I met my wife backpacking in Africa (1996) on the Dar-es-Salam to Zanzibar ferry. We are both from poor families. We both had zero savings and were living hand to mouth. We are both New Zealanders. I (carpenter) was stopping in larger towns/cities for a month or so and working keeping expenses low by living in a tent and living off tinned baked beans and then using money I saved to travel for a month; she (freelance travel writer) was doing the same although not living quite as cheaply.

After another few months of backpacking together we moved to London. We rented a shitty room with a shared bathroom and took advantage of that first relationship year where is it just all talking and shagging and saved our money; maybe splurging once a week on beers or a movie. Our entertainment that year was each other and our library cards. We then moved back to NZ and found we had just enough for a 10% deposit on a largish beaten up old house in a rough suburb. I divided that house into three self contained flats and we lived in one and rented the other two to welfare types with the advantage being that the government paid their rent directly to us as it was deducted from their welfare cheques.

Four years later we sold those flats on three separate titles and bought a beaten up house in a nice suburb; now we could afford a 30% deposit. I divided this one in half again and we got tenets for the other side. We lived there for several years - our son was born during this period - before selling up and moving to the UK. In the UK we bought the smallest house in a medieval village that had also been a hoarder home was completely fucked; all the other buyers were scared because of leaking roof, subsidence etc. We paid a 20% deposit. It had one bedroom - where our son slept - and we had a couch that converted to a bed in the living room. It took me five years to get it saleable, working on it on the weekends, and to sell it. Then we bought another small but nicer home in the same street. Now for the first time in our lives we had both our own dedicated bedroom and an entire house to ourselves without tenets in the other half. We were both 39 years old. We also started to take annual holidays, bought our first TV set and finally stopped living like backpackers and joined the human race.

Now we are both 56 and I just finished restoring another late medieval house in our street that we paid for by remortgaging the house we live in. We just had it valued a few months back and if we sold it - currently it is let to a female married couple who are also painting contractors who I work woth all the time - we could be mortgage free on our home. So we finally ‘sort of’ own our own home. We could never have achieved this without all the sacrifices we made of not going into debt and being prepared to live in shitty conditions and on building sites; wife has the patience of a saint. We are the first people in either of our families to ever own a home outright. I am proud of us but it was a fucken hard slog; but we always had each other so were always happy.

To be honest I thought this was all over. But last week my wife showed me an online listing for a very large rundown late medieval/early modern building at the edge of the village that buyers are scared to buy because of subsidence and ill-repair; because of my job I know these things aren’t a big deal; they just mean a lot of labour. With a lot of work it could be a very spacious and luxurious home. I asked her seriously if - now that we have finally entered the middle class - she wanted to go back to living on a building site again. She said she is up for it. So we may be going to start it all over again.