I purchased a £650,000 two-bedroom flat in certainly one of London’s most fascinating postcodes aged 29, with out ‘the financial institution of mum and pop’ – that is the easy budgeting rule that made me a house owner

A single woman has revealed how she bought a £650,000 home in London in her 20s without ‘the bank of mum and dad’.

Natalie O’Neill, now 30, took ten years to save the £65,000 deposit she needed for her two-bed home in Hackney, east London – beginning when she was earning just £26,000 a year aged 20.

The ex-marketing executive used the 50/30/20 rule – a simple budgeting method which divides your after-tax income into 50 per cent for needs, 30 per cent for wants and 20 per cent for savings or debt repayment.

Starting by putting aside £100 to £200 per month, she was eventually saving £2,000 a year due to multiple promotions at work that increased her salary.

She also began investing at the age of 24 and ‘learned by doing stupid things’, as well as using her credit card to pay for her food shopping to improve her credit score.

These four principles – a pay day routine, monthly investing, using credit cards responsibly and negotiating higher salaries – meant she was able to save £70,000 for her deposit and stamp duty by August 2025.

Natalie started her first marketing job when she was 18 on a £16,000 salary, while she was renting with her then boyfriend.

She started taking budgeting seriously after moving to London and began using credit cards to pay for essentials like her weekly food shop to help improve her credit rating.

Natalie, who is now a finance and interiors influencer, said: ‘When I was about 22, just after I’d moved to London, I remember having a conversation with my boss about personal finances.

‘They told me about the 50, 30, 20 rule and how it was a well-known way to put X amount in your savings.’

As well as adopting the practice, Natalie started investing in 2020, but admits she lost around £3,000 over three years by ‘doing stupid things’ and picking the wrong stocks. She also used Nutmeg to open a stocks and shares ISA. 

‘You don’t have to lose money to learn like I did, but just getting started and doing what you can is better than doing nothing when it comes to saving money,’ she said.

‘I opened my stocks and shares ISA in 2020, and it’s earned me £15,000 up to now. You don’t have to pay tax on a stocks and shares ISA.’

Natalie was able to save increasing amounts of money by negotiating higher salaries – including a pay increase from £28,000 to £33,000 at her first London job on the basis that her performance was good after the first three months. 

She also managed to secure a £95,000 salary for a job that was initially offering £75,000. 

On her £95,000 salary, which she had for half a year, she was able to save £2,000 a month. 

‘Every time I got a pay rise, I would make it a non-negotiable to pay off my credit. When I got paid I would pay my bills, rent, and I didn’t spend a lot on my credit card,’ she explained. 

Natalie has used credit cards for eight years, and said the goal should be to spend only what you would ‘spend in cash’.

‘I started by putting what I did daily that was expensive like my food shopping on my credit card and paid it off weekly.

‘The aim is not carrying over the balance and paying it off in full’.

When she did owe money on her credit card, she made a point of not ‘hiding from debt’.

‘It’s different if you’re tens of thousands of pounds in debt,’ she said. ‘But people who can pay off their debt and are avoiding are procrastinating.

‘I think coming up with a plan of how much you can pay now and later re-invest is the best idea when it comes to paying off debt.

‘There’s an emotional side to money and with paying off debt it’s about forward momentum – believing you’re moving in the right direction with repayments.’ 

Natalie also advises against ‘lifestyle creep’ – where discretionary spending increases in line with income, turning former luxuries into perceived necessities.

As a naturally ‘frugal person’ Natalie will always go to the supermarket with a plan of what to buy and ‘got quite strict’ with orders to Deliveroo to help save.

In 2023, she gave up her marketing job to become an influencer and thanks to her financial planning, she was able to buy her apartment in 2025. 

She purchased a two-bed flat for £650,000 – putting down a deposit of £65,000 and paying £5,000 in stamp duty in 2025.

‘It does feel good,’ she said. ‘Honestly, giving away £70,000 feels terrible though.

‘Especially in this day and age it’s not a fun economy, but I’m reminding myself I do have the money it’s just in an asset.

‘Online I’ve had a few comments, one person said about my work that ‘marketing salaries don’t exist on that level’ or ‘I could never hope to earn that much’.

‘I do think money is so emotionally tied and the more I think about it it’s tied to self-belief and confidence and feeling you can ask for more.

‘It’s a fine line between being arrogant and delusional but I think people should be a bit more delusional than they are to believe that more is possible in your career and in life’.