Friday, June 22, 2012

I'm back!! And why we decided to buy a new house!

I know, I know...terrible blogger alert right here. Luckily this blog is still in its infancy and I'm not really letting anyone down. However, I still really want to give this blogging thing a chance. Life has been a little crazy over the last few months and it's about to get even crazier because we're moving!! In March or April we decided that we wanted to sell our house and buy a new one. We wanted to stay in the Greater Lansing Area, but move out of the city of Lansing itself. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Lansing, it's a great sized city and I have enjoyed living here. However, the hubs grew up living in the country surrounded by farmland and I grew up in a small town. When we thought about our future, we just couldn't see it unfolding where we are now. 

Budgeting also played a major role in this decision. Since I'm not working due to health concerns and the awful job market, my husband's salary is what we're living on. I'm not going to lie, money is tight. We can pay all of our bills and loan payments, but there's not much room for an emergency fund (or say a future child). Nathan is planning on going back to school and finishing up his bachelors degree (he has an associates  right now), which will give him a hefty raise where he's at and open up lots of new career opportunities. However, in the mean time we wanted to find a way to save some money. After looking at it, we really thought that our mortgage was a sure fire way to save some money. 

Our house is financed through my husband's grandfather. We have a mortgage through the bank of grandpa. Now, that sounds somehow not very legit...but lawyers were involved and everything. The reason why this is important is that after a long discussion, grandpa agreed to give us a mortgage on a new home before we sold the one that we are currently in. We will just hold off starting payments on the new house until the old house sells. Complicated? A little. Risky? If our current house doesn't sell, definitely. While we have a completely legal and standard mortgage through Nathan's grandpa (with comparable interest rates and all), we are so grateful for the benefits that having our mortgage through a family member brings. We could not have gotten another mortgage through a bank before selling our current house. We also know that if we end up in financial trouble that our "bank" will work with us. 

Anyways, we knew that we could save some money on our mortgage if we bought a foreclosed home...so that's what we set off to do! My next post will be about the joys (sarcasm) of our house hunting experience. Stick around cause I know you want the details on the new house!!