BIG family, LITTLE house!
Updated: Aug 5, 2021
At 22 we were ready to purchase our first home. We had planned to only be in the home the duration of my husbands’ military contract, just under 5 years. After that we would move to wherever or stay, but we hadn’t decided.
When we were looking we had a SET budget in mind. Rather than looking at payments we looked at how big of a loan to take out. I was dead set on $100,000 and no more. Thankfully our agent showed us homes just over that as what was in our price range didn’t fit our needs. We settle on the home we are in now at 1200 square feet for about $120k. Perfect fit for us at the time. Large yard, new wood look tile, in a quiet cul de sac. It was a win, win.
Flash forward to us almost 5 years later… I’m in real estate, he’s out of the military, and most importantly, we have two kids in our tiny home. With a single car garage and one car driveway, our 3 cars, none of which fit in the garage, one could say we are busting at the seems!
For the longest time, up until very recently in fact, I was ashamed of how small our home is. After all, I’m killing it (so I think) in real estate, we should be able to get a bigger home. But the fact of the matter is this home has afforded us many luxuries.
When I got into real estate we lived off of Brady’s income, as an E3 in the military. Having a low mortgage allowed me to dive into real estate in the first place! If we had to pay much more we would have had a great struggle paying bills while in limbo waiting for my first close.
Then, exciting or not, my husband and I both LIVE in our cars. So, due to having a low mortgage we are afforded the ability to have nice vehicles. Not that our budget is anyone’s business, but we opted to splurge on our vehicles as we do truly do so much work in them and with them, ad neither of us are likely to get under the hood to fix them. If we had a bigger, more expensive home we would be unable to do this.
The greatest bonus of having a small home and low mortgage is our GOALS. If you know me, chances are you were waiting for this line. We bought land last year and are working towards building our DREAM HOME on it. If we had upgraded homes we would not be able to afford the nice things we have and the land, let alone be able to pay for the steps along the way (as much as possible) in full.
We tired endlessly to do an interim home, including some creative maneuvers. Nothing ended up working. Now we know that it wasn’t meant to be and staying here is actually the best thing for us!
