TheDivineMrsM
2 girls 4 me!
Member since 8/08 7878 total posts
Name:
Mama mama mama....
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Re: after buying a house...
We were really, really broke after moving in lol. But we caught up.
I think a lot depends on what kind of house you're buying. If you're buying a house that needs to be nuked and rebuilt, you'll need more money in your account than someone buying a turnkey home.
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Re: after buying a house...
I think you want to have some reserves -- yes, how much you need probably depends on your individual situation and plans for the house. And your comfort level.
But even a turnkey house can require some unexpected maintenance here or there. For example, when I bought my house, everything was in good working order and it was a move-in ready home (of course, we wanted to customize a few cosmetics). But the clothes dryer, which was working fine at our final walk through, broke about 2 weeks after we move in (with a newborn), so we wound up buying a new washer/dryer right away.
There are inevitable unexpected things that crop up, not to mention the fact that if you are moving from a rental situation to a home, there are always things you need to buy -- even aside from furniture -- such as tools, lawn maintenance stuff, garbage cans, etc. You don't want to be counting pennies.
People get hung up on down payment amounts -- but unless putting down more means the difference between a conventional v. FHA loan, or a 20% down no PMI situation v. PMI, you are better off putting less down, and saving some money for future needs/emergencies. So, for example, if you are buying a $400K house and could put 10% down and get a conventional loan, but are considering putting 15% down (which would still be a conventional loan with pmi), I think you are better off saving the extra $20K and putting down just 10%. Mortgaging an extra $20K will increase your payment by roughly $100/month, so that has to be considered, too, but it helps to have a cushion, imo.
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Mrs213
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Member since 2/09 18986 total posts
Name:
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after buying a house...
We had money left but we put less money down initially. And thank god we did because we had a lot of things go wrong about a week after moving in. After we did what we had to do, less than 10k. Way less lol
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