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.

The Library

On this website you will see a lot of posts about books. I love books for learning about new subjects, learning how to do new things, expanding my horizons in new ways, entertainment, and a lot of other things. Over the last three years I have had the opportunity to finish my masters degree which required a lot of reading from books, welcome 2 kids into the world in addition to the one I already had who all love books, and to read on my own time a lot. All told I have read at least 500 books in that time. Sure some of them are kids books, but there have been a lot of other ones as well.

The point is that I have gone through a lot of books. I have only bought about 25 books total in that time. That may be a high guess, but I want to be sure I am not over exaggerating.

How have I done this? I have made great use of the local library. Each time I go I find books I didn’t know I wanted to read in addition to what I was looking for. Libraries are amazing. They let you try out books without having to buy them first! Maybe you aren’t like me, but there are a very few books that I will read more than once. Ironically recipe books face almost the worst attrition rate. So why buy them to have them just sit on your self? That would definitely clutter up your life and mind in addition to making a dent in the finances.

For my wife and I books are a must, so is managing our finances. So we go the library route. Here is a short list of reasons why your library is really rocking in your favor.

• Libraries have room to store a lot of books! This means that they are more likely to have the books your looking for, and many more related to the subject of interest than the book store.

• They don’t charge a fee for membership. This is amazing, they are funded publicly and so you can read and learn for free. This is like being able to take mini classes for free! They do charge fees for late books, but honestly they are usually so small you can chalk them up to improving the library and just move on.

• Libraries aren’t worried about having the latest trends only. Bookstores are trying to sell books. So they are looking for the latest moneymakers to maximize the bottom line. Libraries don’t have to worry about profits, so they can gather the classics and can afford to let books collect dust for years keeping them available for you.

• Most libraries are carrying the latest released books by the hottest authors. I have been impressed to find a wide variety of books all recently released at my library.

• Interlibrary loan. Often if your library doesn’t have a book another will and they gladly loan books between libraries. This basically gives you two or more libraries worth of books under one roof. Bookstores can’t keep up with the variety.

• Public events are hosted and provided by libraries for your benefit for free on a regular basis. My library hosts free movies in a real theatre and has authors coming regularly to talk about their latest books. Don’t forget the kid’s story time. The best part about these events is they are provided for free, and are free of the pushy sales atmosphere sometimes found in bookstores.

• Libraries are conveniently located to where people are living and near community centers rather than in the mall. Dragging your kids there is easier than fighting them through the mall. This again helps you avoid the constant pressure to spend your money.

• You can try out books again and again at no cost to help decide if you actually want to buy it. There are a lot of good books available; you only need the ones that are amazing on your shelves. You can let the library store the rest!

• Frequenting the library and reading regularly will help you to stay educated and up to date with life. It will also increase your social smarts by making you a better conversationalist versed on a wider range of subjects.

• You can have a constantly changing bookshelf at home. You can check out a lot of books from the library and read them at your leisure. See what you really like and renew the really interesting ones. We do this for kid books. It is amazing what books the kids will love and which they just don’t care to open once we get home. By checking out lots of books for them we give them a constantly changing variety to choose from. This also reduces the request for the same book over and over (23 times in one day I think is the record for a favorite book we had).

So stop buying books and check them out instead. Libraries are an amazing convenience available for free. They are usually funded by taxes so they aren’t free but this is all the more reason to use them, so you can get your moneys worth!

Check out your local library today. You will be surprised to find that many of your friends and neighbors may already be there as well.

Have you been to the library this year? How often do you check books out compared to buying them?

So I got to thinking about myself and why I write over here at Unusual Living. I started writing the ideas down and then when I was done I saw I had just written an about me page. So check it out here on the about me page.

I really feel like this site and what I talk about is a big part of who I am as a person. I love other things I do, but this stuff makes up a majority of the person that I am. I think a lot of you would agree as well. Many of us have jobs and things that we do lots of the time, but the family life and our everyday activities in this area make up who we are for the most part. Thanks for reading, I am excited to really be here and diving into these subjects!

I am a pretty addicted blog reader. My google reader at one point had 137 subscriptions. That is being whittled down to an elect few but I spend time once in a while searching out great blogs and sites for information.

One subject that I love to read about is Money! Not because I am rich, I am actually looking at a lot of debt. I love to read about it because I want to understand it better and learn to really control it, rather than it control me. Most people don’t really know much about how money works in any area. So I started reading about this subject and I am becoming a bit more literate and am now able to say that I have decreased my debt every month for more than 2 years.

This post is a list of financial blogs I have come across recently. Hopefully one may be of use to you and perhaps be a nice addition to your regular reading list.

Have I missed some that you like? Let me know in the comments.

• 20 Something Finance
• Being Frugal
• Clever Dude
• Dave Ramsey
• Get Rich Slowly
• Man vs. Debt
• My Money Blog
• The Simple Dollar
• Wise Bread

I hope you enjoy!

What blogs do you love? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.