Our road to Financial Peace: update to buying a new home

This winding and bumpy road to our financial peace has got to be one of the most eye opening experiences of my entire life.
Read all about the beginning of my journey in my first post

Now to update you on our progress.


We have completed steps 1-4.
Now step 5 and 6 say pay home off early and start a college fund.
At the moment we own two small rent homes but we do not own our own home. We have been on the look out for just the right home with the right amount of space. In our area, the price of homes are going up and up because there are more people than real estate. Since my husband and I already own two homes with mortgages we are needing to come up with 20% down payment for our next home.
Well we are looking at $30,000 or more for our down payment. GEEZ!
With 1 income and a family of 5, it is going to take a few more years or so to save up that kind of money and with the cost of homes going up the way they are, we may never get there.

What Dave Ramsey says about buying a home,

Get your finances in order

The first thing you should do is make sure you are financially ready to buy a house. In other words, you need to be debt free with a fully funded emergency fund. Be certain you can afford a new home by asking these questions:
  • Can I make at least a 10% (preferably 20%) down payment?
  • Can I afford a 15-year fixed rate loan?
  • Can I keep the house payments at or below 25% of my monthly take-home pay?
If you answered "yes" to all three questions, then you can afford a house. Otherwise, Dave strongly suggests you wait to buy a home.
You want your new home to be a blessing, not a curse, right? Follow these simple guidelines and you'll keep Murphy and his 3 cousins Broke, Desperate and Stupid from moving in.
see more at www.daveramsey.com

So my husband and I sat down and discussed exactly how we are going to come up with the money a little faster. 
During one of our classes, I remember Dave saying something along this line "Sell everything until the kids think they are next to go".
So that is exactly what we did.
No, we didn't sell the kids :)
We sold all our furniture and cleaned out closets.
Also we are very blessed to have such wonderful parents and in-laws who have opened their home to us to cut the cost of rent and utility bills.
We have made a huge sacrifice and a huge life change to get to our goals without going into debt.
Now since we have cut our bills about 75% and made money off of everything we sold, we will be at our goal by the end of the year.
Along with our new home account, we are going to need to set back money for new furniture. Since we do not need any furniture until we buy a home, we can save about $10 a week to start and then once we have our down payment saved, we can put more towards the furniture fund.
I think I can live without furniture in our new home for awhile knowing that I am not stressing over debt.
Plus, with how picky I am, it might take longer to find the right pieces than it would to save for them.
Lastly, I am going to be putting up one of our rent homes for sale and if that sells, I pray that we can get to our goal that much faster.

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