Money Matters
aavery258
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Seeking feedback from nesters
Before I explain, let me caveat by saying we are seeking professional advice rfom a realtor and mortgage broker.
My husband and I are older. He is 41 and I am 37. We live in a very tiny house and need to move very badly. We make decent money, but not enough with two babies in daycare and a son going to college. Currently we are in good shape if we stay in the tiny house we are in. Our mortgage will be paid off in 14 years.
How can we possibly move with our set of circumstances ans pay off our home before we retire? We have nothing for a downpayment and the equity in our home is only about 10k. 
With three kids and two dogs, less than 1000 sq. feet and a .22 size lot is not cutting it. We are prepared to suffer if we have to, but really know no other options...
With three kids and two dogs, less than 1000 sq. feet and a .22 size lot is not cutting it. We are prepared to suffer if we have to, but really know no other options...
Re: Seeking feedback from nesters
If you don't currently keep a detailed budget, track your expenses for a month and see how much you spend on each category. You might find, for example, that you're spending $200 a month on work lunches that could be cut to $30 by packing sandwiches (just an example, not saying you do that specific thing). Extra could then be put into savings for your DP on a new, larger home.
One regular, jessica, will hopefully chime in. She just worked a ton to get enough equity to sell her home and could share her tips.
Do you have any money saved for retirememt? Frankly, at 41/37 making sure you're in a good place with savings should be far more important than the square footage of your home.
Yes unfortunately I may be a bad example and go against everything that is right to do but our issue was that we were about $10-$12K underwater in our condo mortgage last July before we could even think of listing (We've been in this condo for 7 years, and even when we checked the market to list 2 years ago, the sell value hadn't moved at all and we owed even more!). In the meantime, we had been saving for a house but this really doubled our work. Mind you we have no plans for kids so basically H worked any OT he could get and I picked up a measly minimum wage job because my full-time job didn't allow overtime, so I worked 20 hrs on top of my 40 from September and my last night was actually last night!! Luckily it was over the winter so we didn't do much or spend much at all, just worked away. We listed our condo March 1st and went under deposit within a month and we close June 5. In July, we had owed $139K on the condo and we just made the final May payment which is what we sold it for at $126,500K (we listed at $129K), so basically we are breaking even plus we have closing costs to pay. We saved up $12K in 9 months which to us was a HUGE accomplishment. And we can finally get rid of this condo and pick up a house for a good deal and low interest rate and never look back at condo life.
This may seem totally crazy and a waste of $ to others, but owning a home and traveling is our life plan, we don't want kids, we are building our retirement, so this is what we chose to throw money at so we could finally reach one of our big goals, I mean, what else are we going to spend our money on but ourselves LOL.
But I guess the difference is that you don't have a down payment for a house and we do. We don't have equity in our home, but you do....it's tough. But you really need to cut back on bills and other things...we did that as well. We just kept saving and saving and saving. It takes time and we probably could save more but once we move into my parents house we will save really quick with 4 less large bills to pay.
We are looking for a home around that price range as well and have $20K to put down maybe more...plus don't forget about closing costs on both selling and buying....Selling is tough because you have to pay your own and sometimes the buyers ask for help, but then buying is expensive too because your closing costs are more and you can ask for help but you have to pay for inspections and appraisals as well. Plus moving costs.....if you don't have any savings to work with then it sounds like it might not be possible for you. That 10K in equity could only go so far depending on your market and the other costs you have.
I definitely would at least have a realtor come into your home and give you an idea of the price you could list your home. is your home in good shape? Bad shape? Will you need to fix things? rent a storage unit to help stage the home better? That would be the place to start, then you can figure out after doing all that if you have any money to put towards a new house.
I'm pretty OCD about our home so all winter long we re-painted, touched-up, and fixed small things that we knew would stick out to a buyer or an inspector. At the end of February we rented a storage unit and cleaned out the clutter, extra junk and staged the house to sell. There is a lot more to selling a house than just listing it on the market. All in all in inspection went well and the buyer asked for NOTHING!
I agree about the college-aged childs' room. Clean it out and have him sleep on the floor when he visits. I assume he will also have a job while he is at school to at least help support himself?
I'm curious what you and your DH individually make after taxes. The cost of kiddos in day care is $$$. Is one of your salaries going entirely to day care? If yes, what about that person staying home with the kiddos in the daytime and having a PT job on the weekends? This would save money on day care that would open it up for other uses.
It's hard to advise you though, without a more complete picture of your overall financial situation.
What other debts do you have? Loans? Cars? Credit cards?