When furnishing your new home on a tight budget, it's wise to go for the minimalist look. Photo: Warren Goldswain - How to budget for buying a new home as a DINK couple
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If you’ve been a dedicated enough saver to get onto the property ladder, kudos to you!
I’m sure you’d now love to head out to all the fancy furniture shops and buy up big to get your new home looking just perfect, but with a restricted budget that’s impossible. Don’t worry – there are so many affordable options now and it’s better to buy cheap anyway so you can change it up when you want to, especially since fashions are so fleeting.
Buying more affordable items makes life a little less stressful too, especially if you have children, as they’ll inevitably smear their dirty fingerprints over your expensive white Jasper couch from King Furniture or knock over your most precious vase, smashing it into a thousand pieces (speaking from personal experience).
When looking to furnish on a budget, it’s wise to go for the minimalist look. Less is more, right? Our homes look so much better without clutter – and the bonus is that it’s apparently calming for us. But you will need some furniture, with the first items on your list being the essential whitegoods, followed by major pieces such as a couch and dining table.
The first port of call should be asking family and friends if they have any unwanted furniture – remember, retro is chic these days, so if your parents have any old couches, it might work well.
When looking to furnish on a budget, it’s wise to go for the minimalist look. Less is more, right?
Think artistically when it comes to decorating – many designers consider everyday items such as clothes, shoes, books and magazines to be accessories, but it’s all in the way you display it. You can also use plants – ask around to see if anyone can give you some pups to put in cheap pots – you can pick them up for less than $10.
Italian label Gedebe’s jewel-encrusted slip-ons: Many designers use shoes, clothes and books as accessories.
Photo: Jennifer Soo
You can also try to find treasures in items people leave out for council kerbside collections.
Other options for second-hand furniture – at a low cost – are dedicated shops, garage sales or online classified sites such as Gumtree. Some people even give their furniture away as part of a recycling initiative – check out sites such as Freecycle or Oz Recycle.
If you want to buy new furniture, consider cheaper options such as Fantastic Furniture, Ikea or Aldi’s furniture specials. For whitegoods there are always sales in electronics and appliance stores, so look out for bargains.
For accessories, there are many great budget options in department stores such as Target and Kmart or even bargain shops – you just have to pound the pavement to find what you’re after.
If you have a creative side, consider DIY for accessories. There are so many online tutorials and home improvement shows that will teach you how to make homewares on a budget. You can even paint your own pictures or print out some personal photos and put them in homemade photo frames to decorate the walls.
Perhaps my best piece of advice is to only buy items when you can afford them. Remember, generations before us sat on the floor to eat and fashioned tables out of cardboard boxes when they bought their first home because they couldn’t afford furniture. They didn’t use credit cards or borrow more money to fund purchases, avoiding years of extra debt. They continued saving and went without until they could afford to buy what they needed, and – shock horror – they got by just fine in the meantime.
It may be tempting to enter into a “no deposit, interest free” purchase contract with a furniture store, but beware of the fine print. You’ll end up paying more, especially if you don’t pay it out in full by the end of the interest-free period, with interest charged at rates of about 25 per cent a year.
Likewise, try to avoid renting whitegoods as it’ll cost you much more over time.
