New blog! New house! Times they are a-changin’ in our lives. Brad and I are officially no longer house hunting virgins! Let’s talk about that crazy process for a second. House hunting, to us, means long conversations about budgets and must-have lists, meetings with real estate agents and driving through neighborhoods. It means finding green toilets and collapsing ceilings, falling in love with pictures online and realizing you hate it in person. We walk into rooms and see not what exists, but what could be. It is thrilling and exhausting at the same time. Flood plains, escrow, mortgage insurance, offers, counter-offers, brokers – so many new terms unfamiliar to us until this stage in our adult lives!

It’s hard to believe that things are moving so quickly. It has been two weeks since we started the whole process. We have been pre-approved for a mortgage, seen 9 houses, and fallen in love with 1. I still can’t believe that anyone thinks we are responsible enough to buy a house, but this is what we have been working so hard to achieve for the past two and a half years. I am amazed when I look back and see how far we have come. It has been 1 year, 9 months, and 27 days since we moved in with my parents (or “roommates” as we affectionately like to call them). In that time, we have paid off 3 store credit cards, 2 major credit cards, 2 (of many) student loans, and 1 car. We also paid cash for another car, took a trip to Ireland, visited friends across the US, attended concerts of some of our favorite bands, and found adventures in daily life.

It is not my intention to brag about these things. I only tell you here as an encouragement – if we can do it, anyone can! We went from unemployment to minimum wage jobs to busting our butts and working our way up the ladder. We made a budget and (for the most part) we stick to it. We took Dave Ramsey’s words to heart (read an old post about that here) and implemented the debt-snowball with gazelle intensity. Gradually, we are making our way to financial peace, but still doing things we love along the way.

So we won’t lose hope. Even if we don’t end up with the house we love, there is a better one out there for us. For now, we will enjoy the process and continue to count our blessings.