Making Ends meet - need some support!

[dcfromva]

JDarling,
It sounds like you are working hard and making sacrifices. Hang in there and keep up the good work and you will be rewarded for your sacrifices. By just owning your own home, you have already achieved a huge accomplishment and you should be proud of yourselves.

Here is a link to the IRS web site withholding calculator.


-DC

 

[JDarling]

Are you paying PMI (Mortgage Insurance) ? If you think you that the area has increased enough to have your equity at 20% then you can see about having it removed. Even if you don't think it has yet, keep that in mind for the future?

Thanks for the tip! No - we're not paying mortgage insurance (though we get offers every day in the mail).

Blang - Thanks for the words of encouragement! That's exactly it. I know we'll find a way to make this trip happen, and I know things will get better. Somedays it just seems SO far away but... remember that better job I mentioned? I have an interview on Sunday!
And DH was recently offered a job in Boston which would pay what we BOTH make combined now. It's an open-ended offer, so we don't have to decide now (and we can't - we'd be paying MASSIVE penalties on our mortgage).

MickeyFlirt -
I would LOVE to move out of Cali! We had the plan to, BUT DH found a job he loves and is learning a great skill that will pay off in the long run. So we stuck it out and bought here. The nice thing is, our condo is already going for about $30,000 more than we paid for it back in January!

 

[ducklite]

Yeah. Nearly as bad here. your average house you wouldn't mind living in and raising a family in runs over 1/2 a mill. easy. "Expensive" houses here run about $4-5 mills

Sounds like much of NJ, Metropolitan NY, and SW CT. Housing prices are rising all over the US, and incomes aren't neccesarily rising with them.

MickeyFlirt--Florida is not what it was a few years ago for housing prices. We've seen them rise 150% in my neighborhood in under two years, and there's no end in sight.

JDarling, you've gotten a lot of good advice here. One thing I haven't seen you talk about is getting a second part time job. If you worked ten hours a week p/t at a second job you'd be able to save enough in the space of two years to easily take a nice vacation to WDW.

Anne

 

[ducklite]

Thanks for the tip! No - we're not paying mortgage insurance (though we get offers every day in the mail).

Mortgage life and PMI are two different things. Unless you put down at least 20%, have an FHA or VA loan, or possibly a CalHFA, or structured your loan as an 80/10/10 (very few lenders will do that for a first time buyer) you have PMI.

You likely do'nt even know it. Call your lender to find out how to ahve it removed. They might require you to pay $200 or so for an appraisal.

Anne

 

[JDarling]

Anne -
I occasionally do get part time acting/singing jobs, and coding jobs. The coding jobs pay REALLY well (when I get them). I have done the part time job thing before and I am picking it up again on the weekends, in the form of being a mystery shopper, selling books on Amazon.com, etc. All that extra money is going into the vacation savings fund, so that does help a tiny bit. I'm getting the couple we're going with involved too and all of that money is going to help pay off the trip as well and things we all want to do together while we're there (like Hoop-De-Doo).

We're getting there.
Thanks for the support everyone!
We'll defiantely look into getting that Mortgage insurance removed - probably next month if there's a fee involved.

I did forget that 1/2 the reason we're so tight this month is because of DH's crown and other dental work. If we added up the money spent on that, that would equal about $500 we could have thrown into our WDW trip. Thankfully, the work is done now and those "shouldn't" be reoccuring costs.

 

[crisi]

Do watch the withholding thing. Not everyone gets money back. We withhold at the higher single rate, don't claim our kids on our W-4s, pay in a few hundred extra dollars a month, own a home, give to charity, itemize - and I still got hit with a $15,000 tax bill!

 

[ducklite]

Do watch the withholding thing. Not everyone gets money back. We withhold at the higher single rate, don't claim our kids on our W-4s, pay in a few hundred extra dollars a month, own a home, give to charity, itemize - and I still got hit with a $15,000 tax bill!

OUCH!!!!

The most we ever got hit with was about $4500. After that we started having an extra $400/month taken out. This year we're getting around $8K back! Got to call about getting the rest of the window treatments done.

Anne

 

[JDarling]

Yeah well - we're currently battling w/ the IRS over $5000.00 they say we owe them from 2002. My Dh was out of work for 4 months during that year. I think he might have made $5000.00 all year long! Basically, they are saying that our companies reported different numbers than we did (we paid the $300 we owed). We've mailed them copies of our paperwork showing we reported the same things they did and got a response saying they recieved it... and then another letter saying we still owe it... FOR THE SAME REASON! Grrr.... We do have an attorney though so it's hearing time.

 

[goofyforlife]

I feel for you..... I live in the DC area...where if you want to live in a decent school district/neighborhood..it costs.....

We moved 25 miles from my job just to get a nice townhouse for $250K last July. (that's because we couldn't afford to purchase the townhouse we were renting closer in for get this....$380K)

We tried looking for something cheaper but short of a two hour commute, our price range was limited because anything cheaper was quickly overbid by slumlords with cash on hand or people who could pay over the appraisal value because they had extra money.

We used to live in central PA...the cost of living was lower but so were the wages....and you had to worry about layoffs more often.....

 

[crisi]

OUCH!!!!

The most we ever got hit with was about $4500. After that we started having an extra $400/month taken out. This year we're getting around $8K back! Got to call about getting the rest of the window treatments done.

Anne

I'm not sure how much I can complain, because it means we made quite a bit of money on short term capital gains last year.

 

[JDarling]

I feel for you..... I live in the DC area...where if you want to live in a decent school district/neighborhood..it costs.....

We moved 25 miles from my job just to get a nice townhouse for $250K last July. (that's because we couldn't afford to purchase the townhouse we were renting closer in for get this....$380K)

We tried looking for something cheaper but short of a two hour commute, our price range was limited because anything cheaper was quickly overbid by slumlords with cash on hand or people who could pay over the appraisal value because they had extra money.

We used to live in central PA...the cost of living was lower but so were the wages....and you had to worry about layoffs more often.....

Yup. There's the rub of us moving to Boston. DH might have a job, but I'll be stuck for a while while I find one. It's no big deal, because I have a certification that puts me in demand anywhere in the country. He's not sure if he wants to move back east again. I don't care. As long as we're together - home is where we are! We could always lease the condo out. We'll see though. It'll be some time before he makes any decision. He has to finish his GEG first so he can be a certified gem appraiser. Then we'll go hunting.
Besides - this little cutey has never seen snow.

Got Milk?

 

[undertheradar]

Wow, $2.41 a gallon sounds great! We are North of Los Angeles and gas here has risen $.25 a gallon this week to command an "inexpensive" $2.73 per gallon. We have 3 kids and are looking into housing here and it is sick what these homes are running. The average in Ventura County, as a "starter" home is $465,000 for a condo and $630,000 for a single dwelling. Who ever thought that 6 figure incomes would not be enough to safely afford housing. We moved here from Ohio 2+1/4 years ago and cannot believe what people are willing to pay. The challenge here is that you are not competing with other buyers, you are competing with investment groups. The market here stays falsely high due to the limited new construction. The SOCAL region is making up for property value losses in the 70s.