Richie and Esther Tikolevu with their children at their new Islington home. Front row, from left, Ricattaleya, 4, Ronaldo, 2, Ricardo, 7. Back row, Raquel, 8, left, Rochelle, 6, and RJ, 9.

Buying your first home has never been tougher. In this On the ladder series, Stuff talks to Kiwis who've made it onto the property ladder and others who, by choice or not, are still renting.

It took Richie Tikolevu and his wife Esther six years to save up for their first home – that's one year for each of their children.

The couple saved hard, cutting costs everywhere they could – even cooking on a gas hob rather than using the expensive electric stove. A $23,000 gift from Tikolevu's parents helped, but with six little ones, it still wasn't easy to scrape together a deposit.

Last week the hard work paid off. The 34-year-old truck driver and his family have moved into their first home in Islington, Christchurch.

"It's good to move into your own home," he says from the roadside somewhere between Christchurch and Invercargill. "It's a wonderful feeling to just know that it's yours."

Have you got a story to share about either getting on, or being kept off, the property ladder? Email homed@stuff.co.nz

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While Tikolevu's working, Esther, 32, a homemaker, Ronaldo, 2, Ricattaleya, 4, Rochelle, 6, Ricardo, 7, Raquel, 8, and RJ, 9, are back home sorting out the house – no small task when you've got eight people's things to unpack.

"There were certainly a lot of belongings to take across."

Their new three-bedroom home cost the family $450,000. It has a conservatory, a pergola, and a garage that's ripe for converting into a sleepout for family and guests. But above all, it comes with peace of mind for the family's only breadwinner.

What it didn't come with was any additional debt other than the mortgage: The Tikolevus don't have a credit card and never have, a fact so astounding to their mortgage broker, Nathan Miglani, it prompted him to write us a letter about it.

"I genuinely feel that people need to know their story," Miglani wrote. "They worked hard to save a deposit, used their KiwiSaver, had absolutely no debts at all and finally they are moving into their first home."

Originally from Suva, Fiji, Tikolevu had tried on numerous occasions to get a mortgage, but it wasn't until Miglani went into bat for him that he was able to secure one.

"I'd been with our bank for at least 10 years but they turned me down flat. I don't blame them – I have six kids.

"When I approached Nathan, he said, 'I'm just worried ... do you have any debt?' I said I don't and he was really pleased to take me on board. In three or four weeks we got our mortgage approval."

Excited, Tokolevu started looking for a house straight-away, but they kept being gazumped by higher offers.

"We were constantly just hunting. My maximum was $450k, so even if a property was $400, I'd offer $450. But someone would come in and offer $480 or $500. I was gutted. I thought, 'I won't have a chance here'.

"I was in Fiji the week my wife found the property we got. Esther called me and said 'I've found a property, do you want me to act on our behalf?', and I said: 'if you're happy with the property I'm happy with it'. After all, happy wife is a happy life."

Tikolevu came to New Zealand when he was 21 to study. At Polytech, he met Esther and he's been here ever since. They make a good team.

"It is hard having six kids, but we always tried to make sure we lived within our means. We tried not to purchase on finance or borrow a lot of money or purchase anything we couldn't afford.

"We opened savings and Kiwi saver accounts for our children and ourselves. We were just more into saving money than spending it on things that we couldn't afford."

A lot of their savings came from home-cooked meals – "it means you know that's it's good food, it's healthy" – never having a credit card, buying affordable cars and even cooking with gas.

"We bought a little gas burner to use because power bills were one of the major expenses. We brought them down to about $80 [a month] during winter, even further down to about $60."

They made sure their new home would be double glazed and have a log burner.

"The last place didn't, so it was pretty cold and we had to get gas heaters, which wasn't a healthy option but it did the job."

Tikolevu has advice for other prospective first-home buyers: "Just everything you do, try to keep within your price range.

"Eliminate as many unnecessary expenses as you can and avoid paying interest. Rather than investing in paying other people off, invest in saving your money. That's going to you, it's yours and when you have it in the bank it accumulates as well."

Though their mortgage repayments are less than they had been paying in rent (about $460 a week in their old place) Tikolevu will keep paying the mortgage at that rate, to make a bigger dent in it. Now that he's on the ladder, he's looking ahead to ways he can he can secure his children's future.

"My mortgage broker told me he has a lot of clients who mortgage another property after five years and rent it out while they keep paying off the original property. In another five years they buy another property and build it up. I think I'll take that idea on board. Just for the future of our children, so they will have something."