A millennial’s guide to buying a house in your 20s

Hello, JOE's resident millennial here.

As a genuine child of the millennium, I am here to impart my wisdom on those that are failing to reach the impossibly low standards set upon us by our parents. It's exhausting being referred to as a snowflake, we're simply doing our best after the generation before us destroyed the banking sector and housing market in the ultimate act of banter. I've completely bought into the millennial bashing culture. We're all terrible. Frankly, if you don't own a house by the age of 25, you are scum. Make that one into a meme, Banksy. Listen, I get it and I'm here to help. As the owner of approximately 4 (four) organic bananas at present, let me show you the ways of lavish expenditure. What follows is a series of foolproof options that are guaranteed to result in you buying a house in your 20s. Take your pick and best of luck.

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Option 1: Save, save, save! :) This is in relation to all the dank memes you've been creating with your wonderful little snowflake brain. Gail Plait? Fatima Whitbread / Fatima Withoutbread? Positively inspired. When you're done saving and watermarking all those exemplary memes into a special folder called 'Why Does It Always Rain On Meme?', you should really take stock of your finances. If you have anything over £200,000 in your savings account, you're probably doing fine and can just go ahead and stop reading this article. In the very likely event that your savings total a figure far below that amount, you're going to need to start a very advanced saving scheme. For every £1 you earn from now on, you're going to need to put £1 of that into a savings account. Once the interest kicks in, you could be accumulating anything up to .5p a year in total. You're going to have that four bed semi-detached property in Inverness before we hit 2020 if you simply B-E-L-I-E-V-E. B - Be sure to do the lotto. E - Especially the Euromillions because that's where you'll get the most cash. L - Liberty X were a massively underrated band. I - I've run out of corresponding words and letters. E - Everyone likes crisps. V - Valentine's Day. E - Excellent, we're done here.   Option 2: Substitute your daily cappuccino for a robbery :) I've read numerous articles in the past suggesting that if you forego your daily cup of coffee, you'll own a house in no time at all. Having tested that hypothesis, I can confirm that it's absolutely correct and a means of saving that more people should be adopting. Next time you head to your local Coaster or Starbuckaroo, ask the barista if you can order a 'Give me everything in the till or I will shoot you with the gun that's definitely in my pocket'. That's a special code for their secret menu that hardly anyone knows about. The barista will then empty the contents of the till into a paper bag and throw in a lemon and poppy seed muffin for - get this - zero extra cost! You won't have to dip into your pocket once. If you successfully do this every day during your 20s, you're well on your way to getting a house. A handy tip I've learned along the way is to wait until it's late in the evening so the till is really full, although the muffins tend to go a bit stale at this point but simply pop one in the microwave for 20 seconds and it'll taste good as new.   Option 3: Invest all of your acquired money in Frubes Yes, the yoghurt that comes in tubes. Once you've gathered together all of your robbery earnings (as detailed above), simply invest every penny in the financial stability of Frubes. Trust me, it's a no-brainer. Frubes aren't going anywhere. I'm qualified to make that assessment because I've seen Wolf of Wall Street twice and I've also seen that other Wall Street film with Shia LaBeouf. Frubes are the backbone of modern society. There's always going to be a high demand for them, meaning the supply will need to be there forever. They could charge £500 per Frube and we'd still be paying it because at our very core, we are all capitalist yoghurt-obsessed scum. Contact your local stockbroker and put everything on Frubes, then sit back and get an estate agent on the phone. Within minutes, you'll have quadrupled your money. Let it stew for a long as you can, then pounce. You won't believe the house you'll be able to buy within a year or two. 'That's Frube money, surely', people will say as they drive past your obnoxiously large house with a heated outdoor infinity pool.   