| Brij
Sood
"We
survived on earnings of £8.00 or £9.00 a week. Again
like people from the east, we have it in the blood to save a little
out of what they earn.
We
never forgot that formula, and though my earnings were very small,
and my wife couldn't work because of the baby, if she'd put the
baby in a nursery it would cost even more. So we eventually tried
to save, even if it was only a pound a week, so we saved out of
that. And it was after a year that she started working part time,
and we left our son with a baby-minder, and things became a bit
easier.
We
both worked and saved, and we were able to buy a place in 1969.
So effectively within four years of coming here with only £9.00,
we had saved enough to put a deposit of about twenty per cent on
a place, and we bought our first place in Peckham. It was £2600,
that was the average price of a terrace three bed-roomed house,
yes £2600. And there were a lot of people after the house,
and we were able to put up the highest deposit for the house which
was about £700-£800. The sellers preferred that, the
bigger deposit, and we raised our first mortgage and bought a place."
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