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9 Helpful Tips You Need To Know When Buying A Home

March 6, 2017 By Thinking of Someday

9 Helpful Tips You Need To Know When Buying A Home

1. Make A List: Must Haves vs Nice To Have

Make a list of your must haves vs nice to haves.  However, remember to be flexible, to an extent, once you start to look at homes.  When we made our list for our first home we focused on our must-haves.  As we started to view homes we realized that although some things were must-haves, if the home didn’t have every single must-have then that was ok as long as it was something we were willing to compromise on for that particular house.  For example, we wanted an open-concept house, but the home we bought is not completely an open-concept.  Yet, it is open enough that it wasn’t a deal breaker for us.

Make sure to take into consideration how many bedrooms or extra rooms you will really need.  You don’t need a lot of rooms if you have no use for them.  However, you don’t want to buy a house and realize you have come up short because you didn’t take into account needing a room for an office or once you decide to expand your family, now you don’t have a guest room.

Try to think ahead: Is your family going to be growing?  Do you want or need a basement or a bonus room?  Does your wife/husband want to be a stay at home parent meaning you can only take on so much mortgage?

Other things to consider when making your list is

  • location
  • distance from your job
  • school ratings,
  • and distance from interstate and major highways if used frequently.

2. New Build vs Established Neighborhood vs Fixer-Upper

There are pros and cons to each.  With a new build, you might be able to pick your floor plan as well as certain finishes.  You might even be able to pick your lot.

With an established neighborhood it’s kind of like what you see is what you get.  However, this might not be a bad thing because you will be able to see what the neighborhood is already like.  For example, do people tend to keep their grass cut?  Are people constantly parking in the street?  Does it seem like people are taking pride in their neighborhood or do they not care?

If you’re considering a fixer-upper, then there are basically two types –
  1. the one that needs to be completely gutted and finished before moving in, and
  2. the one that is practically move-in ready, but needs some updating to suit your taste.
With either of these, you will have to take into consideration your budget and if you can afford to fix up a house.  You should factor these costs into your budget along with the time frame it will take to get these things done.  Also, keep in mind that just because you can’t afford one fixer-upper doesn’t mean you can’t afford a fixer-upper at all.  You just have to choose something within your budget.

As much as we are into budgeting, we didn’t quite consider the money it would take to update our entire house.  However, it’s working out for us. It’s taking us a little longer than we expected, but that’s because we pay cash for everything.

3. Set Your Budget

Determine what your budget for your house should be and be realistic about it.  And if you’re not doing an actual budget then now is the time to start – before you buy a house that is.  If you need a budget template to use then check out the different ones available in the shop and check out this blog post to help you get started.

Things that you should take into consideration when determining your budget are
  • any current bills/debt that you now have,
  • utilities for the new home, and
  • any other expenses that you pay on a regular basis (i.e. gas for your car, groceries, Netflix, etc.).
You don’t want to assume what you can afford for a mortgage.  You want to be 100% sure.  It would suck to buy a home and realize later you can barely make ends meet because you didn’t take all your expenses into consideration beforehand.

Once you evaluate your budget and start to look at houses, you might realize that your must-haves don’t fit into your budget.  This is when you have to be honest with yourself and re-evaluate your list of must-haves.

4. Spend Less Than The Bank Approves You For

If I remember correctly back in 2013 we were approved for $300K+ for a 30-year mortgage.  We didn’t have any business with a $300K mortgage.  The mortgage company isn’t considering your future financial plans or obligations when they approve you for a mortgage amount.  They don’t consider that you plan on having children and may need to pay for childcare.  They aren’t considering that you need to invest for college for your kids or that you need to invest for your future or even that you want to pay it off before the mortgage term.  You have to think about your future and the life you want for yourself, and then dictate what mortgage fits into that plan.  You don’t want to be house poor.

side note – You also want to make sure you have a good realtor.  You don’t want someone who is pushy and just trying to close the deal on the most expensive house that you are approved for.

