Hi Everyone,
I have been reading this great forum for a while and it has been extremely helpful. I wanted to seek your opinion on my situation and see if I am ready to plung into the home buying market. Here is a summary of my situation:
26yrs old
live alone in apartment - $1200/m.o
CC (Visa) - $1500 at 0% (I have been wiping this off religiously for the last 6 months by paying $750 every month so goal is to be at $0 on July 30 )
Discover Gas card - $330 at 0% (I use this for gas purchases to get cashback and some purchases for travel. Should be able to get to $0 in couple of months)
Car - $250/month on remaining $4500 at 4.49% (planning to pay $1000/month for the last 4 months of the year after my CC Visa is done so that I wipe it clean by end of the year)
Savings - $1500/month
Travel Saving - $250/month (I use this as a pool to save money for vacations. My family lives in another country so I do visit them every yr or so)
Misc. Saving - $90/month (I use this for any misc. expenses that may arise like car tires, lCD plasma tv one day maybe
)
Food - $300/month ( I have tried to reduce it and am on my way)
Gas - $100/month
Cable + Electricity - $100/month
CellPhone - $50/month
Misc Expenses - $300/month (Usually stuff like going out with friends, 1 day road trips etc. whatever is left gets put into CCs or savings)
I maintain an excel sheet for every month so that i follow my budget which has got me so far after having thousands in CCs and paying interest to these big corporations which was my wake up call!
My Savings are not much since I did this above plan for the last 8 months only and put down about $2000 to wipe out my student loan.
HSBC at 5.18% - $6500
Travel saving at ING - $600
Wamu saving for Misc exp - $250
I dont have any 401k or retirement since I work at a startup and they dont have a plan yet. I do however plan to start something by next year.
My aim is to have financial freedom by end of this year (which was my goal last sept; so much so that I dont use the word D**T and use financial freedom
instead) and thats why I want to pay off car, CCs etc and have about $16k in liquid savings by end of the year. Goal is to then save $2500/month for first 6 months of 2008 to have a total of about $31k in savings on June 30, 2008.
Now here is my dilemma. I live in southern california where house prices have dipped but still are expensive. I would like to buy a condo somewhere around July, 2008. Plan is to put $15k down, $10k for closing costs and get another loan so that I can take it for 15% to avoid PMI. After researching on bankrate, i would probably be able to afford around $350k for a 2br condo which would translate to ($2150 for mortgage + $250 HOA + $300 for property taxes = $2700 on a 5/1 ARM!!). I would live in the condo for atleast 5yrs to recoup my investment. This would however dent into my ability to save after i purchase since I would only be able to save around $1300/month. But I hear you get tax breaks which makes it worthwhile. What is your suggestion? Do you think the above is a good strategy?
I have been reading this great forum for a while and it has been extremely helpful. I wanted to seek your opinion on my situation and see if I am ready to plung into the home buying market. Here is a summary of my situation:
26yrs old
live alone in apartment - $1200/m.o
CC (Visa) - $1500 at 0% (I have been wiping this off religiously for the last 6 months by paying $750 every month so goal is to be at $0 on July 30 )
Discover Gas card - $330 at 0% (I use this for gas purchases to get cashback and some purchases for travel. Should be able to get to $0 in couple of months)
Car - $250/month on remaining $4500 at 4.49% (planning to pay $1000/month for the last 4 months of the year after my CC Visa is done so that I wipe it clean by end of the year)
Savings - $1500/month
Travel Saving - $250/month (I use this as a pool to save money for vacations. My family lives in another country so I do visit them every yr or so)
Misc. Saving - $90/month (I use this for any misc. expenses that may arise like car tires, lCD plasma tv one day maybe

Food - $300/month ( I have tried to reduce it and am on my way)
Gas - $100/month
Cable + Electricity - $100/month
CellPhone - $50/month
Misc Expenses - $300/month (Usually stuff like going out with friends, 1 day road trips etc. whatever is left gets put into CCs or savings)
I maintain an excel sheet for every month so that i follow my budget which has got me so far after having thousands in CCs and paying interest to these big corporations which was my wake up call!
My Savings are not much since I did this above plan for the last 8 months only and put down about $2000 to wipe out my student loan.
HSBC at 5.18% - $6500
Travel saving at ING - $600
Wamu saving for Misc exp - $250
I dont have any 401k or retirement since I work at a startup and they dont have a plan yet. I do however plan to start something by next year.
My aim is to have financial freedom by end of this year (which was my goal last sept; so much so that I dont use the word D**T and use financial freedom

Now here is my dilemma. I live in southern california where house prices have dipped but still are expensive. I would like to buy a condo somewhere around July, 2008. Plan is to put $15k down, $10k for closing costs and get another loan so that I can take it for 15% to avoid PMI. After researching on bankrate, i would probably be able to afford around $350k for a 2br condo which would translate to ($2150 for mortgage + $250 HOA + $300 for property taxes = $2700 on a 5/1 ARM!!). I would live in the condo for atleast 5yrs to recoup my investment. This would however dent into my ability to save after i purchase since I would only be able to save around $1300/month. But I hear you get tax breaks which makes it worthwhile. What is your suggestion? Do you think the above is a good strategy?
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