Tuesday, September 21, 2010

First offer on a house FAIL!

I haven't blogged in a while. Partly because we've been pretty busy looking for a house and with work and partly because I haven't had much to say, or at least anything that would be interesting to the two followers I have! :) (Thanks for following ladies!)

On Sunday, The Husband and I went to the first of 5 houses we had scheduled to look at that afternoon...and we fell in love! We walked around, talked about ideas and then went outside and found the most awesome, most beautiful backyard we'd seen at any of the houses. We both knew this felt like home. We went to look at the other houses, or as our realtor put it "Let's go look at the other dumps" - HA! None of lived up to the first house and we kept comparing them all to the first one. We asked if we could go back to look one more time. Afterward, we went home with the intentions of putting in an offer in the morning.

After speaking to our mortgage guy, he told us he'd need the most current paystub from each of us. Since we are living in a temporary home at the moment, I leave all my paystubs at work...in a city that is about a 35-40 minute drive with morning traffice. First FAIL! We had to drive to my city of employment and all the way back, just to grab my paystub. You can be sure those babies will be coming home with me from now on.

After meeting with the mortgage guy, we booked it to our realtor's where we found out there was another offer coming in as well. We decided on our best possible offer, wrote a schmaltzy letter about us and how much we'd been looking forward to buying our first home together since meeting and how we'd fallen in love with their home and how beautifully they'd cared for it and sent them both off by fax. That was at 1:50pm. Almost exactly 2 hours and 40 minutes later, my husband got THE CALL. Turns out the other offer was a FULL CASH offer and they decided to accept it. However, the agent made sure to tell us that the sellers "really appreciated the letter and would've taken our offer if the other one hadn't been cash." Yeah, thanks. I feel SO much better now.

We are so disappointed and upset. Everything we find that we really like either already has an offer on it or it's out of our price range. The ones we are finding are outdated and not exactly the location we want. I am getting so stressed that we'll never find something we love and will want to live for years to come.

Back to the drawing board.

What about you guys? How have your house hunts gone? Any advice?

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Lean with Green?

*I apologize in advance if this post is all over the place. It's kind of how my mind works sometimes.

The Husband and I have always been spenders. When we were single, we didn't have to worry about someone else or a family and now that we are married, we have a big enough income to do the fun things we enjoy doing as well as pay the bills every month. However, that was when our mortgage was low and our bills weren't too bad. Now that we are looking to purchase a home in the next few months, things need to change, but I'm afraid we won't be able to make the changes. We are so used to spending our money instead of saving.

The Husband and I don't go on extravegant trips, we don't eat at expensive restaurants, we don't go to a lot of concerts (maybe 2-3 each year), we rarely go to the theater, I don't get my nails done every week, we don't drink overpriced coffee from Starbucks, I try to go to the library for books instead of buying, I rarely buy cds and we don't go to a ton of movies. What we spend money on is shopping (clothes, bags, home decor and groceries) and going out to eat. Those are the things we enjoy spending our money on. Obviously we are enjoying it a little too much :)

Along with the cost of moving and paying to get out of condo when it sold back in June, we also had quite a few unexpected expenses over the past four or five months that ate away at the small amount of savings we'd accumulated. Now we are back to where we were four months ago, with a small savings, but I don't feel it's enough. We need to put more away each time a paycheck comes in. We are trying our best to cut back and decided to cancel our vacation to Sunset Beach, North Carolina in 2 weeks. We hate to do it, but my husband is in a line of work where he's not lucky enough to get paid vacation like me. If he doesn't work, he doesn't get paid. And when you're trying to save up money, that doesn't help. At least when I take vacation and spending money, I'm making it at the same time.

Every few weeks, I get super stressed out about money. I get an anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach and I feel my heart start to beat harder and faster. It's not that we don't have enough money to pay the bills and also enjoy doing fun things. It's that we don't have a big enough savings. I mean, you never know when something's going to come up - like a car repair, a house repair or a sick dog (one of those unexpected expenses over the last four months). Plus, when we finally do get into a house, we're going to need things, like a lawn mower, yard supplies, and whatever else. I know we'll be able to afford a nice house in a comfortable (for us) price range. We are both very adament that we don't spend past our means and get some ridiculously huge house that we can't afford. However, affording it means cutting way back on all the fun things we enjoy doing now, such as going out to eat, movies, shopping, concerts, trips, etc.

We've definitely improved over the last few months, spending half as much and putting the other half away. I am looking into getting a second job to help as well, but I still feel like there is more we can do. I don't feel that we are giving it our best shot at putting money away. I can't help it, I still enjoy shopping and going on trips.

I am going to NYC with my mother at the beginning of November. I am lucky in that she is paying for most of the trip and we have free airline tickets to use to get there and back. All I really pay for is the extras - shopping mainly. I also have an opportunity to go to Disney World in October for a few days for a reunion with some of my sorority sisters. Again, airfare would be free (we have extra tickets to use) and since two of my sisters work at Disney, hotel rooms will be pretty inexpensive and tickets will be either free or very cheap. They've asked me to go every year, and every year I've said no. Now I have these free airline tickets and really want to go. What do I do?!?! The husband has said I can go, but I feel so guilty! He stays at home and works and I go and play?

How do we find a balance? Not just a balance, but a good balance? A balance between saving and spending, but still doing these fun things that come around? What do you do to save money? Where/how do you cut back?