When we had discussions about how much of a mortgage we wanted one of the most important items we discussed was how we would continue to pay the mortgage in situations where one of us couldn’t earn an income.  Basically, we wanted a mortgage, that in emergencies, one income could support.  We paid a little more than half of what the mortgage company approved.  Little did we know that that decision would allow Kim to virtually be a stay at home mom.  Also, since our mortgage is so low compared to what we were approved for,  it makes the idea of paying it off a little easier to wrap our minds around.

9 Helpful Tips You Need To Know When Buying A Home

5. Include Investing Goals When Setting Your Budget

Baby Step 4 of Dave Ramsey’s plan is to invest 15% of your income for retirement.  When we got our mortgage this baby step wasn’t even on our radar.  To be honest, looking back, I’m not even sure why we didn’t think about it.  It might have been because we had a little bit of debt at the time, and we weren’t fully committed to the baby steps.  Once we were out of debt and looking at baby step 4 we realized that getting to the 15% was going to be more difficult than we thought.  That’s when we realized that this would have been a good conversation to have while we were going through the house buying process.  This is tough.  It’s tough because it may affect the amount of house you can buy.  It’s hard to sacrifice your today for 20 or 30 or even 40 years in the future.  The truth is that the 15% that you invest over that time period is going to be what provides for you when you don’t want to work or physically can’t work anymore.  It’s just as important as the house you are buying today.

  • read: Is Investing Really That Hard?

6. Get A 15-Year-Mortgage

This is another one we got wrong.  We went with the 30-year mortgage.  Our thought was that if we got into an emergency having a smaller mortgage would help to ease the pain.  Also, we promised ourselves that we would pay extra on the mortgage…eventually.  Welp, in the 2 1/2 years we had that mortgage we never paid extra on it once, and we only paid off $6K in principal.  We refinanced to a 15-year mortgage at the beginning of 2016 and paid off $6K in principal in about 8 months.  If you compare the total costs of a 15-year and 30-year mortgage you end up paying a lot more interest on the 30-year mortgage. We originally justified getting the 30-year mortgage to help with emergencies, but you can offset this simply by building your emergency fund to more than 6 months.  It doesn’t make sense to pay all that additional interest to help with emergencies when you can build up your emergency fund to offset the risk.  And yes, you won’t be able to get as much house with a 15-year mortgage.  In response, I asked myself these questions: “What do you want more – to get to financial freedom sooner or a bigger house?”

  • read: Mortgage Term: 15 Or 30 Years A Slave?

7. Visit The Neighborhood At Different Times Of Day

Once the offer was accepted on our house it was becoming more and more real that we might actually be living in that neighborhood.  With us being first time home buyers we were very excited but nervous as well about making the right decision.  One thing we did to try to put our minds at ease was to visit the neighborhood several times during our due diligence period.  We had already visited the neighborhood during the day with our realtor.  We also decided it was best to visit the neighborhood in the evening (closer to night time) and on the weekend because this is when most people are home.  This way we could get a better feel for the neighborhood and somewhat the people in the neighborhood.

8. Set Aside Extra Money

When we bought our home there were a ton of things that we knew we wanted to do.  Some were needs to us and some were definitely wants.  For example, Kim hated the idea of using the toilets that were in our home.  They were dingy and ugly, to say the least.  After replacing them we found out that they were actually refurbished toilets.  We made sure we had some cash in addition to our down payment and emergency fund so we could replace those toilets amongst other things.

Having that extra cushion to make your new house feel more like home is definitely worth it.

  • read: Why An Emergency Fund Is A Must-Have

9. Don’t Feel The Need To Do Everything Right Away

We get it.  You bought a new home and feel the need to make it “yours” right away.  However, we’re here to tell you that you don’t have to do everything at once.  It’s ok to take your time.  Sometimes it’s even better to live in a space for awhile to see exactly what it is that you want and what it is that you like.  For example, we didn’t buy all new furniture right away once we moved into our house.  For one, it wasn’t in the budget, and we had some perfectly good hand me downs.  When we did talk about the furniture we discussed getting a sectional in the living room.  After living in our space we have come to realize that we don’t want a sectional in our living room.  A sectional will appear too big in our space and cut off one of our walkways that we like to use.  If we had bought a sectional right away or shortly after moving in, then we would’ve been stuck with it until it was no good anymore!

