Want to Save for a House? Be Frugal, Healthy and Smart in the Kitchen

After graduating from university, I felt like I'd won the lottery. I landed a great job, joined a gym and found the perfect apartment close to friends. But I was failing miserably at one thing: budgeting.

In theory I knew how to manage spending, but in practice I was blowing my food allowance too quickly and often on food that added to my waistline without satisfying my appetite. When my fridge was empty, I routinely stocked it with organic greens, which would only rot as I headed out for pub food with friends.

To top it all off, I was starting to dip into my savings to pay for basic expenses. Ugh!

My new focus became eating well and saving for the perfect house, so I decided to take a page out of my daily, get-serious gym playbook and apply it to my budget.

Paying ME First

Living well now and later can be easy when you Pay Yourself First. Instead of making my savings and investments an afterthought, I arranged to have a slice of every paycheque transferred to my investment account as soon as it was deposited. Don't forget, if you commit to saving a percentage of your pay instead of a specific amount, how much you're setting aside will climb when that raise comes your way.

To help carve out the cash I was putting away, I started looking at supermarket flyers and planning weeknight dinners. When there was a bargain on steak, I made tacos and took the leftovers for lunch. If canned tomatoes were on sale, it was time to stock up and freeze containers of homemade spicy pasta sauce for post-workout meals. Not only was I eating better, but was also socking away a portion of every paycheque into a Tax-Free Savings Account. Anything to get me closer to that house!

Paying myself first meant that, because I didn't see the money sitting there, I didn't get accustomed to spending it — and didn't miss it. It's the same reason I stopped buying those expensive packaged cookies. If they were sitting in the cupboard, it was hard to resist the temptation to eat them.

In no time, my diet and new "financial fitness" felt normal, and really not that painful — which I wish I could say about my gym workouts! Some of my favourite foods, like my dad's famous lentil soup, cost just pennies a bowl. I could eat well, save money and still have a little left to join my friends at the pub for happy hour.

Taking Advantage of Dollar-Cost Averaging

I realized that while flipping through supermarket flyers every week was a great way to eat well on a budget, I needed a different course for my investment plan. Since I didn't have a big chunk of cash to invest all at once, my monthly contributions meant I could put dollar-cost averaging to work for me.

Investing a fixed amount on a regular basis—in my case around $200 per paycheque — meant I didn't have to watch the markets hour by hour to determine when the best time to buy or sell was. Prices were higher in some months and lower in others, but the idea was that my average price would generally end up somewhere in the middle overall.

Just like I stocked my freezer when fresh salmon went on sale, I was building up my savings and making my money work harder so I could shorten the journey to my house. It was like having my fish cakes and eating them too.

Our Pre-Authorized Contributions Calculator and goal-setting tool can help you get started and stay focused on saving for your goal.