Kerre Woodham: Spend now and pay later at your peril

I was in my early 30s before I owned my own home. Although I was a single parent, raising a child, it could have happened earlier. I earned good money, as a journalist, and my daughter's dad was very supportive.

So I could have scraped together some money for a deposit, and the steep rent I was paying for living in Ponsonby could have gone into a mortgage. But, of course, that would have meant making sacrifices. Saying no to lunches at Prego and dinners at Metropole. Living somewhat more humbly, rather than renting a Ponsonby villa I couldn't afford to furnish. Glassons rather than Zambesi. Simple really. But no.

I made lifestyle choices in my 20s that will impact on my lifestyle when I'm retired and while it was all very fun and fabulous at the time, the price I paid for the high life was ultimately a lot more than the bills presented at the time.

Owning your own home does make a difference. You put down roots. Your lifestyle becomes more settled. You get enjoyment from simple things - the smell of baking filling the kitchen, roses that you've planted and nurtured, flowering in your garden, picking lemons off your own tree.

There are all sorts of surveys that suggest that high home ownership is good for the country. You have more of a stake in the community. Home owners participate in elections. There's less truancy among children who live in their own homes. Of course, economist Gareth Morgan is quite right when he says there's a strong correlation between income levels and health issues, but nonetheless, all things being considered, home ownership, it is generally agreed, is a very good thing. It's just a matter of getting your foot on that first rung. And for a nation that simply doesn't grasp the principles of self-sacrifice and saving, that's going to be very difficult.

As it was, if I hadn't won employment lotto and found myself an Irishman with a dowry, I'd still be dreaming of my acre paradise. A deposit of $50,000 might as well have been $50 million, and while I might have hoped and prayed for a government scheme that would have allowed me to buy my own castle, it would have been nobody's fault but my own if I'd been a renter forever.

There are all sorts of success stories out there of young people who've worked like navvies, eschewed the $4 coffees and the takeaways, delayed their families, and turned a blind eye to the buy-now-pay-later deals on offer all around the city. They've put all their spare cash into a piece of real estate, then another, then another - and now they're sitting pretty.

For those on low incomes, who simply don't have spare cash, rent-to- buy schemes are a great idea, and there are private foundations willing to assist other low-income earners into their own homes. It also makes sense to offer incentives to public service workers like nurses and police officers to help them buy homes where recruiting is a known problem.

But for most of us, the reason we're behind the eight ball, home-ownership wise, is because we're into instant gratification and to buy now and pay later is so much more pleasurable than saving our money. When we drive through city neighbourhoods, looking at homes, and wish that we were lucky enough to own one, we should realise luck has nothing to do with it. Apart from the odd trust-fund baby, and drug dealer, most people did it the hard way. And if we drove home and cooked dinner rather than headed out to the cafe, we might be in one of those homes sooner than we think.