I recommend making a list of the things that you feel the need to do right away vs the things that can be done later on.  And once again remember to be flexible and mindful of your budget as you might have to reevaluate your list.  When we were waiting to close on our house we made our list of everything that needed to be done.  Some things took precedence over others.  For instance, we had to remove some wood alongside the house that was rotting and attracting termites.  And then we had to put down sod.  This took quite a bit of time and work, but Omar was adamant that it had to be done because we didn’t want termite problems.  However, I wasn’t exactly thrilled that I had to wait another week or two to get blinds just because we didn’t have the time to work on it nor did we have all of the money to purchase the blinds.  In the end, it all worked out though because we weren’t living in the house at this point anyways.

Hopefully, these tips have been and will be helpful.  If you are starting your house buying journey, do you plan to use any of these tips? If you have already bought your house, did you use these tips or similar tips? Did you make any mistakes along the way? What were they and were you able to fix them? 

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Filed Under: Life + Home Tagged With: home tips

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thinkingofsomeday

As of 1/8/2022, it’s been one year since we beca As of 1/8/2022, it’s been one year since we became mortgage free. What better way to celebrate than a date night in our paid off home?! 😏
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So how does it feel?
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Financially, we invested the most money we've ever invested. We also increased our lifestyle a bit as well to keep a healthy balance.
 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Kim’s Perspective: 
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It’s been great. For the longest it felt surreal and unbelievable that we actually did it. I never really worried about paying off the mortgage because I knew that worst case scenario, it would be paid off in 15 years, which would’ve been when we were 45 (and that’s not a bad age at all). However, it’s been nice to know that it’s not something that Omar is stressing over anymore. And since it was one of his biggest dreams/goals, it’s nice knowing that I was able to support him 100% of the way in making this happen for us and our family. I’m glad this is something he wanted to pursue and that I was actually on board with it. What I’ve enjoyed most about it is being able to spend more money (of course 😆) because a lot of things were put on hold while we focused on the payoff. So now I feel like I’m at that point where I can make our house more of a home for us. It literally feels like we’re in a new space (mentally and physically) and we’re loving it.
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Omar’s Perspective:
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This past year has probably been the best year I've had in life. I've been the least stressed I've ever been, but took on the most responsibility at work I've ever taken on which lead to a promotion and an increase in income. This boggles my mind as more responsibility at work usually means more stress. I feel like I’ve been able to focus on other areas of my life more (my health/weight as well as making more of an effort to maintain my relationships with friends/family). Most importantly, I realize the strength of my marriage.  With the state of dating/relationships these days, I realize I won the lottery with Kim.  She's an amazing wife and mother. We've always had a good relationship but we're stronger than ever.  We started from the bottom now we're here (in my Drake voice). 🎶 #thislifeafterdebt
After taking some time to think about what we want After taking some time to think about what we wanted to focus on for this year, we decided that our word for the year is health.
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Overall we both want to continue making healthier choices when it comes to eating. And we both want to focus on exercising more than we have in the past and be way more consistent with it.
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At the end of the day, what’s money, financial freedom/independence and wealth if you’re not healthy? And we definitely have high blood pressure, diabetes, etc that run in our families. We have kids to live for and that’s what we plan to do to the best of our ability!
This is what our financial goals ended up looking This is what our financial goals ended up looking like for this year. We’re pretty pleased with the outcome and the fact that we still enjoyed ourselves throughout the year and even made some pretty big purchases (like that whole couch saga I shared in my stories 😆). We’re looking forward to seeing what the next year holds! #thislifeafterdebt
We didn’t officially choose a word for 2021, but We didn’t officially choose a word for 2021, but if we had to say a word that was our word for this year it would be “intentional” by far.
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At the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 we were very intentional about pulling money from an inherited IRA so that our tax bill wouldn’t be ridiculous like it would have been if we pulled a lump sum at one time. We then used the money to help pay off our mortgage 8 days into 2021.
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What we were even more  intentional about was our plan for what we were going to do with our mortgage payment once we didn’t have a mortgage anymore. We didn’t want to frivolously spend that money. So we actually came up with our plan a couple months before making our final payment. But literally after that payment on January 8, 2020, our new mortgage-free budget was in full effect! So yea, “intentional” is definitely a good word to sum up 2021 for us. #thislifeafterdebt
