Financial Goals for March

Our Dream Home

All of the financial goals that my husband I set at the beginning of the year have changed, due to the picture above.

We were working on our debt snowball (and doing really well) but we have to put that on hold for now. Our builder requires $2500 cash (upfront) before they will break ground on a new house and we have to come to closing with an additional $2000. We also had to pay $500 cash for the processing of our mortgage.

These amounts alone were not going to stop our debt snowball, just slow it down a little. But our mortgage company is now asking us to come to closing with between 9,000 and 10,000 cash (for no other reason than to show that we can save up that amount of money). I guess since the housing market crash banks are wanting buyers to prove that they have lots of extra wiggle room when it comes to their income.

So the debt snowball has STOPPED (for now) and we will work (very hard) to save as much money as we possibly can between now and August. One of the first things that we did (to give ourselves some grace) is my husband took on a second job. He now works a full time job (as a letter-carrier for the USPS) and part time at Publix stocking shelves. His entire paycheck from Publix goes into the "House Fund"!

We have paid the $500 cash for the loan processing and put $1,000 down on the house (from money we had managed to save since the beginning of the year). We will be borrowing $2500 from Micah's 401K plan (it's considered a residential loan and so is payed back over 15 years and we are paying the money and the interest (1.3%) back to ourselves.

We have to come up with another 1500 dollars (500 in March, 500 in April, and the last 500 in May) to put down on the house. And then we will have to save ABOUT 7,000 by closing. It's going to be a little tight around here for the next few months! But oh so worth it!

Our goal for March is to pay the $500 toward the down payment and then to save an additional $300. I would love to save another $500 but I want to keep my goals reachable so that I am not discouraged at the end of the month.

So in total we hope to have $800 dollars put toward the house by the end of March! And of course still have paid all of our other bills too!