Quick Update and an Explanation

I have made progress on my three weekly goals already, and will post them later on but for right now I wanted to give a quick explanation of our housing situation and how it is about to change. Currently my mother owns a total of 7 houses, and 6 of them are here in CO. We have been wanting to buy a house since last year, and she has decided to try to sell a couple of her houses. It just so happened that the house we want to buy was to become vacant at the same time that our lease on this apartment would end. The plan was for us to move into the house and take over paying rent (which I have already explained will be exactly the same as what we pay for our current apartment). This way we would have more time to save up for closing costs and have some extra cash to actually purchase the house from her. She is willing to sell us the house for exactly what she owes on it, which puts it at the high end of our budget, but we were pre-approved for more than that last year, and now we have higher income, so we don't predict any issues there.

Anyways, in a rapid turn of event, her tenants decided to vacate the premises at the end of this month. So we were suddenly left with a decision of staying in the apartment til September, either forcing her to eat the mortgage payment on the house for the next 4 months, or try and rent the house and have it not be available to us when our lease ends, OR to just break our lease now and move into the house early. Ultimately we decided to go ahead and break our lease because moving into the house will be a huge transition and renting it out or leaving it vacant would leave us with a month-to-month lease or moving to another apartment until the house became vacant again. There is a penalty for breaking our lease, so we will basically be paying a full month's rent extra. We are going to have to make this payment out of our savings, but I think we can make up for it pretty quickly. Our deposit here was relatively small ($250) so they said they would just bill our last month's utilities and carpet cleaning to the deposit and that would be it. We didn't expect to get any of that money back anyways.

So at the end of this month we will be going into the house to clean it and prepare for move-in. Over the course of June we will be moving whatever small bits of our stuff that we can. Luckily since my mom owns the house we aren't going to be locked out until exactly July 1st which will make our moving process much easier. Then at the end of the month we will get a trailer and move all of the furniture in 1 trip (hopefully).

The end result is that instead of paying $750/month for a 2 bedroom/1bath apartment, we will be paying the same amount for a 4-5 bed/4 bath house with a backyard. We will have our own washer and dryer, we will have our own utilities, which I expect to go up from what we are paying in the apartment, but we will have ways to combat the costs. There is a fireplace, and Jason's parents live up in the mountains, so we can take as much firewood as we can get our hands on from their property for the winter. The house is already equipped with energy efficient windows and siding, and I even think the last time the roof was replaced, they put the lighter, more-reflective shingles on the house.

The other upside to this is that the basement is only partially finished but it does have 1 room and 1 full bathroom. We have a friend who is looking for a place to live temporarily, and we have talked to him about renting the basement from us. We stand to make $2-300/month on this, which will easily make up for the increase in utilities costs or drop our portion of the rent even further. Even if he decides not to take it, the option will still be open for us to rent out that portion of the house.

So this is where we stand today. We've taken a hit to our savings but long-term stability is what we are aiming for, and we will be one step closer. This will officially be an end to constantly moving, sometimes twice a year. I added it all up the other day, and this will be the 8th time in the last 4-ish years that we've had to get a trailer and move. It is a PAIN, and it has cost us much more than just deposits and truck rentals. Much of our furniture that was in good shape is battered and falling apart after this many moves. We will ultimately have to replace some of it, but we are trying to hold off until the house is actually in our name before we start spending all of our money on furniture and decorations.

Will definitely be updating with my weekly goals soon! :)