If you have been following me for a while now, you know that I am pretty much an open book when it comes to sharing my life. I have talked about many things from my personal life, to being a mom, all the way to nursing school on my instagram stories. I do this 1 – because I truly enjoy showing my life but 2 – because if I can help even just one person I want to be able to do that. One of my favorite things is when someone DMs me asking about a time that I shared something because they can relate and want someone to talk to about it. I love your guys’ messages! So I thought why not share Joe and I’s journey in buying our first home since that is sort of why I have been a little MIA these past couple of weeks. Well keep reading!
To start, I am going to need to take you back 2 years in time, to the part of my life that we found out we were pregnant with Joey which was January of 2020. Joe and I had nothing. No savings, no long term life plans, no idea of where we were headed basically. I was a sophomore at Bradley University going for my nursing degree and Joe, actually the day I told him I was pregnant was supposed to be starting school back up again. He had left his full time job to be able to attend school full time. I remember I told Joe I was pregnant on a Monday and that same day he did not go to school but instead called his boss to ask for his job back. Yeah… a little overwhelming I know. Our original quick thinking plan was that I was going to come home and we would save up some money to rent an apartment. However, after talking our situation over with both of our parents we came to the decision that Joe and I would move in with my parents for the time being. Not the exact vision we had but at the same time we were very fortunate for this because this is what really allowed us to start saving money.
Within the next couple of weeks I returned home from Bradley and started trying to figure out my next schooling steps because it was and still is very important to me to finish my nursing degree. I wanted to get everything settled, so once Joey was born and I was comfortable in being a mom, I would return back to school. Meanwhile, Joe at this point was working two jobs. He was working his full time job, plus he picked up weekends shifts at a grocery store. Joe worked 7 days a week basically my whole pregnancy. He was so determined to save every penny and be able to provide for us that he did not take a break. This whole time I really wanted to contribute to this in some way but this is when covid was brand new and no one really knew what the situation was so we decided that it was best for me to stay home and not work during this time.
This went on for 9 months, saving every penny, only spending money on things we needed. At this point we still did not really know if we wanted to rent, or if we would be looking to buy but really budgeting ourselves helped us get our life together and ease our anxiety about what was to come.
Joey was born in September 2020 and Joe actually started school back up a month prior to his arrival in August. He had to go down to working part time to be able to manage school work but we were still trying to save all our pennies. We felt comfortable with this decision because truthfully, hard work really does pay off and it allowed Joe to now be able to continue his schooling.
I think my biggest tip in trying to aim toward a goal is to set priorities but also allowing yourself some flexibility. What I mean by this- for us our goals were 1= our own home, 2= school. We knew that no matter what, we wanted to move out of my parents home but we did not want to do it at the expense of our education. We prioritized what we wanted our money to go toward as we were getting married and still trying to get into our own space.
Once summer 2021 rolled around, Joe went back to work full time and I too started working as well. We knew that this was the “last stretch of working” because in the back of our minds, we knew that this was it. We wanted to be moved into our own place sometime in the next upcoming months and BOTH be back in school. So that summer we both worked our butts off. I also just want to say that we were very fortunate to have my mom helping us with Joey while we were working. Without her I would not have been able to go back to work. Kind of one of the perks of living with your parents haha.
Fast forward a couple months (December 2021) we finally started looking at homes and pretty immediately fell in love with the one we are in now! I am not going to get into the whole buying process but I will say we have been living here for a little over a month now and feel beyond blessed and lucky. I share all of this with you guys because the stage of life that Joe and I are in currently is slowly starting a family. We craved independence so badly and just wanted to give Joey his own space. His own room, more structure to his day, a place with space for all of our things, a proper home. Even though some may say our situation wasn’t exactly “the best” we still made it work. We worked together as a team and achieved our goal within 2 years. It was not always easy as working around the clock can be very challenging (especially once a baby is born) but it was what needed to be done in order to achieve what we have today. You have to look at it like, it is not going to be easy but it will get easier… (maybe a little cliche to say but really, a few months of a tough situation can set you up for a bright future). You will slowly build up to your goal, especially my young parents out there reading this… you can do it. Don’t get discouraged, you have so much going for you… your baby!
Not everyones journey will look exactly like ours but I truly believe that if you really want it, it will be yours.
As always thank you for reading!
With love, Kasia
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