Buying a house! Part One

by admin on April 19, 2010

This is a the first of a series of posts about buying a home for the first time. It will be following our journey through this process, and hopefully some of the things we learn will be beneficial to others. A note here, these are being written after the fact. I figured that writing about how we never bought a house would be less than beneficial, not to mention bit disappointing for me as a writer.  So I waited until we were finished to start writing about it.

My wife and I recently realized that the stars were starting to align for us to potentially buy a house. Something that never before seemed a possibility for my wife and I.

Here is a brief summary of what had happened to get us to consider looking at buying a house.

  • I got offered and would soon be starting a permanent position where I had been working as a contractor.
  • Our apartment lease, which we loved, was ending in 2 months.
  • We had been able to save quite a bit of money for a variety of things and realized it could be put towards a house.
  • We realized that we would be living here in Las Vegas for at least several years.
  • The government was offering a great tax credit to first time home buyers ($8,000).

All of these things together meant that we might be able to afford a house and could consider starting the process of looking for and trying to buy one. We have dreamed about it before. Tried to save some money, and even thought about permanently living in one place. However until we realized that we had all of these things going for us we had not considered it seriously at all.

These are big steps to consider with the mindset we had had for so long. We basically had been students for 6 years and gotten quite used to being poor, and moving around a lot. Now we are on the verge of being grown ups, with a job to go to each day.

Even with the new full time job on the horizon, being a parent to three and a husband I didn’t feel responsible or the need to actually try and be stable. I am sure that a bit of nesting behavior may start to set in now that we are committed to staying here for a while.

So we decided to try and buy a house. The first step is figuring out what the first step was. This sounds kind of funny, but actually it is true. I am an accomplished scientist, and my wife is a trained educator, but the real estate market is a totally new ball game.

We new that we would need a down payment, a loan, a real estate agent (I know you could get around this, but I made the assumption that it is probably more advanced than a total newbie could handle), and of course time and effort to find a house and then try and close the deal (randomly found out that only 1 in 50 in Las Vegas, NV close the deal on their first pick, Wow).

I was under the impression that this would take a really long time to do. Talking to some friends and family I found out that it could go much faster, like 3 weeks or less. That would require a few things to be in clear order, especially finances, but it can go fast.

So in summary of this first post about buying a home, the first step is considering if you might be able to afford buying a house. Then think do you want to even buy one at all? There are a lot of reasons why perhaps you wouldn’t want to and those are important to consider. If all of these things make sense, you do actually want to buy a house where you are, and might be able to afford one, then you can move forward and see what happens.

I personally believe that set backs and failures aren’t a bad thing to experience. These are great opportunities to learn from and to use too more accurately shape your future plans and goals. Then again if you know you can’t afford one or just don’t want to live permanently where you are currently there is no need to go through any unnecessary setbacks and failures.

For us we realized that we wanted to buy a house. We felt ready for this step and willing to deal with the trouble that would come from being a home owner. We also had a great situation to fall back on if we ended up not buying a home at all. Our apartment was renewable and we would lose anything by looking to see if there was a home that we liked.

For you what was the first thing that moved you towards the home buying process?

Next up, figuring out the finances.

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Sources of Frustration

by admin on April 8, 2010

A few days ago I got really frustrated. I was mad at a lot of different things. Ironically looking back I wasn’t mad at people, but with their actions. My kids set me off. They were just acting like normal, so I allowed them to set me off. I was mad that I had not been able to accomplish anything I had wanted and had hoped for.

The hard thing about all this is that I set myself up for this to happen. I almost plan for this to happen on a regular basis because of how I make choices and set goals.

First of all I didn’t outwardly tell my wife and kids what I was trying to accomplish when I allowed myself to get really mad. I could have said “hey I am trying to clean these toys up really fast and I would like to eat dinner while it is hot, not when it gets cold.” If I had said these things out loud rather than just thinking them I would have had some help from my wife at least. The kids still probably would have acted like little children and done what they did but they would have probably helped a bit by not working against me.

I also didn’t tell myself specifically what I had been trying to accomplish and decide what I had to do to do it. I had only a vague idea of what would be nice. I didn’t know exactly what that was, or how I would get that.

Overall I was letting vagueness be my destination and when I wasn’t able to reach that I got overwhelmed by not being able to reach it. Again. I can look back and see that I do this to myself again and again. So then I had the small momentary frustration of the toys and dinner that sparked my anger which was fueled by the lack of reaching that vague destination of happiness I had been hoping for.

Comically (I guess tragically) I set myself up for this type of thing to happen repeatedly. These are my steps to failure:

  • I set some type of vagueness as my goal.
  • Initially I  set out and feel good about progress.
  • Then I lose sight of the vague destination and get depressed, tired, frustrated, or angry and I act surprised by this!
  • Lastly some small thing external to myself comes along and I lose control feeling like it is the small thing that did it to me, but in reality I do it to myself. I sow the seeds for my own failure.

Why don’t we sow the seeds for our own success?

Here are some viable steps towards reaching success:

  • Set a firm goal, or destination.
  • Figure out what I need to do to reach it, focusing on the work and effort I must put in to make it happen rather than daydreaming about it magically appearing.
  • Go and make it happen.
  • If I fail then I can look back and figure out what else I need to add to the process so that success can be reached.
  • That’s it.

No more frustration please, I will move that out of my life and in it’s place put happiness and success.

What do you do to avoid these type of self defeating cycles?

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March 2010 at Unusual Living

April 2, 2010

Welcome to April 2010 here at Unusual Living! This is our new monthly update post. I think a quick update around the first of the month about what happened in the previous month and what will be happening in the next month is in order.
March 2010 was a great month. I was able to follow [...]

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The Secret to True Happiness

March 28, 2010

Here is the secret to true happiness you probably haven’t been looking for!

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