A focused young couple

Stuff reports:

When he was 16, Charlie Simmons set himself a goal of home ownership by age 20. At the same age, his now girlfriend, Courtney Morison, had lived in rentals all her life, and never for a moment thought she’d own her own home.

Now, both are aged 19 and about to settle on their first home, a $720,000 house in their home town Taupō.

They saved the $160,000 deposit themselves from their supermarket jobs: Both work at Pak’n Save; Simmons as a grocery supervisor and Morison in the deli.

Simmons, who started his working life with a paper run aged 12, has been working at the supermarket for five years, and saving consistently.

I also started with a paper run (age 10) and started work at Woolworths at age 14. I didn’t;’t save anything like this couple, but I am always grateful to my parents for getting me to start contributing to a savings fund when I was 16.

“All my friends were out buying their fancy cars and whatnot: I just kept saving my money, saving, saving.“

Although he sometimes worked as many as 20 hours a week while a high school student, his grades didn’t suffer: “I finished year 13, I smashed NCEA. I got second to dux at the end of the year.“

20 hours a week while at school is impressive. I worked 4 pm to 5.30 pm every week night, 4 to 9 on Fridays and 9 – 1 Saturdays.

University was an option, but, as Simmons puts it: “I quite like the supermarket industry and I thought I’d do that with my career. I’m hoping to own my own store one day.”

What I like about this is he never say a supermarket job as beneath him or only suitable as an after school job. He made a conscious decision to carry on with it.

Simmons’ parents helped, he says, with discipline, by feeding him, and by allowing the pair to live at home with them, paying $100 a week each in board.

Some people on Twitter have scoffed at this and suggested this is the main reason they were able to save so much. But they are 19, not 25. Many 19 year olds are still living at home and paying zero board.

And they have bigger financial fish to fry in the future. Buying their own Four Square, as a stepping stone to owning a New World supermarket, is in the 10-year plan.

Great ambition.