I have no idea what that would even look like. As my hubby and I sit down to estimate the cost of moving into a home (finally getting out of an apartment), I'm scared to death about the possibility of not actually being able to do it. Most of my friends live in a house, how do they do it? I'm paralyzed with the idea of not being able to pay all the bills.
Hubby and I have been on a journey of being debt free and we are so close to paying off the last of our credit card debt. Just the other day I told him we are 10 months from being freed of that burden. HOWEVER, that is based on what we have been paying the last 3 months. We couldn't possibly keep up that kind of payment if we moved into a house. We would have to resort to paying the minimum balance plus $20 - $30 extra. That puts us back in the bracket of paying off the credit card debt in 5-10 YEARS!!! What the heck?
I don't want to be a person that dwells on finances, but seriously it's so hard not to when you live in today's world. I've been sitting on my couch for 30 minutes mapping out our 'house-dwelling' budget and it looks like we would just barely survive month to month if we moved into this house that is so cute and so perfect. That means minimum balance payments on the two debts we have left and putting barely anything into savings month to month. Lets not forget that hubby and I are tithing on a regular basis and loving being able to do this freely. {I feel the tap on my shoulder to remember that God will always provide and that we are called to tithe especially in the "money's tight" times.}
On top of that, hubby and I want to have a family at some point and how the HECK are we supposed to find money to fit that in. I hate that I just naturally typed 'fit that in'. It's not supposed to be that way, it's supposed to be a joy and a blessing and....ugh, let's not go down that road (tears are sure to follow).
I don't know if you can tell, but I'm a little overwhelmed by this and am having a VERY hard time figuring out how to begin to handle all the information that my brain tells me I need to work through.
Here's what we are looking at:
+Income
-Rent
-Water/Sewer
-Trash/Recycling (p.s. - how the heck can they charge for recycling? I don't get that)
-Electricity
-School Loan payment
-Credit Card payment
-Groceries (to include our gleaning community payment)
-Gas
-Tithe
-Savings
-Things we want (internet, monthly allowance, entertainment)
---------------------------
=not a whole lot left over (i.e. why Charissa is stressing!)
Obviously the things we want would be cut back. The gas would be less because the house would be closer to work and hubby and I would be able to walk/bike to work. But that still leaves us with little to no money left over.
I pray about this and daily give it God...then promptly take it back from him. Why is this such a hard item to hand over?
What are your thoughts on this? How do you handle the 'stress,' the unknown, the urge to just crawl in a hole and ignore it all?
I stressed out a lot about this type of thing before we bought our condo. It was hard to wait longer but we knew we had to be patient, and even after we moved I was still worried.
ReplyDeleteI also stressed A LOT about being able to afford children, which was part of the reason why we moved to the country- daycare is soooooooo much cheaper out here. I'll tell you what my brother told me, "If you wait until you feel like you're financially set you will never have children" and he was right. We've had to make a lot of changes but the benefits have been worth it.