We’re Buying a House!
(But not in the way you might think!)

Blog posts contain affiliate links. When you click on these links I earn a small commission that helps keep this blog running and support my coffee habit. If you have any questions, feel free to read my disclaimer and privacy policy. Thank you!

Yep – we’re buying a house, but it’s not that kind of blog post. I know you’re probably thinking “Wait what? What does that even mean?” Allow me to explain.

 

We are buying a house! Not today, not this month, maybe not even before the end of the year. In fact, we haven’t even really started looking. I know – isn’t that totally backwards? Usually you find a house, and then you buy it. Not the other way around. Before I go any further, I need to fill you in on some of our story.

This is the home we bought in the story I’m about to share – it was a great starter home and we brought Jett home from the hospital here, so it is full of fun memories!

Rewind about ten years to the end of 2009. (Yes, I too still think ten years ago was 1990.) Chris and I were living in West Monroe, Louisiana and had been renting a house there for the previous year. We decided it was time to buy. Why? I have no idea.

We just thought it was the next thing we should do. We were throwing away tons of money in rent. We should be smart and buy a home. That is what people who have been married and have jobs do. We should just do it.

Well, that was enough for us. So we got a realtor and started looking. We went to the bank and got “pre-approved” for a home loan. Honestly, I have NO idea how we got approved for that. Sure, our credit score was incredible but it was because we somehow managed to pay our bills on time every month.

We found a house and put an offer on it. They accepted it. That is when the “fun” started.

Here is what we had going against us:

1. We had, at the time, over $60,000 in debt. We were struggling every month to pay our bills and debt, but hey, a house payment would be less than our rent, so let’s take on another $100K in a mortgage!
2. I was working “part time” (34 hours/week) for a company that would not verify my employment with them, which makes it a real hassle to get a home loan regardless of your credit score. (PS – this company was ALSO who we were trying to get our mortgage secured through. How’s that for irony?)
3. We had no money saved up. Nothing. We barely eeked by each month so we didn’t have anything to save. Even if we had leftover cash every month, we didn’t live with a budget so we never knew where it went. So we had nothing for a down payment or closing costs.
4. In order to close on a house, we would have to take money out of Chris’ IRA account, which means that we had to pay income taxes on it the next year. But hey – when it is your first home, you can take money from your retirement without the penalty, so it’s a great idea!
5. This was right after the housing market had gone berserk, and everything was still sort of up in the air. We had to do a Rural Development Loan (no down payment required) and in the middle of the process, their government funding was cut.

We basically did EVERYTHING backwards. And when our lease on our rental property was up, guess what – we were still trying to secure the mortgage and had nowhere to live! FUN! We fought tooth and claw to get approved for that mortgage and had to get the owners to approve us to live in the property before we bought it and pay weekly rent to them.

So we moved in at the beginning of May but didn’t unpack a thing because we still didn’t know if we would even be approved for the loan. Y’all – we were basically squatters in this home and it was absolutely TERRIFYING.

Then, on May 17, 2010, in the middle of all of this, my mom unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack. I’m still not sure how I managed to get through all of this unmedicated, but I did.

Finally, on June 17, 2010, one month after my mom passed away, we closed on the home. It was one of the most anxiety-ridden periods of my life and I think I still suffer a bit from PTSD because of it.

When we sold it in 2014 to move to Shreveport, we walked away from the closing with $700. I’m grateful that we did not have to pay the bank anything in order to close, but we did all of that work and went through that stressful time “investing” in a home that we lived in for four years and made less than $1000 on.

Since then, I haven’t even entertained the thought of buying a house.

The lesson I’d like you to take away from this post is this:

Buy a home on your own schedule, on your own time, and when you are ready financially to take on the responsibility of home ownership.

Chris and Skye in 2009/2010 were not ready to take on that responsibility. If not for my our parents and their absolutely generous hearts and spirits, we would have drowned in that home.

Chris and Skye in 2019/2020 are ready to buy a home. But this time we are going about it all in a completely different way. Here is what the past ten years have given us time to do:

Get a real handle on our finances:

It took us about a year to bounce back from all of that, and right about the time we were ready (or thought we were anyways) to maybe buy a house again, Chris changed jobs and we moved to The Woodlands. We found another house to rent because we had no idea where we should live here and it was scary to think about buying still. The PTSD that came with that entire experience is real.

So one of the first things we did when we moved here was to take Financial Peace University at our church. We knew we had some debt to take care of and we knew Chris was getting a nice raise. What we didn’t understand is that it would completely open our eyes up to a new way of handling our finances and a better understanding of how to make huge decisions like buying a house.

Over the next 22 or so months, Chris and I tightened down everything, lived on a very small budget every month, and paid off all of our debt – over $57,000. And that was fantastic – having no debt payments each month really frees up our monthly income! But what we really took away from that journey was how important it is for us to be on a budget every month and plan our spending.

Learn what our priorities are:

Chris & Skye from ten years ago didn’t really know what we wanted out of life. We definitely wanted different things but we had no idea what those really were. We were both still pretty young and hadn’t really had enough life experiences to be able to say “this is a priority to me”. Hence the reason we couldn’t make our own decision when it came to not buying a house – we let “other people” influence us into doing it.

Now that we are both on the same page when it comes to money as well as what we want to get out of our lives in the long run, it is so much easier to put on our blinders to what the world thinks is a good idea and stick together and on the path for what we think is a good idea.

We have rented for four years as of September and while some may think that has been a huge waste of money, we see it as an investment in our patience, in our worldview, in our priorities, and in our future selves. Paying rent is expensive, for sure, but what we have gotten from it is a whole lot of perspective and a chance to really think about what is important to us when it comes to long term goals.

Develop our patience muscles:

When we bought that house, we were in such a hurry to do it that we really missed out on a lot of the experience. This time we are in a rental and we have about a year left on our lease, which gives us plenty of time to take our time with the process. We don’t want to rush into anything!

We (well, this is probably just me) need to unlearn that idea that there is just “one perfect house” out there that is made for us. The truth is, there is literally a house on every corner, and none of them are absolutely perfect. I want to shake off that feeling of “oooh if I don’t buy this one I might not find another I love” because that simply is NOT true.

We are also starting this process by meeting with a lending company in our area that has our priorities and goals in mind and isn’t just trying to write us a mortgage. I’ll share more details about this later, but I will never buy a house through a bank again if I can help it, especially a large corporation. We have a meeting with a mortgage officer next week, so once I talk with him I can share more about the process!

We want our home to be a blessing in our lives, not a point of stress or a traumatic memory. So we are going to be buying a house, but we are going to take the next year (or more, or less) to make that happen. We are going to enjoy the process and buy something we love that we can afford (and that we can pay off quickly.. but again, more on that in a future post!).

The prospect is exciting and I can’t wait to share more of the journey with you guys! Be sure you’re also following me on Instagram because I’ll do a lot of house hunting videos over there as well!

---

Tell me – if you’ve bought a house and enjoyed the process – what is one awesome tip you can share with us? Leave it in the comments below!

---