Some of the things we automate are:
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Our Budget:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
For the longest we use to type everything we were going to spend or save into our budget template. It wasn’t super time consuming but it wasn’t efficient when it came to our regular bills/expenses. Then one day we decided to prefill the template and copy and paste it month to month for our regular bills/expenses. All we have to do is add anything else we spend.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Savings / Investing:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Most of our savings/investing and even our gas and spending money our automated transfers. It beats having to go in and make multiple transfers to our personal accounts and our sinking funds. The 529 accounts for the kids and the Roth IRAs are automatically transferred. But for the brokerage account we have to manually transfer the money because it’s never the same amount each paycheck.
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Bill Pay:
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I’ve never been a fan of bill pay because I don’t like companies having that type of access to my money. 🥴 And whenever they mess up and charge you too much, they’ll try to just credit your account instead of putting the money back in your bank account. 🙄 However, I’m a tad bit more trusting these days. Lol. Our home alarm had no option but to be auto drafted. Since the amount wasn’t much and is always the same price, I agreed. And the only other bill auto drafted is our cell phone bill after many many years (gasp! haha). Some of the other bills are paid via online bill pay via our banking account. #thisfinancialconfession
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Doing all of this has been a game changer and time saver. Are you team automate or team manual?
It’s been a minute since I’ve made a charcuter It’s been a minute since I’ve made a charcuterie board. So I figured Christmas brunch was the perfect time. And plus, that meant less time in the kitchen for me with cooking because I knew I was going to be cooking dinner today. #piecesofsomeday
Merry Christmas! And 2 pictures because it’s gua Merry Christmas! And 2 pictures because it’s guaranteed that someone isn’t going to be looking. 😆 #christmas2021 #piecesofsomeday
We purchased our house for $168.5k (after the down We purchased our house for $168.5k (after the down payment). We refinanced at $165k.
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If we took 30 years to pay it off, our total would’ve been $293k.
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If we paid the 30-year mortgage like a 15, then it would’ve been $225k.
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After we refinanced to a 15-year, if we took 15 years to pay it off, then our total would’ve been $205k.
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Instead, we paid off our mortgage in a little over 7.5 years.
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We ended up paying a total of $200k with interest.
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Paying $200k for this home with how it looked when we purchased it sounded a lot better than having to pay a total of $293k if we end up being here for 30 years! This was yet another factor that helped us decide to pay it off early. #thislifeafterdebt
Part of the reason we decided to refinance and eve Part of the reason we decided to refinance and even pay our house off early is because of the amount of money we were paying in interest on our mortgage. So of course, several months after we paid off the mortgage I began to wonder just how much did we really pay in interest. So I asked Omar if there was a way to figure it out. At first he was like, “Really Kim?” 😳 And of course I was like, “Ummm yea.” 😬 Lol.
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Jun 2013 is when we bought the house. So there wasn’t much interest paid then.
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2014 and 2015 is still when we had the 30-year mortgage. It’s also the years that we paid the most interest. We refinanced at the end of 2015.
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2016 is when we made our first payment with the 15-year mortgage. It’s crazy how the amount of interest decreased based off that alone.
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2019 is when we decided to pay off our mortgage early. It was supposed to take 6 years. But instead we used RSUs and sped it up tremendously.
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Jan 2021 is when we paid it off before our first payment would’ve been due. $27 was the last bit of interest we paid on our mortgage.
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Grand total: $35,102.
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If we had continue to just make regular payments on the 15-year mortgage, we would’ve paid a total of $56,279. A difference of $21,177. 🙌🏽 🙌🏽 #thislifeafterdebt
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Comments

  1. Jennifer Burel says

    March 6, 2017 at 10:42 pm

    Great post! My favorite, of course, is number 7! Gotta check out those neighbors! You guys are the best and we love having you in our neighborhood.

    • Kim says

      March 7, 2017 at 8:22 pm

      Thanks Jenn! Omar and I said that if you guys ever move then you have to make sure that the house next door to you is for sale as well because we will be moving too! Lol.

