A year and a half ago I decided to purchase my first home and it’s been one of the best decisions I have made. I did it thinking I was going to live there for two years and then I would rent it out and move back to Taiwan. I wanted to move back to Taiwan and get my masters while working on my Chinese. I thought I was going to be able to do this in two years. I am currently still in the US paying down debt so that I can travel worry free. More on this later.
Well 6 months into my new job I decided it was time to start looking for something. I had an ok down payment about 5% down. I was able to save this since I was living at home with my parents at the time so my expenses were low. My main expense was my $400 student loan payment. I seriously HATE student loans!!!!!!!!!!
Anyway, I live in Atlanta so there is still some good deals out there for real estate. I knew that this was going to be an investment property so I was trying to look at things from that perspective. Yes I was going to live there for a while but eventually it was going be used for rental income. I knew that I wanted something with at least 2 bedrooms 2 bathrooms. This was because I wanted to have a roommate, partly because it’ll help pay the mortgage but also because I’ve never lived with a roommate. The idea of having a friend roommate sounded like the best idea ever!
I ended up purchasing a 3 bedroom 2.5 bathroom town home under my budget. The house needed some work, though not much. I decided to renovate the bathrooms, add some lights/fans and change the carpet. I wanted to renovate the kitchen but that will have to be done at a later time. Thanks to my dad I didn’t have to hire a contractor to help with the bathrooms (thank you dad!!) this helped me keep the cost of the renovations down.
After about a month of working on updating the house, mainly during weekday nights and weekends. (Working full time and doing renovations is definitely not easy, it’s worth it but not easy). I was able to move in with my roommate/best friend and start my new independent life. I totally cried the day I moved out of my parents house. Tears of both happiness and sadness. Six months after we moved in I found a 2nd roommate and we lived together for about a year.
Having roommates was definitely a great help financially. I wish I would have been better with money at this time, I would have been able to save a lot more. You know when you are in your early 20s with a brand new job plus extra income coming in, it’s really hard to not spend! Most of it was spend in Travel and going out to eat. Now that I am no longer in my early 20s, I understand the importance of saving and being debt free. I still go out and have fun with friends but not to the level that it was happening in my early 20s. The lesson has been learned.
