And so it begins

What begins, you ask? The house buying process! We are in the very, very, very beginning phases. Our lease isn't up until September, so we're not really looking to move until late summer/early fall.

Allow me to give you a little insight and background into my thoughts and feelings on buying a home. I've announced publicly several times that I would not buy a house unless I had a 20% down payment saved up. That was our goal at least...and we're looking more at only being able to put down 10%. It would take us probably another 3 years to save up enough for 20%.

I have absolutely nothing against renting. It has allowed us to have fixed expenses over the past 4 and a half years and has allowed us to save a lot. In fact, if we were currently renting a little house with a fenced in yard and a garage we would be pretty content renting for another 3 years until we had saved up 20%. Our apartment now is nice, but it's not conducive to raising a family (if we decide to start that in the next couple years) and it's a bit more expensive than our rent was when we lived in Alabama.

So far, we're on the right track. Remember when I went crazy obsessing over trying to find a place to live in Chicago before we moved methodically and calmly looked online for a place to live in Chicago before we moved? Well, we met this really awesome realtor who showed us a few rental properties. None of them panned out, but we've been in contact with her again and she's going to be our realtor for this process. She's really great, and we both got a really good vibe from her and have heard good things about her. We've also been in touch with a mortgage broker, who ran some numbers for us and gave us a good idea of what we can afford. I had originally wanted to get pre-qualified (instead of just pre-approved) for a mortgage but since we're so early in the process she would have to be pulling our credit to extend our pre-qualification every 90 days until we closed on a house.

We've looked at a few places online and plan to go to a few open houses in the next month or so. We are very excited, but I have to say I'm really not sure how anyone affords a house, ever! We have some savings, have no debt (other than student loans), and combined we have a decent salary and it still seems like it's going to be an expensive endeavor! Wish us luck and stay tuned....I'll update as we go along!