You can pay cash for a home with the right planning.
My husband and I have a crazy goal to pay cash for our next home.
We currently live in an 860 square-foot home and there are six of us. We are short and we joke that our kids are short, so it will be easy for us to fit in the home for a while longer. However, there are days when another bathroom would be totally convenient.
We started on this journey 11.5 years ago. I took a budgeting class from my husband while we were dating. Six months later he proposed and we began facilitating Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University class. It was life-changing.
We changed our way of spending, and saving, money.
We had a goal to pay cash for our wedding, and then pay off our entire consumer debt of $28,000 in the first year of our marriage. Not only did we hit both goals, but we even paid off our consumer debt in a little less than a year.
When we did that so fast, we wondered if maybe we could pay off our home, which had about $72,000 left on the loan, before trying to have children. Our goal was to pay it off in 18 months. We did it in 15.
We have been debt free, including our home, since March 2008.
The time has come to think about our next home. We began talking to the children about how we are going to not be buying certain items and we’ll be cutting back on the grocery budget to help save for our next home.
We want to pay cash for a home again — and plan to.
To help them get on board, we share with them why we are cutting back on expenses. We have tried to help them visualize a different, roomier home with hopefully a separate game/play room. They might possibly have their own rooms, but they might not. We will most likely DEFINITELY have two bathrooms!
The 5-year-old often comments, “Good job mom for turning off the lights so we can save money for our next house. I hope it’s bigger than this one so we can have more places to hide!”
The kids are amazed that we have to pay for water, lights, and electricity. Watching TV costs money; staying cool costs money. It has been a great opportunity to help them see where they can help save money to reach our goal.
Visualizing our goal
One of the most important ways to cut back on spending is to have a goal. Having a goal helps us to say “No” to ourselves because we have our eye on the prize — to pay cash for a home.
I told my husband about a woman on the Dave Ramsey show doing her debt-free scream. Her goal was to travel the world after she became debt free. So, she drew a picture of the world and colored it in as she saved more money. When she had saved all the money for the trip, the whole picture was colored in.
I bought graph paper and proposed we draw a house to represent our next home and color in the picture as we save money to pay cash. His idea of a goal sheet was to start off with a white piece of paper and color the squares black as we save money. Then we would end up with a black piece of paper.
I was not wild about his idea nor he mine. So, we are doing both.
We made these posters out of graph paper so each square is worth $100. For every $100 we save toward the next house, we will color in 1 square. Last weekend, we were able to color in $100,000 worth of squares to represent our current home. Our goal is to save $210,000 total so we can pay cash for a home.
After coloring in $100,000 worth, the kids are asking when we are going to color the rest of the picture.
In due time, my children. Slow and steady.
About Misty Clark:
Misty is a mom of 4 kids age 7 and under (Wayne-7, Bruce-5, Allison-3, and David-1). She is a wife, stay-at-home mom, homeschooler, and future professional storyteller. Right in the middle of having children, she developed a love of speaking on stage encouraging others with humor. She enjoys telling Bible stories along with stories from her own life. Since she is in the trenches of motherhood, the internet is her stage while she blogs over at momsforloweredexpectations.com
Want to read more? Let’s connect on social, too:
Mumbling Mommy on Facebook
Mumbling Mommy on Twitter
Mumbling Mommy on Pinterest
Category: Family Finances
Tags: buying a home
