LECTURER WHO’S TAKEN IN A LODGER TO SAVE

LILY CANTER, 38, a lecturer, lives in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, with husband, Mark, 44, a cabinet-maker, and children Byron, five, and ivor, two. the family has £30,000 in savings. Lily says:

UNTIL two years ago I was earning a full-time salary of £50,000.

But we worked out that by cutting back on travel and childcare costs and taking in a lodger, we’d be better off if I went part-time.

So now I earn around £30,000, and my husband a similar amount. Yet in the past year we have managed to transfer £10,000 to a savings account.

Ever since I started work after finishing my English Literature degree, aged 21, I’ve put away money each month.

In fact, even as a teenager I would save my pocket money, rather than fritter it away on clothes and CDs like some of my friends. My parents gave me a 21st birthday gift of £6,000. But I didn’t want to just blow it on any old thing, so it wasn’t until three years ago that I finally spent it — landscaping our back garden.

I didn’t even borrow anything for our wedding: I enjoyed the challenge of saving every penny for the £8,000 we spent on our big day.

I managed to put away £500 a month from my wage, which was then around £24,000.

All of our child benefit now goes into savings.

I like knowing that even if one of us was unable to work for a while, we have a good buffer. Having only £6,360 in savings — the average that most people have — would not feel like nearly enough for me to sleep easy at night. Consequently, I’m very frugal day-to-day.

I shop at Lidl, drive a Skoda, don’t splash out excessively on clothes for myself, and make my son Byron’s school shoes last until he grows out of them, even once they’re tatty.

However, we have a hefty £227,000 mortgage on our four-bedroom semi-detached home and the childcare costs are still £8,400 a year.

But a chunk of that is covered by the tax-free income we get from our student lodger and the Government’s tax-free childcare scheme.

Friends have said that they would have to be really on their uppers to consider sharing their home with someone other than family.

But I just see that extra money from having a lodger going towards our savings pot which, one day, when the children have left home, we hope to spend on travelling.

In the meantime, it’s just a great comfort knowing that it’s there.