So this whole house hunting thing is becoming a bit more real. I contacted a Realtor, who came recommended by a friend, and she pointed me in the direction of a few different lenders to get my pre-approval letter. Yikes! I’m not worried about getting approved. My credit score is good (though I should recheck that) and I have a solid down payment and a solid job. But it’s still a little scary. I feel like I’m venturing into unknown territory.
Thankfully, I not only have friends who have done this before, but I have very supportive coworkers who are happy to answer questions. It’s still pretty scary to think about though. There’s just so much I don’t know. I am finding myself very thankful for my real estate transactions professor in law school who insisted we be able to read rental contracts and home purchase contracts though!
Megan is a 30-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.
House hunting would be so fun! But yes, daunting at first. I’ve never done it (yet!) but that’s the sort of thing I can’t WAIT to do with my life.
You’ll get approved. Even when I worked for $10/hr ^& my boyfriend had a very, very unsteady job, & we had no downpayment, we got approved for a $310,000 mortgage. We were just looking into it.
I just started looking at your blog, can’t wait to read more 🙂
Good luck! I want to hear all about your house hunting and financing adventures.