Before I talk about our new purchase, I want to give a little background...
Rewind 8 years. Two weeks before our wedding in 2003, we purchased a very nice, large home in Clive. I LOVE my house in Clive. There really wasn't one thing about it I would change. It has a very open floor plan, an amazing kitchen, double fireplace, huge closets, great location and the list goes on. However, along with that large, beautiful house came a large, not-so-beautiful mortgage payment. I was totally willing to make large mortgage payments to have a nice house early in our marriage. However, the unexpected premature birth of Alexis and all of the financial burden that came along with that often times made it very hard to have any money at the end of the month. We were "house-poor" as some would say. It was a stressful few years early in our marriage, mostly because of financial burden.
Fast forward 7 years. We re-locate to Newell. We decide it would be smart to rent rather than buy so we rent the only 3 bedroom place available (to rent) in town. Let's just say it's a far cry from our beautiful estate in Clive. I don't love many things about this house but the one thing I do love is it allows us so much flexibility with our monthly budget.
You see, our trailer is only $450 a month to rent, which went up from the $400 it was our first year here. That is less than 1/3 of the cost of our Clive mortgage payment. So, while it was not by choice that we landed here in our trailer, it has been a blessing in many, many ways.
We've gotten so used to the flexibility in our budget, which has allowed us to get even more serious about our FPU 7 Baby Steps that we decided to buy an "in the budget" house. Instead of building a new, expensive house here or moving back to our expensive house in Clive, we've purchased.....a 2100 squarefoot house..........with............CASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(***Side note: We so debated professing that to the world because to some people, finances are somewhat private and while we were keeping the fact we paid cash for an $80,000 house on the DL, we decided why? We shouldn't apologize for living a very disciplined lifestyle and SHOULD be excited about this amazing journey. We hope to help others learn to live a disciplined lifestyle so they, too, can be financially free someday!!)
While our new house is not my dream house, my dreams of becoming financially independent at an early age are coming true. We will not have a rent or mortgage payment. (At least not one that we're paying with our own money, anyway. We do still own our Clive house but we've rented that out so the rent there is covering our mortgage). It will feel so good to not owe anyone a dime. It will free up money in our budget to do things like:
- Give more generously
- Save $ to send our kids to college
- Save for our dream house :)
- Vacation
- Have more fun and less stress!!!
God has truly given me a passion to live a frugal lifestyle. Justin is becoming more and more frugal by the day and I love it. We are excited to be able to live below our means for a few years to help our dreams, and the dreams of many others come true.
Stay tuned for more details on our new purchase. I'll get pictures up soon.
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