While many twentysomethings are struggling to get on the property ladder, one young woman hopes to be mortgage-free by 40.
Martha Collins, now 24, bought her first home with her partner Harry at just 23, having “saved every penny possible through apprenticeships, part-time jobs and full-time work”.
After moving into their £137,500 terraced home in January 2025, the couple, who met at a house party eight years ago, considered overpaying their £130,625 mortgage. However, they felt it simply wouldn’t be feasible while undergoing a full house renovation. It turned out, they were mistaken.
One year after their big move, events professional Martha happened across the free mortgage app Sprive while browsing TikTok, and decided to give it a try.
While Martha, from Liverpool, initially thought the app was “too good to be true”, she says it has transformed the way that the couple manage their finances.
This service allows homeowners to earn cashback on everyday purchases from household-name brands such as Morrisons, Costa Coffee, Primark and Uber, putting these rewards directly towards mortgage overpayments.
All shoppers have to do is select the brand and enter the value of their shopping before checkout. They are then shown the amount credited to their account, and hit ‘pay now’ to authorise the transfer through their banking app.
Following successful payment, the customer receives a voucher to pay for the goods. Rewards are credited to the user’s account within a couple of hours, allowing them to pay funds to their lender with just “one tap”.
Martha told the Mirror: “I think what we love about Sprive is the overpayment. It’s not coming directly out of your bank. Even though you’re still paying for the voucher through your food shopping, you’re not necessarily transferring £50, £100 out of your actual bank. You’re just making it back in cashback.
“We both absolutely love using the app, and we both are on it now. So every little shop that we’re going to or place that we might be going, Odeon or things like that, we’ll just make sure to check if it’s on the app first, so we can download our voucher and do it through there.”
This means that whenever the pair do their food shopping at Tesco, they are taking steps towards paying off their mortgage.
So far, Martha and Harry have overpaid more than £800, helped along by £712 through weekly prize draws. Based on their current usage, the couple hope to save themselves around £30,000 in interest, and are on track to be mortgage-free by their early 40s.
“I’m very conscious that we do have this 40-year-long mortgage, which seems like we’re never going to be able to pay it off,” Martha added. “So just having those little incentives where you can pay a little bit more off makes us feel like we’re doing the right thing.”
A proud self-described “spreadsheet girlie”, Martha is the financial anchor of the relationship. “I’m very much the one who sorts out the finances in our relationship,” she told. Each month, she keeps everything logged in a meticulous budget spreadsheet, so she is constantly aware of where her money is going.
Nowadays, she shares her experiences of being a first-time buyer renovating her home on Instagram and TikTok at @marthcollinshome. Aimed at fellow young buyers, Martha speaks openly about the realities of being a homeowner – from costs of renovation project, to hunting down interior design bargains.
The couple are currently set to complete the upstairs of their house in August, once their bathroom is finished.
Martha credits their parents parents for helping them become financially aware from a young age, with the couple getting used to paying for groceries and bills while living together at her mum’s house. “I think we always knew that we wanted to buy a house,” she reflected.
“We didn’t want to move out and rent, and I think we were just committed to that goal. And having that goal in the end sight really made us sort of not sacrifice anything, but be a little bit more careful with what we were spending our money on.”
While their financial maturity is impressive, Martha – who notes none of her friends are in a similar position – acknowledges that she has been incredibly fortunate. Neither she nor Harry, an assistant supervisor in a manufacturing company, has any hefty student loans to pay off, having decided university wasn’t the right path for them.
“I think we’ve got to acknowledge that we are in a lucky position not to have debt from university,” she explained. “I did an apprenticeship, Harry went straight into work, so we do acknowledge that when we look at our position and the savings that we made while we were still living at home and not out renting.”
Their experience stands out against a challenging backdrop for young buyers. Government data highlights that 11.5 per cent of first-time buyers are now 45 years old or over – nearly triple the figure recorded just five years ago.
With almost one in three first-time buyers choosing mortgages of 35 years or more, it’s expected that two-thirds will still be making payments into their 60s. As the cost-of-living crisis continues, staying educated on matters of personal finance is more crucial than ever.
“I’d just say strip it down to the basics and look at where your money actually is going,” Martha said.
“It might be going on subscriptions or things that you don’t know that it’s actually going on. So just strip it right back down to the basics and work with what you’ve got as well. Obviously, it’s a really tough climate that we’re living in, so just work with what you’ve got and with the prices of things.”
As for the first thing she plans to buy once she is finally mortgage-free?
“A holiday. I need a holiday,” Martha laughed. “We’ve had to sacrifice that this year, which obviously we’re lucky to be able to go on holiday anyway, but that’s a sacrifice we’ve had to make this year. Hopefully, in 40 years I will have had a holiday!”
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