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! 

Our Dream Come True!

Our Dream Home

This is the house that my husband and are getting ready to build. This is "THE HOUSE"! It is our dream home! We are beyond excited and we are so thankful and grateful for the providing hand of God that is making this dream a reality! This a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom house that is PERFECT for us. The boys will each have their own bedrooms and they will share a bathroom. And Delaney will have her own bedroom and her own bathroom.

Our Land

 This is the piece of land that we picked out. The lot is HUGE! And so there will be plenty of room for our "Someday" pool and we will still have some yard leftover. The pool is a few years down the road but it's nice to know that there will be plenty of room for it when the time comes.

Tile and Carpet

After we picked out the floor plan we wanted and the lot that the house would be built on we signed about 100 papers and then a few days later we headed off to the design center.
The house that we picked is at the very top of our budget (hey we are a family of 5 that needs some serious space) so we didn't have a lot of money to spend on extras. We did upgrade to a gourmet kitchen (be still my little cooking/baking heart) and we added an office instead of the three car garage.
We have lots of plans of upgrading to hard wood floors and granite counters at a later date. But for now the builder grade is just fine with us!

Kitchen

While I am most excited about my gourmet kitchen (double oven in the walls, tons of counter space, an island, and upgraded appliances) we spent the bulk of our money on the appliances and the island so we had to go builder grade on everything else. We have plans of white cabinets (IKEA), quarts counters, farmhouse sink, and hardwood floors someday. But for now, this is my kitchen. The wood is the cabinets, the dark gray is the counter tops and the floor tile is underneath the counter tops.

Bathroom Upgrades

Now we did actually spend some money in the bathrooms. My husband and I both agreed that if we were EVER going to upgrade the bathrooms it would need to be now! We knew that they would be so far down the priority list that we might never get to them. And so we spent the little bit of money that we had to upgrade all three bathrooms. The tile at the top of the picture will be our shower/tub tile, the black, gray, and white square tiles are the decorative wall tiles that will go around the tubs and the showers, the tiny white tile is the granite counters, and the large tile under the small white tile is our tile flooring.
These colors actually work out perfect for all the bathrooms. The master bathroom is Tiffany Blue, black and gray. Delaney's bathroom is pink, black, and gray. And the boys bathroom is black and gray.

We are not closing on the house until September (we do not want to break our lease) so the building process is going to be stalled for awhile. Micah and I are thinking they will break ground in late May or early June. Right now our house plans are at the architecture being drawn up and finalized. We are also in the last stages of loan approval (boy are there a lot of hoops to jump through on that one)! That will be another post for another day.

I am beyond excited for this phase, we have never been homeowners before, and to be building our dream home is such a God thing.

For those of you who have built a home any advice?! Would love to hear from those of you who have been there, done that, and SURVIVED!