Taking a step towards homebuying

Well, I tried to take a step anyway.

I have been looking at local condo buildings online, just to see what’s available and get an idea of how much things cost around here.  My last experience with accompanying someone buying a home was in a very different part of the country, so I’m trying to acclimate myself to the sticker shock.

I found a building not too far from where I live now that looks great online.  It’s new, and they have open hours.  It doesn’t seem to have all the features I want, but it was a good starting point to try to get my baseline.  So I checked their hours, dressed up to make myself not look like a college student (I often get mistaken for someone in her late teens, not someone in her late 20’s), and headed over.

And couldn’t figure out how to get into the building.

Now, I’m not an idiot.  But I couldn’t get in.  The building is secure, which is obviously a good thing.  There’s a call box, but no indication of how to call up to the office.  The sign outside had a phone number.  I called and got the generic “You have reached ###-####. Please leave a message at the tone.”  I wandered around, called the number a few times and nothing.  I pulled out my handy dandy phone and sent an e-mail to the address on the sign.  Then I gave up and went home.  Once home, I used the online form on the website to contact the company.

That was Monday.

This is Thursday.  I still haven’t heard anything.  Now, I’m not in sales, but I would think that if someone wants to buy your product, you are more likely to sell it if you respond to their e-mails.

So I guess I’m going to have to find another place to look.  I’m a little frustrated.  It’s not as if I had my heart set on this place, but I at least wanted to see what was out there, and I want to see how the reality compares to the website.  It would be a great beginning to a baseline.

Oh well.  Back to square one.

Megan Smith

Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:

In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance.  It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information.  It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck.  While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.

While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.

Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.

So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan.  I needed to budget.  I needed to know what I was spending my money on.  I needed to prepare for the future.

I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way.  I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.