    • Omar says

      March 7, 2017 at 8:36 pm

      Likewise Jenn!!

  2. Chad Belinfanti says

    March 6, 2017 at 11:15 pm

    For number 1 does having kids impact the priority of location /school/etc? Great post, lots of good info.

    • Kim says

      March 7, 2017 at 8:27 pm

      I would say that it’s in the top 2. Staying within your budget would be number one for me. At the time that we bought our house, we didn’t even have a child yet, but we still researched the schools in the area. Also, sometimes when people relocate in regards to their kids it’s usually because they want a better school system. So it should definitely be at the top of your priority list.

    • Omar says

      March 7, 2017 at 8:48 pm

      I definitely agree with Kim here! No surprise there I’m sure! 🙂 Get your kids in the best school possible while keeping your other financial goals in mind as well.

  3. Yvonne says

    March 7, 2017 at 8:24 am

    Great post! So many helpful tips that we could have used when we came to Georgia over 30 years ago. For sure, we could have saved ourselves some bumps and bruises.

    • Kim says

      March 7, 2017 at 8:30 pm

      Thanks! If you ever move again then you can utilize the tips that we offered. 😉

  4. Merchell says

    March 8, 2017 at 2:43 pm

    Thanks for the information you shared. I am sure it will help many of your readers. Would have changed my life 30 years ago but is still meaningful today. Great job.

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See what’s happening on Instagram

