A common theme since deciding to buy a home has been "don't give up."
It's all to easy to look at the economy and decide to horde your pennies for a rainy day...to look at those student loans and bank statements and just think that you'll never get there. Or you live in an area like southwestern CT and home prices are through the roof so you think you'll never break into the market without a winning lotto ticket. It can be infuriating when you are doing everything 'right' but it still just isn't enough.
Don't give up.
Work hard. Save what you can. If your income changes keep your spending the same and put the rest away. When I finished nursing school I went from being a nurses aid to a registered nurse and my income more than doubled. We resisted the urge to move and splurge on a nicer apartment closer to work and instead funneled the extra dough toward paying off debt and filling the savings account. After a year and a half I'd paid an extra 5k off of my loans and saved 10k. Plus I did have to buy a (used!) car during that time, so we did have one new monthly expense. The easiest way I've found to save is to set up automatic deposits to your savings account on payday. That way the money just goes away before you've even seen it. I've gradually increased the weekly deposits and it's amazing what a difference its made. Even if you only do $25 dollars a paycheck over the course of the year it adds up!
Now, not everyone can make a major career change and there's no guarantee of a pay increase so if your income doesn't change look at cutting corners where you can. Tip: Don't buy snacks/drinks from vending machines! I'm still amazed at how much Jim and I wasted on buying soft drinks and waters at work. Now we try to keep a stash of drinks in our respective lockers/offices so we're not always throwing money away at a $1.50 to $2.50 a bottle. It helped a ton when we were living on my student income.
The other thing I learned was to keep your options open. Jim and I looked at 100's of houses online and more than a dozen in person before finding the one we loved. Our search area was huge and we didn't turn down houses that didn't fit in the 'dream house' criteria list. We knew we were looking for something with privacy (my number one requirement!) Hopefully 3 bed/2bath. Garage maybe? Open floor plan? More than that and we had no idea but we looked at anything in our price range. We weighed whether we wanted a move in ready house or a fixer upper. Did we want something small and perfect or roomy and dated? One level or two? Lake community?
Then we met with a mortgage guy at the local community bank and talked though our financing options and learned that there were many more choices out there than you find online. Even for people in the low income end of the spectrum. I was actually stunned to learn what we could afford.
After all of that was the actual home buying process. We found a house (which ironically belonged to the mother-in-law of our former realtor, can you say awkward?!) fell in love and then there was the tumultuous home inspection process in a 30 year old home. One inspector, two contractors, a structural engineer, a radon repair crew and an exterminator later we had agreed on a price. It. was. ridiculous. But finally, we had a closing date. That fateful day when your bank accounts cry but you drive home with keys. I'll spare you all the details of the closing... it included lots of paper signing and check writing and bank documents and at the end of it all we were homeowners.
The moral of it all? Don't give up!
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