As you may remember back in January I posted about taxes and how much I hate them.
I had three options, remember what they were?
1. Baby.
2. House.
3. Africian Clicky Language.
I can't have 1 without first having 2 and once again I'm kinda scared of 3, so 2 it is.
David and I had our "come to Jesus" moment about our finances and decided it was time to do a 180. We realized we should be saving over a grand a month...and we are now trying (being the key word) to do that.
What does that have to do with my bloggy-mc-blog? Well, my blog is now going to be the adventure of bringing us home...or to our home for that matter. We are not debt-ridden or credit-slaves but on the other hand we aren't home-buying savvy knee deep in the "know" of what to do with thousands of dollars put away. We are just a young couple trying to get home in the WORST housing market since the depression and boy do we want it bad!
So I invite you along on our really crazy journey to buying our first home. We are trying to do it alone (aka no government second loans or friends co-signing) and the right way. We want to be 100% happy with what we buy and we want it to be long term. We've seen quite a few of our friends buy "what they can" just so they can...and you know what? They want out already. It's scary to see that and I don't want to be that way. I want to love my house, work on my house, and eventually start growing our family in that house. I'm so excited that this process has begun that it is literally consuming me day in and day out (don't worry, David supports it!).
Anyway, the market is scary right now for homeowners but great for David and I. We hope to be starting the "buying process" <-whatever that is, at the end of summer/early fall. The third quarter is when the market is supposed to have fallen extremely low which means more types of houses for us to look at assuming banks are terrified to let go of some money. It's kind of scary if you are at the other end of the spectrum. Just the other day I was looking at our condo complex and we have 9, yes you read that right, 9 condos for sale! That number may not be gigantic but in a complex of under 70(ish) thats over ten percent!
If you ever feel like giving us, or me specifically, advice feel free! I love talking to anyone about this and feel like everyone has some sort of input that may help us on our journey. And just so you know I'll try not to make it too boring and still show the cutest pictures of my ridiculously handsome puppy (who is a year old on April 8th!).
Here are the two articles in which I was reading about 2011 housing forecast.
Housing Market Outlook 2011: Unsettled, Underwater, and Unsold
2011 Housing Market Forecast
One thing that helps us to save is an ING account. If you go to ingdirect.com, you can open a savings account that is at about 1%. But the nice thing about it is as we tuck money away in there, we kind of forget about it. Also it takes about a week to get your money out so then you don't spend the money on impulse buys. That's my little tip : )
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