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34, but I could have afforded a home much earlier. I chose to rent for all those years for the flexibility and freedom. Well worth the supposed 'money down the toilet.'
I'm still a fan of renting in many circumstances.
This is what I'm doing now. I'm 30, but choose to rent as I want to be flexible and free to move to different areas every couple of years.
My first house was 29 - bought cheap and with a 15 year note. Will be paid off when my oldest kid is 17 (the biggest part of my kids college plan). My parents rented their whole life and it was the biggest mistake they ever made. My dad is 77, and still doesn't own a place, and has no wealth to pass down to his kids or grandkids.
When I was 18 my mom went in on a townhouse with me in my college town that me and my now-husband lived in together. Does that one count? Lol. We sold that 2 years later before I even graduated because it was really old and needed a lot of work, turned into a money pit. We got what we paid for it which was nice. That was right before the market crashed.
Then my husband and I bought the house we currently own the week before we got married. That's the one we are trying to sell now. So we will be on house #3 or #2, depending on how you look at it.
I was 27 and hubby was 31, fresh out of 2 yr military commitment. Moved from living on an Air force base in Wyoming to Chapel Hill, NC in 1974 so he could begin an orthopedic residency. We bought a 3 BR, 1 bath home, 1200 sq ft for $24K. When we toured it, he could see the bones were good but it needed A/C, painting and a dishwasher. The nearly 1 acre lot was so overgrown that I could barely make out the front door. I wanted to move to an apt complex with tennis and a pool but he overruled that saying that we could sell at a profit after residency and use that money for a down payment on a dream house. We got a VA loan and the GI bill paid him $300/mo which covered the mortgage. So that's what we did and in 3 years I sold it myself for $28K and a friend of ours who was an attorney did the closing gratis. And we got our dream house after that! We did put in A/C, and did the painting and D/W installation ourselves.
23. It was the 80's and interest rates were through the roof. We had a 5 year ARM that started at 13%
Anyone not taking advantage of these 3.5-4% rates right now is nuts!
but it was a lot cheaper. Better to pay 13% on a 75k home
than 4% on a 300k home. and they are probably the same place.
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