thinkingofsomeday

As of 1/8/2022, it’s been one year since we beca As of 1/8/2022, it’s been one year since we became mortgage free. What better way to celebrate than a date night in our paid off home?! 😏
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
So how does it feel?
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Financially, we invested the most money we've ever invested. We also increased our lifestyle a bit as well to keep a healthy balance.
 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Kim’s Perspective: 
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
It’s been great. For the longest it felt surreal and unbelievable that we actually did it. I never really worried about paying off the mortgage because I knew that worst case scenario, it would be paid off in 15 years, which would’ve been when we were 45 (and that’s not a bad age at all). However, it’s been nice to know that it’s not something that Omar is stressing over anymore. And since it was one of his biggest dreams/goals, it’s nice knowing that I was able to support him 100% of the way in making this happen for us and our family. I’m glad this is something he wanted to pursue and that I was actually on board with it. What I’ve enjoyed most about it is being able to spend more money (of course 😆) because a lot of things were put on hold while we focused on the payoff. So now I feel like I’m at that point where I can make our house more of a home for us. It literally feels like we’re in a new space (mentally and physically) and we’re loving it.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Omar’s Perspective:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This past year has probably been the best year I've had in life. I've been the least stressed I've ever been, but took on the most responsibility at work I've ever taken on which lead to a promotion and an increase in income. This boggles my mind as more responsibility at work usually means more stress. I feel like I’ve been able to focus on other areas of my life more (my health/weight as well as making more of an effort to maintain my relationships with friends/family). Most importantly, I realize the strength of my marriage.  With the state of dating/relationships these days, I realize I won the lottery with Kim.  She's an amazing wife and mother. We've always had a good relationship but we're stronger than ever.  We started from the bottom now we're here (in my Drake voice). 🎶 #thislifeafterdebt
After taking some time to think about what we want After taking some time to think about what we wanted to focus on for this year, we decided that our word for the year is health.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Overall we both want to continue making healthier choices when it comes to eating. And we both want to focus on exercising more than we have in the past and be way more consistent with it.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
At the end of the day, what’s money, financial freedom/independence and wealth if you’re not healthy? And we definitely have high blood pressure, diabetes, etc that run in our families. We have kids to live for and that’s what we plan to do to the best of our ability!
This is what our financial goals ended up looking This is what our financial goals ended up looking like for this year. We’re pretty pleased with the outcome and the fact that we still enjoyed ourselves throughout the year and even made some pretty big purchases (like that whole couch saga I shared in my stories 😆). We’re looking forward to seeing what the next year holds! #thislifeafterdebt
We didn’t officially choose a word for 2021, but We didn’t officially choose a word for 2021, but if we had to say a word that was our word for this year it would be “intentional” by far.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
At the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 we were very intentional about pulling money from an inherited IRA so that our tax bill wouldn’t be ridiculous like it would have been if we pulled a lump sum at one time. We then used the money to help pay off our mortgage 8 days into 2021.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
What we were even more  intentional about was our plan for what we were going to do with our mortgage payment once we didn’t have a mortgage anymore. We didn’t want to frivolously spend that money. So we actually came up with our plan a couple months before making our final payment. But literally after that payment on January 8, 2020, our new mortgage-free budget was in full effect! So yea, “intentional” is definitely a good word to sum up 2021 for us. #thislifeafterdebt
Some of the things we automate are:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Our Budget:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
For the longest we use to type everything we were going to spend or save into our budget template. It wasn’t super time consuming but it wasn’t efficient when it came to our regular bills/expenses. Then one day we decided to prefill the template and copy and paste it month to month for our regular bills/expenses. All we have to do is add anything else we spend.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Savings / Investing:
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Most of our savings/investing and even our gas and spending money our automated transfers. It beats having to go in and make multiple transfers to our personal accounts and our sinking funds. The 529 accounts for the kids and the Roth IRAs are automatically transferred. But for the brokerage account we have to manually transfer the money because it’s never the same amount each paycheck.
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Bill Pay:
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I’ve never been a fan of bill pay because I don’t like companies having that type of access to my money. 🥴 And whenever they mess up and charge you too much, they’ll try to just credit your account instead of putting the money back in your bank account. 🙄 However, I’m a tad bit more trusting these days. Lol. Our home alarm had no option but to be auto drafted. Since the amount wasn’t much and is always the same price, I agreed. And the only other bill auto drafted is our cell phone bill after many many years (gasp! haha). Some of the other bills are paid via online bill pay via our banking account. #thisfinancialconfession
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Doing all of this has been a game changer and time saver. Are you team automate or team manual?
It’s been a minute since I’ve made a charcuter It’s been a minute since I’ve made a charcuterie board. So I figured Christmas brunch was the perfect time. And plus, that meant less time in the kitchen for me with cooking because I knew I was going to be cooking dinner today. #piecesofsomeday
Merry Christmas! And 2 pictures because it’s gua Merry Christmas! And 2 pictures because it’s guaranteed that someone isn’t going to be looking. 😆 #christmas2021 #piecesofsomeday
We purchased our house for $168.5k (after the down We purchased our house for $168.5k (after the down payment). We refinanced at $165k.
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If we took 30 years to pay it off, our total would’ve been $293k.
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If we paid the 30-year mortgage like a 15, then it would’ve been $225k.
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After we refinanced to a 15-year, if we took 15 years to pay it off, then our total would’ve been $205k.
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Instead, we paid off our mortgage in a little over 7.5 years.
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We ended up paying a total of $200k with interest.
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Paying $200k for this home with how it looked when we purchased it sounded a lot better than having to pay a total of $293k if we end up being here for 30 years! This was yet another factor that helped us decide to pay it off early. #thislifeafterdebt
Part of the reason we decided to refinance and eve Part of the reason we decided to refinance and even pay our house off early is because of the amount of money we were paying in interest on our mortgage. So of course, several months after we paid off the mortgage I began to wonder just how much did we really pay in interest. So I asked Omar if there was a way to figure it out. At first he was like, “Really Kim?” 😳 And of course I was like, “Ummm yea.” 😬 Lol.
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Jun 2013 is when we bought the house. So there wasn’t much interest paid then.
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2014 and 2015 is still when we had the 30-year mortgage. It’s also the years that we paid the most interest. We refinanced at the end of 2015.
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2016 is when we made our first payment with the 15-year mortgage. It’s crazy how the amount of interest decreased based off that alone.
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2019 is when we decided to pay off our mortgage early. It was supposed to take 6 years. But instead we used RSUs and sped it up tremendously.
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Jan 2021 is when we paid it off before our first payment would’ve been due. $27 was the last bit of interest we paid on our mortgage.
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Grand total: $35,102.
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If we had continue to just make regular payments on the 15-year mortgage, we would’ve paid a total of $56,279. A difference of $21,177. 🙌🏽 🙌🏽 #thislifeafterdebt
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