I saved money in London was moving close to where my work was. I paid a bit more in rent but it was more than offset by saving in travel costs. It also let me go home for lunch which saves a lot too. If you work somewhere really fancy this may not be possible.
One question we never got answered on this forum was are there any issues to Monzo only reporting the current account to one agency?. We don’t know if this will cause issues or not with mortgage people. I’m probably stupid for worrying about it but it is nagging at me.
The main thing to be prepared for is that you have to be able to move quickly when you see something you like. It’s hard to do that when such large sums of money are involved. Sometimes an opportunity will arrive and you have to jump on it. I found out my selling agent had a target to reach by end of year and managed to negotiate a much better deal on the premise I could sort everything in only a couple of weeks. It was extremely stressful but I got lucky and had a good lawyer and the selling agent needed it done so they made their side of the paperwork happen very quickly.