DJ and Yvette’s Blog!

Yvette and I signed a lease on a new apartment today!  We’re excited because the rent is under $700 for a 2 bedroom apartment, which is great since Yvette pays almost that much now for a 1 bedroom apartment!!!

The apartment is in a condo complex and rented out by the owner, so we’re anticipating a lot less of the noise and hassles of most apartment complexes.  That and I found out that we’ll be living next door to a policeman, which is always a good thing   I’m willing to bet a patrol car in the parking lot each night will prevent the crimes, noise and of course the ever annoying pot-waft I can’t seem to be rid of in this town whenever I’m in an apartment.

The kitchen is pretty small but it has a decent sized living room, a porch and of course two average-sized bedrooms.  One of the bedrooms will be used as an office and spare room (as well as Missy’s room during the day) with a futon (at least that’s the current plan).  Of course we’ll have pictures down the road.

The apartment, for those of you familiar with Fort Collins, is on the corner of Lemay and Swallow- so much closer to both of our offices!  We’re both looking forward to not having to deal with College Ave. unless we really want to!

Not a House?

We get the question a lot- people just assume that because we’re getting married and the market is so ‘good’ that we’ll just buy a house together.

Well, we have some thoughts on that:
1)  Why would you add the stress of buying a house to the stress of a new life together?
2)  We still have a lot of debts to pay off.  In other words, until we get them paid off, we’re ‘broke’.  It doesn’t make sense to buy a house when you’re broke!  By renting at this price we’ll have several hundred dollars extra each month to put towards reducing our debts and within a year or maybe two we’ll be in a position to get a mortgage with no other debts; a very nice thought.  Dave Ramsey has a good saying about this- that if you buy a house when you’re broke Murphy moves in!
It seems that starting a family and having a house is a good thing.  But having a family, a mortgage and a bunch of debt is one of the big problems with our nation and we’d really like to get off to a better start as a family.  We would like to start from a position of financial strength, not weakness.
3)  So you say, well- put the $700 a month into a mortgage so you’re not ‘throwing money away at rent’!  It seems to me that if I have $800 a month in debt payments and $700 in rent, then when I’m done paying off the debts I’ll have enough money to afford a pretty nice mortgage payment, and won’t have to worry about selling off my little apartment.  I’m willing to push my frustrations about being 33 and not owning a home aside when I think about that.  Besides…
4)  When I first started saying we should look at houses back in March, Yvette said “I dunno”.  More sagelike Ramsey advice:  Listen to your (future) wife’s gut feelings!  They’ll save you money!

If you can’t tell- our feet are very well planted with this decision.

No, we’re not ’shacking up’…

DJ will begin moving in gradually in July, his lease expires July 31st.  Sure, more expensive this way but having been in the Fort Collins rental market for this long I know that these kind of deals don’t stay long.  In fact, another condo just two doors down from this one is renting for $75 more and is in worse shape.  So, worth it in the long run.

The other nice thing about all this is that a gradual move is much less stressful.  I can take a load of stuff in my car on my way to work (I’ve been passing this complex every workday for almost a year now) and the big stuff sometime around the end of the month.

DJ will have almost a full month of peace before the wedding, as Yvette won’t be moved in until well after the honeymoon.  Her lease doesn’t expire until the end of September, so we have yet another month to get all of her stuff moved in.

So- a gradual move in to be sure, but a lot less stressful!  It’s a shame we couldn’t syncronize our move in/out schedules more, but when you think about it- it’s only this one time- at least when we get a mortgage on a house we’ll be in control of when we move in!

One fun little detail is that part of this plan will mean getting a storage shed for the time being- DJ being in his 30s, there’s a lot of ’stuff’ he’s accumulated that will be useful when it comes time to buy a house, but not in an apartment.   Besides, gotta store that DJ equipment somewhere!  That was another huge reason why we jumped on the apartment- the price allows us to get a storage unit and an apartment for less than the average apartment!

Come October- the Debt Snowball begins in full effect!  Then lookout world; the Eshelmans will finally get themselves a house!

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