Oh hey there!
The weather is cooling down here (we had our first snow that stuck to the ground yesterday!) and I'm pulling out all the sweaters and wool socks. I do enjoy the excuse to snuggle up and be a bit lazier this season, but am not ready for full blown winter quite yet!
There are a few BIG things happening over here in our household including the fact that WE BOUGHT A HOUSE! Well a new house, that is ;) We had been looking to upgrade our home for 1.5 years and finally found a beautiful home that we both agreed on (that seriously has been the hardest part this go around!) that is also in our price range. It’s bigger than our current home (by roughly 1000 sq. feet) and has everything we were looking for - open layout, 3 bedrooms on one level, a yard big enough for the dog to run around., no ridiculously small entry way. So basically, it’s perfect for us for this next stage of our life!
When we bought our current home 5 years ago I was the one who bought it (technically speaking). I also was the only one going to do the house tours being I had a more flexible schedule as a teacher and could go look earlier in the afternoons. The day our current home went on the market I went and looked at it, loved it and signed all the paperwork. My then fiance thought I was crazy, and couldn't believe I had moved forward without him having seen the house yet. Needless to say he looked the next morning and we submitted our offer right away (I knew he would love it and he did!) We got the house, and the rest has been history.
We got our first fur baby in this house, had our two baby girls and have made sooo many memories here. I've fallen in love with this lake community, my local moms group, and being in such a walk-able town. I also love being only 15 mins from my mom who helps us out a ton with our girls (and watches the oldest one day a week so I can get some stuff done!)
Needless to say, it's going to be tough to leave this home BUT we are thrilled to have more space, a POOL (that was my hubby's big thing!) and be closer to some of our closet friends. I'm sure we will grow to love our new town and make new SAHM friends too.
We went back and forth about using our current home as a rental (we ended up purchasing the next home without having to sell this current one as we had saved the minimum 5% required to put down) but ultimately decided we don't love the idea of being landlords and want to continue down our path of paying down debt and funding our index fund retirement accounts.
This new home will add roughly $100k to our mortgage total, and although my original plan was for us to be debt free by 40 (you can read more about that in my Biz Insider article here!) I'm hoping we can still pay down our new mortgage aggressively and be debt free shortly after that (OK maybe like another 5-10 years - I’ll report back with exact math once we sell our current home and figure out what else we are putting towards our new mortgage!)
We've been busting our butt to get our current home ready to go on the market this week - eek!
So that's the news in our world. I've been a bit quiet on the work front but there's been a lot going on at home so I wanted to pop in here and give you an update!
What about you? What’s new in your world? Would love to hear about your own life updates!
Until next time…
Cheers to your abundance!
Katie O
