My last post informed you
on the information I received and cultured at the First Time Homebuyer’s workshop
I attended over the weekend. This post is dedicated to what I have done over
the three days since I published that post.
Amanda and I had a chance to sit down on Sunday night and go
over some of the big stuff I took away from the meeting. A good starting point
is looking at, and fixing up, our credit. Credit is literally a key to all of
the things you want in life, and it’s important to keep it groomed or it can
have an effect on life as you go. It is also important to look at spending and
income or, a budget. These are the things we discussed.
We sat at the kitchen table, each with our own piece of
paper. We wrote down our average net income, and then added it together. We
then wrote down all of our fixed expenses like rent, car payments, and
utilities, etc. And then we figured in our flexible payments like groceries,
credit card bills, and gas. We added them all up and subtracted that number
from our net income which left us with what we have left to buy things we want,
or save. The number was small, and it shrunk every time we thought of some
little expense like garbage which is billed every three months. And it got smaller
and smaller. We were essentially not living within our means, and that is what
we talked about.
We agreed on a budget which is also flexible. And we talked
about what we could do with our credit. Her ex left her credit in shambles and
to say the least it needs work. My credit score is at 720, and I just now (like
this minute) found out I could qualify for a $160,000 loan based on my credit
alone. But this isn’t an “I” adventure, this is us, and I don’t think I’m going
to rush into anything quite yet.
Yesterday I gathered all of the necessary documents and sent
them to the mortgage guy I met at the workshop, and he started crunching the
numbers which resulted in the information I received in the paragraph above.
And yesterday, we walked and drove around to look at some
houses in the area after we checked them out online. The two that we really
loved had been sold with no reference to that on the website. But we know we
are going to fall in love with many houses before we find our home, and there
will be much consideration and thought before this becomes final. So much has
happened over the past four days, I can’t imagine what this next year has in
store for me.
Here’s one of the greatest things I gleaned from the
seminar: it’s a lot easier to save money if you treat savings as a bill—it has
to get paid. This way it’s in the budget, and you can forget about it. It’s
gone, until it’s needed.
