Oh.

Just heard on the morning news:

• First time buyers of homes has fallen by 2/3.

• First time buyers must come up with a 25% deposit. The average house price being £165,000, that means the deposit is on average £38,000.

• The era of the 100% mortgage is gone. The 75% mortgage is here to stay.

• The average age of the first time buyer is 35.

All of this means to me we are never, ever going to be able to afford a property. Our entire combined savings of the last 7 years is not enough to pay the deposit, much less the duties and all the costs associated with moving and setting up a new household. At the rate we're saving, I'll be in my mid 50s before we can even meet the deposit--and who knows how much a deposit will be by then. We cannot save at a higher rate than we are. I am already putting nearly a third of my take home pay in savings. We can't help it if our earnings are not very high.

I feel quite despondent about this, not because I particularly want to own a home, but because I am concerned about where we are going to live after we are no longer able to work. The savings we have now are being built up with a view toward pensions investments, not down payment on a house. And there's not enough there for that. Our pension gap is enormous.

I wonder where we are going to live and how we are going to live when we get too old to work. There are no children to take care of us or take us in.

I still have at least 25 years left in my working life to sort out the best thing we can figure out.