We Nearly Have Enough to Begin Our Househunting Adventure

After we paid off the student loan debt, we began to start saving up for a down payment on a house and the closing costs with it. I was stunned to learn that I would need to save at least $14,000 to purchase a home listed for $150,000, and only $7,500 of that would be going towards the list price. The other $6,500 would we used for "closing costs". So, as you can imagine, this is a huge amount of money to save up. especially if you have a short time frame.

We decided to "try" to begin our family during the summer and were very much shocked to find out we were extremely efficient in this venture. We went from "trying" to "expecting" in just three weeks time. If you know anything about me or my blog, you'll then know that I promptly began rearranging my budgets and punching numbers into a calculator to figure out how we would be able to make this all work. Due to a little snag with insurance, we paid for the birth of our child up front and needed to build our savings back up as we prepared to move out of the home we were renting and sharing with a family member.

I quickly began socking away more than 90% of my paycheck (while also being sure to invest in retirement, company stocks, and paying for insurance coverage), and we soon began to grow our savings slowly but surely. We're nearly ready to begin our house search with a fistful of cash, and will continue to save up after we've signed our 30-year mortgage to prepare for any little surprises that will inevitably come along with a newborn baby.

So, how did we do it? We budgeted so that we lived on an fine line of nearly being "broke" according to our savings while still maintaining a monthly savings of $2,600 each month, We lived ONLY on my husband's checks and still had to pay rent, bills, and two car payments each month with the occasional semi-annual bills like car insurance. And what tool did we use to accomplish this task, might you ask? My favorite budgeting tool that I've written about NUMEROUS times on this blog: MINT.COM.

Check out my older posts on how to use Mint.com to accomplish your savings goals or debt offs!

How To Pay Off $17,000 of Student Loan Debt in Less Than 18 Months

Why I Had to Trade in The Stratus for Kia Rio
Progress on Our Student Loans & How We'll be Debt-Free in 2014
Knocking Out Our Student Loans One at a Time
The Chair That Almost Blew Our Budget For The Month
Keeping Our Eyes on the [Financial] Prize
Finance 101: 7 Reasons Why I Love Mint.com
Sell your crap. Pay off your debt. Do what you love.