the dilemmas couples go thru when getting married…
for those who are getting married or are, how did u decide what to do with living arragements? Assuming u moved out of ur parents home.. and into one for yourself..
did you begin with renting or go straight into buying a house? and what sort of house did u look for or are looknig for? are u thinking long term or short? or just for convenience sake until you have enuff money for a deposit?
we have the first home buyers scheme here where the bank i think gives u like hmm 7% of the deposit.. something along those lines.. but even then, the deposit is an outrageous $30k+ amount… i get a cardiac arrest just thinking about it..
so, got any good advice?
note: assume we aint rich.. just working our butts off and still have no money
note 2: im sure when theres a goal in mind, money can be saved.. so thats not a problem
well we've decided to rent first for atleast few years as we both are broke students ourselves. get settled in a new city, in a new place. get comfortable and save enough first and then buy a house. probably a small one at first. phir inshallah agar haseeyat hoee to bara lay laingay :-)
start small, there are grants available for first time home buyers, look into those, get a small starter place, put down as little as possible. Even if you have to get short term loans from parents do it, the way prices are rising the sooner you get in the market the better. maybe get an interest only mortgage, buy the place in an area which is seeing growth. sell a few years down the road apply the profit made to downpayment of a different place, relax.
We bought a flat, paying in montly installments, its like paying rent, not much difference, just figure out how much you can pay monthly and still live a nice life. We plan on moving to a bigger apartment in few years though.
sadzzz, Fraudia made some good points, also keep in mind that a house's monthly mortgage payments are sometimes lower than renting, but the more you put as a down payment the lower the payments.
You have to decide what type of house you need or want, the average price of one, and usually 25%+ (we did about 50%) as a down payment. Aim for that.
My former husband and I rented a very cramped apartment when we were starting out and saved every penny we had. It took us about 7 years, but we bought our first house that way. The monthly payments were about 300+ a month, so it sometimes is worth it to do it that way. That way the upkeep and monthly bills don't kill you on top of the mortgage.
You need to know what your long term plans are. You shouldn't invest in a place where u don't see yourself living in the next five years. If the future looks unpredictable then rent otherwise save money for down payment. You can live with inlaws or your parents for a few months after marraige. I don't think parents will have any objections unless u do. Try to save a grand a month and in a year's time u will have enough to pay for the down payment. Good luck
Sadzz he already has a home in LA that is being rented, so we "might" (we have to kick out the people living there) stay there until he's done with med school, than we'll being moving back to San Diego. b/c thats where we are building our home. His parents are helping him out in everything.
we've been getting really good advice from my parents and uncles as well, so its all really helpful. It's always nice to know what people in ur situation are doing though..
we dont know what exactly our plan is.. we dont want to be renting cus that way our money is just getting wasted (our thinking neways.. i know it works for a lot of people though).. hehe we're hoping (praying wishing begging) someone is nice and lends us some money for the deposit.. but we'll see..
we're thinking of a smallish house/apartment to begin with... lets see what happens Inshallah. There's jsut too many things one needs to think about. I had no idea.. now i look thru catalogues and just panic... geez! i even worry about cuttlery...
Sadzzz, why. It is such a desi thing to do to buy a house as your first major investment, and I dont consider it an investment, at your stage it will be a liability. Investment is when your money is generating more money, that is what you should look into. Only buy a house to live in when you have spare cash.
Read some books on it, talk to people who know. I dont think it is feasable to pay a financial advisor if you have less than 100K to invest, but there are a lot of good investing opportunities out there. I guess since both of you are young your risk tolerence is high too, remember higher the risk, higher the reward. There is no financial education in a desi household. 80/90% of desi men and women, when they leave their house and start a new life for themselves are totally clueless in financial matters.
I can suggest a very good book for learning basic concepts as a starting guide. It was infact discussed by Matsui in Eco, do a search of the forum. it is called rich dad, poor dad.
^ thanks ashtray. Yeah we were thinknig about going to a financial advisor. But sheesh, even they cost. I have 8 months to save, and ive saved zilch.. thats an awesome start i must say...
arritey, I shall look into it. Might go get it over the weekend.
Na, our parents have been really helpful.. the thing is when uve seen ur parents go thru the same thing (like when the migrated over) and seen the mistakes they've made.. u do learn a bit or two..
everyone has dreams and they want the best straight away.. but i guess we need to be patient, start out small.. and build it up
We haven't properly thought about that yet, honestly. We're very flighty and impractical. Sometimes we wanna run off and drift around, sometimes I want to buy a house in a small rural tourist town and renovate it to make a bed and breakfast.
Choices, choices. At this point, I really don't care. It's fun that the future is a tabula rasa. I hate being tied down and committed to something.
