How to Set Up a Dream Wallet for Your First Home

Setting up a DreamWallet goal for the first time is straightforward. What most people get wrong isn't the setup. It's the decisions they make during it.

Read: How Small Savings Can Become a Real Property Plan 

Before you open DreamWallet, spend some time on the House48 Dream Account. Browse the Marketplace. Save the properties that genuinely represent what you want. Look at the price ranges of those properties across the markets you're considering. The goal you set in DreamWallet should be tied to something you've actually looked at, not a number you estimated in your head.

When you're ready to set the goal, start with the target amount. Work backwards from the property price you've identified. Add a realistic estimate of the additional costs of purchase: legal fees, transfer taxes, and inspection. In most markets, plan for 7 to 10 percent on top of the property price. That's your total savings target.

Next, choose the timeline. How long are you willing to take? The timeline determines your required monthly deposit. Run the maths: total target divided by number of months gives you the monthly amount. If that amount isn't sustainable on your current income, either extend the timeline, target a lower-priced property, or look at a different market where the same budget goes further.

Set the monthly deposit at the sustainable amount, not the aspirational one. A deposit you can maintain for four years is worth more than a larger deposit you abandon after eight months.

Read: How to Make Your DreamWallet Work for a Specific Property Goal 

Then set the automation. The deposit should go out shortly after your income arrives each month. Not a week later, not when you remember. Shortly after. This removes the decision from the equation and protects the deposit from competing with your other monthly spending.

Finally, tell someone. Not because you need accountability in a formal sense, but because making the goal visible, even to one person, makes it harder to quietly abandon.

The setup takes less than twenty minutes. What matters after that is the consistency.

Set up your first Dream Wallet goal at thehouse48.com