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gazelle intense

My life is about to get very… different for a while.

So everybody knows that now is a great time to buy a house since the entire real estate market is on sale. But only if you have a nice down payment and a pile of cash sitting around for emergencies, otherwise home-ownership will be a curse and not a blessing. Believe me, we’ve lived the curse side of things, twice. Zero down, interest only, 2/1 ARM with a balloon. Ya baby, you name the stupid mortgage feature, we signed up for it. The reason we had to get all “creative” was because WE HAD NO BUSINESS BUYING A HOUSE. I barely made any money, Missy was at home with a new baby, we were a mortgage industry meltdown waiting to happen.

Thankfully, God intervened and introduced us to Dave Ramsey’s material and turned a spotlight on our stupid behavior. We were able to sell the house 1) before the market took it’s dive, and 2) before our rate adjusted and drove us to bankruptcy.

So needless to say, we are NOT going to go out of order of the baby steps to buy a house, no matter how good the market is. We had a goal to finish off the last $35k of our $235k in debt in 2009, then get our 3-6 months of expenses in the bank, then save a down payment.

Well my wife’s parents want us to get in on this down market. Alot. So much so that they’ve offered to let us live with them rent free so we can accelerate through the last of our debt and get into our own house ASAP.

At first, the thought of moving in with my in-laws at the age of 29 with a 4 year old seemed crazy. We laughed. We chuckled. Then we paused. Thought. Prayed. Considered. Prayed again. Debated. Ate a pizza. Prayed again. In the end, the only thing that was in the way of this being the right thing to do was my pride. “How can I tell my friends that I’m going to be turning 30 while living with my in-laws?”

Here’s the way I see it. This is what we should have done when we got married. Save money, live within your means, and buy when you can afford it. Instead, we got married and 2 months later, on a $27k salary, built a brand new house, got 2 car loans, credit cards, and student loans. Now we’re paying the price, having to live like no one else (in their right mind) so later we can live like no one else.

If all goes as planned, we’ll be out of debt this year, have our FFE saved, and be house hunting with a nice big down payment in time for our 10th wedding anniversary next June. And man will we have a great get-out-of-debt story to tell when we’re leading FPU classes.

Tags: buying a house, paying off debt

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 12:16 pmand is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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