Credit Crunch

We're stuck - we can't afford to buy a house, and we can't afford to save up a deposit either.

Darren's 32, I'm 30, we've got great jobs which pay us a combined salary of almost £55,000 a year, but buying the house that we can call home is out of our reach.

The story goes back to leaving home at a fairly young age, by today's standards. Darren moved from Cumbria to Cambridge to start university, and has never lived with his parents since, because they - quite rightly - have always regarded him as an adult, and he's never questioned that he should stand on his own two feet.

I left home for university at 18, went back, moved out again, went back and finally moved out for the last time at 23.

I had a succession of fairly low-paid jobs, although by no means was I regarded by society as having a particularly low income.

Bedsit

I lived in a housing association bedsit at first, which was much nicer than it sounds, then moved to Essex for work, with Darren.

We went on to have to move a number of times for work reasons, plus we were forced to move by two landlords who sold their houses from under us.

All these moves, combined with my very low salary during my time as a trainee newspaper reporter, built up our debts.

Last year we consolidated the lot; overdrafts, credit cards, the dreaded store cards, and previous loans.

Those loans now cost us almost £600 a month, but when we finish paying them, we will be entirely debt free. The promised land.

Daunting

In the meantime, although our bank would agree a mortgage for the value of the house we rent in Biddenham, just outside Bedford, we cannot realistically afford to pay it.

The list of what we would have to pay for if we took on a mortgage now is a bit daunting: we would have to take out a loan to pay a deposit, legal fees and all the fresh air fees that seem to come with buying a house, as well as the consolidation loans we already have, not forgetting the mortgage payments themselves.

All this would add up to hundreds of pounds more than we're paying in rent now for a lovely two-bedroom house with a garage and garden.

The garden's south facing, too, as is the kitchen. We love that house and we've called it home for two and a half years - longer than we've managed to stay anywhere else - but we can't afford to buy it.

Home

We feel at home in Biddenham; Darren plays cricket or the village club, and we've made friends there. We don't want to leave.

We're hoping to save enough for a deposit and all the other fees associated with owning property, and then buy a house in the village.

But - just to slow us down a bit more - we're getting married next year.

All our spare cash is now being ploughed into the wedding of the decade. It won't be a fancy affair, in fact we're quite determined not to get carried away and spend ridiculous amounts of money on details no-one will remember. But it's still all our spare cash between now and then, putting buying a house off the agenda.

We find it frustrating. Occasionally we wonder what we're doing wrong - we work hard, we have good jobs that we've had to work hard to get, we don't live extravagantly, and we don't have any children or even pets.

It's just impossible to buy a house where we want to live. Maybe we should move to a cheaper area, where we might be able to afford a house we wouldn't want to live in?