michelleponders

So recent data on home buyers in the United States stated that the average age of a home buyer is 40. That is certainly not hard to believe. The cost of homes has gone up so much in the past 10 years or so that many young home buyers do not see how they will be able to save enough for a down payment when just surviving day to day takes all they have. Wages have not kept up with the economy much less inflation. The mortgage rates went from crazy low 3% before Covid to as high as 7.9% during the Biden Administration back to 6.5% today. Add to all that, the immigrants, both legal and illegal, and you have a big housing shortage. And for young people, buying a home just seems like a nice dream from which they were rudely shaken awake.

I have always struggled with the home buying process. My credit was not high enough or I did not make enough money for a bank to take a chance on me. So I had pretty much given up on having my own home. I figured I would always be a renter who could never paint a wall if I wanted or add upgrades to make my life easier that just increased the value of the home and the landlord never paid a dime for increased property value. Renting was just my lot in life.

Now like all renters, I have always been at the mercy of rent increases or the property being sold. My husband and I had gone through the house we were renting being put on the market two different times. And after the second round, a Realtor friend who knew my husband asked if we had ever considered buying a home. So we both laid out our forever renter stories and our Realtor told us that if we would give him a shot at helping us, maybe we could finally own our own home.

I was excited and yet more nervous than a long tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs. We did not have the money for a down payment saved up and we would have to do some work on our credit scores. So we made the choice to borrow against our 401Ks to pay down our credit cards as well as have the down payment at closing. Now, when you are still in your 30’s to early 40’s you have plenty of time to repay the money you borrowed against the 401K before you will ever need it. We, on the other hand, are in our 50’s and borrowed the money. Absolutely insane and crazy and certainly not recommended. But you see, we were tired. We were tired of houses we were renting being sold and us having to move every 5 years. And we are just getting to dang old to move without help. So we proceeded to do something rather reckless. But we now have a piece of the American Dream of home ownership.

We bought a brand new build thinking it would be awhile before we would have to do any major work on the house unless we wanted to do any upgrades. And that has pretty much been the case thus far. But the oven on our 1 year old stove stopped working and WE had to get it fixed. We have recessed lighting all throughout the house including the outside lights. I went to the website of the brand the lights are from and getting new lights was easy. At first. Then, the company changed the design of the connecting wire from the light just slightly to the junction box and we will have to change every junction box in the house in order to stay with the lights from this particular company. Needless to say, we will being going to our local home improvement store and looking for recessed lighting with the same type of connection wire on the original lights in the house so we can replace lights. If we can not find what we are looking for, well, I guess we are gonna have to buy a bunch of recessed lights and replace EVERY junction box in the house. Or we will have to completely remodel our lighting in the house. Not a pleasant thought. But that is home ownership for ya!

We have been in our home for a couple of years now. Since it is a new build, any modifications we would like to do is completely on us. There was no one before us modifying anything. I hope to one day have a carport and a walk-in shower again one day. We did at least get a shed built out back. We will build some above ground boxes for gardening and plant a few trees. Plant flowers for the pollinators and find balance on our little homestead. That is the joy of having a home.

You may ask why in the world would we do something so crazy as borrowing against our 401Ks? Besides the reasons listed above, we struggle to save enough money to buy a house. We are working class folks. We do not make enough to be considered middle class and we make too much to be considered below the poverty line. And believe it or not, there was a time in America when even the working class was able to save up enough money for a down payment on the American Dream. But that is just not the case anymore. We knew we were able make a house payment because every time we had to move we were paying crazy stupid rent that just keep going up. We also live in a college town and rent is as high as house payments in many cases. So why help someone else’s wealth grow when we could do it for ourselves? And we did have an excellent Realtor who helped us get what we needed and what we could afford. Highly recommended by the way. Yes, we realize that we can very easily loose it all if one of us lost a job or was out of work for a while due to an injury. Yes, we are aware of our ages and know that our kids may have to either finish paying off the house or just sell it when we are gone for their inheritance unless we come across a lot of money to pay it off. But it took a longtime for us to have a piece of the American Dream and build a little wealth of our own. So, to us, it was worth it.