Option 4: Hold someone important hostage Deciding on the important person is going to be quite tricky here. You want to go for someone famous, but not so famous that they're going to deploy a huge amount of resources into their safe retrieval. All you need is a person in the public eye that someone likes enough to pay money for their life. I recommend a member of Spandau Ballet, or Chesney off Coronation Street. Once you successfully kidnap your celebrity of choice, get a newspaper and cut out your ransom note letter by letter. Don't be afraid to add some splashes of blood from your inevitable paper cuts for dramatic effect. You're going to want to demand a reasonable sum of money, enough to buy a house. I recommend about £500,000 for Chesney or £100,000 per Spandau Ballet band member. Send a letter to their loved ones and keep an eye on your bank account to watch those sweet Ks roll in. In the unlikely event that this doesn't work (perhaps you've chosen poorly and gone with a that guy from the WiMax ads), simply release the celebrity and try again with someone more likeable. Repeat this process until you can afford a house.   Option 5: Go back in time and pull a Zuckerberg Classic millennial reference here, I know. This option is pretty vital if you want to really nail down that property in your 20s. It's also one of the easiest, so shouldn't take long. First, you need to locate your local lunatic scientist. This can be quite tricky, but I've learned that if you follow the smell of sulphur and rotting flesh, it usually leads you to the nearest McDonalds and his laboratory will be across the road. Scientist Simon will have been working on a time machine for the bones of twelve years, so when you arrive it'll surely be ready for the inaugural test run. You're going to want to ask him to send you right back to Harvard in 2004 and make your way into the Winklevoss' friend circle before they approach Jesse Eisenberg. I suggest taking up rowing (the sport, not the practice of disagreeing with people). Get the twins to trust you, buy them a coffee (regular, not the secret menu) and slowly infiltrate their trust. When they confide in you and reveal their plans for Facebook, you can tell them you've been to the year 3000 and not much has changed but they live underwater. They'll be distracted by the Busted song reference, which gives you a window of about 20 minutes to invent Facebook and dash back to the present where you'll be a billionaire and have at least one house. Doubting the validity of this plan? How do you think Mark Zuckerberg became Mark Zuckerberg. Ever heard of Ronald Crumb, the original inventor of Facebook? Exactly.   Option 6: Marry a dying billionaire  Bit of a no-brainer here. Simply find a list of every billionaire over the age of 85 and get to work. I recommend having a quick stalk of their MySpace, sending them an anonymous basket of Frubes (so they know you're familiar with extravagant things) and then slowly but surely weaseling your way into their heart. Don't let the naysayers get in the way, they're just jealous. If you can, get the marriage off the ground pretty quickly, change their will before you exchange your vows and make sure everything is going to be signed over to your name. Then all you have to do is wait. It could be days, weeks, months or even years, but you'll get there eventually. Bonus point if the billionaire has some sort of media mogul, so you can gag the press if they dare say anything negative about your intentions.   Option 7: Play Monopoly, but be really good at it and also a pathological liar Listen, I never said it had to be an actual house. The beauty of playing Monopoly is that you can legitimately describe yourself as a homeowner to strangers and you'll pass that lie detector test nine times out of ten. That's a 90% success rate, pal. Just make sure you actually buy houses in the game itself, also appoint yourself as the banker and slip yourself an extra £100 every time you pass go because it's a difficult job and deserves handsome remuneration. Don't trouble yourself with the hotels, they're more hassle than they're worth. Just get yourself set up with a nice few houses, couple of mortgages and you're sorted. If possible, allow the game to stretch out over the course of several hours or even days so as to avoid returning to the harsh reality that you are and subsequently have nothing. Disclaimer: If you're going to take the game seriously, you must also divulge that you have been to jail when applying for any future employment. Unfortunate, but honest.   Option 8: Stop spending money altogether, you capitalist fuck This one's pretty simple. With the right amount of determination, you can and will purchase a house in your 20s. All it takes is the very achievable practice of never spending a penny ever again, except on an entire house. Say goodbye to all those unnecessary luxuries you've been treating yourself to, such as dinner and transportation. You're a saver now. Let's say you're earning £25,000 per annum. If you manage to save every penny, you could be walking away with an impressive £20,167 after tax. That's enough to buy one tenth of a decent house! Simply repeat the easy peasy process of spending nothing for ten years (ages 19-29) and you're going to own a house, sunshine. Granted you'll look and smell disgusting but at least you'll be doing it in A BIG FUCKING HOUSE THAT YOU OWN. Congratulations, you are a millennial whom owns a house in their 20s.