063 What It's Really Like to Be a New Homeowner - Jessica Moorhouse

For this special solo episode, I share what's been happening on the new homeowner-front since my first episode of the season where I announced that my husband and I bought our first place. Long description: In my first episode (and first solo episode) for season 3 of the Mo' Money Podcast, I shared with you the big news that my husband and I bought our very first place. After one failed house hunt two years ago, we restarted our search in July and ended up buying a townhouse in Toronto. Not only that, we were able to put 25% for our down-payment so we could keep our monthly payments as low as possible. Well, since I recorded that episode at the beginning of September, a lot has happened. We've owned our home for 1 1/2 months, and we've already experienced quite a few ups and downs as new homeowners. Some of the Not So Fun Things About New Homeownership Overall, we are still super happy with our decision, but it has hands down been the most stressful period in our lives (save for maybe planning our wedding 3 years ago). You know when people warn you that things are gonna go wrong and break when you buy a place so be prepared? Well, they did, and we are seriously so glad we were prepared! At the end of the episode I offer some tips I believe everyone thinking of buying a place should consider. One of those tips was to have a special emergency fund for housing repairs and replacements that you'll need to do right away. For us, we had to replace our washer/dryer and stove within the first week of moving in. How much did that cost is? About $3,000! But we need clean our clothes and cook our food so we had to replace them both ASAP. Luckily, we had the cash stashed away so we could afford it. If we didn't, we may have had to dip into our other emergency funds (for real emergencies or job losses), or had to put them on credit. Since I'm am 100% anti-debt (though now I guess I'm not totally debt-free with my mortgage), that just wasn't an option for me. How You Can Easily Get Swept Up into a Never-ending Spending Cycle Besides having to drop some major cash after getting the keys, our place has pretty much been total chaos since we moved all of our stuff in. Now, we finally have some space and privacy. I'll most likely do another update podcast episode at either the 6 month or 1 year mark. Until then, make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel as I'll be posting some new videos soon all about life as a new homeowner! For more podcast episodes, check out the Podcast page. Shownotes: jessicamoorhouse.com/63