Housing update

I'm still not quite ready to give details yet, but since I didn't feel like writing a review, I thought I'd provide a housing update.

Not too long after my last post about adventures in house selling we got an offer, and after a bit of back and forth we came to an agreement, inspections were done, paperwork was signed, and in theory we should be closing in a couple months! I say "in theory" because until you're at that closing table, anything could happen though now that we have approvals and signed contracts and lawyers have been brought in, I'm (knock on wood) hopeful things will go through.

All of this did mean one very important thing: we better find somewhere to live, either permanently or short term cos we're gonna be homeless soon.

We'd put an offer in on a place that was pretty sweet and in a fun area. Unfortunately a LOT of people thought the same thing, and we knew we'd be going up against a lot of other offers. I don't know how much it actually went for but I know it was 1) higher than our offer and 2) all in cash.

Who are theses people that can buy places in cash? Jerks, probably.

Wherever we end up won't be the first place we'd be buying (that'd be where we are now), but there are always lessons to learn. For example, the purchase price isn't that important. I mean, it is, obviously. And it's the biggest number and therefore the scariest one. But when you break it down into monthly payments you realize what sounds like a BIG difference in the total price translates to like $50 extra per month. Way more important than setting a budget on the total purchase price is setting a budget for monthly costs. Cos what you can afford on the purchase price may vary widely once you start throwing taxes and HOA (if you're in a condo/co-op) and such in the mix.

Pretty much

Tom and I are fairly good at budgeting. Mint has been super helpful in helping me see where my money goes and made it very easy to get an average for what I spend throughout the year so when we put together a budget for this whole house thing I could quickly get numbers. Also it tracks stuff automatically, which is quite important to me keeping track of anything. (Thank you, FitBit and no thank you, any system that makes me manually enter shit.)

Still don't want to jinx anything but I'm hoping we'll only be homeless for a month (knock on wood, fingers crossed, other superstitions) and another "hopefully," we'll be able to crash with relatives which means freeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

I'll share more details as they come up or as I want to procrastinate from writing reviews.