Frustration is...

I was talking to someone the other day, and she was telling me about how she and her husband are looking for a house to buy. They are looking in the $100,000-$150,000 range. I’ve never met her husband, and don’t know how old he is, or what kind of money they make. What I do know is that she is pretty young, they have 3 kids, and she is a stay-at-home mom. And, they just recently bought a fairly new car.

So how in the hell are they going to buy a $100,000 house?

This isn’t the first time I’ve wondered about this. I keep running into people who I can’t believe are buying houses. I used to work with this girl, she was 18, got married the summer of 2004. In this case I happen to know that they don’t have very good credit and didn’t make enough money to save up a down payment. They bought a house last summer. I don’t know how much the house was or anything, she wasn’t working here at the time.

So how in the hell did they buy a house?

Chris and I are always talking about where we want to live, what kind of house we want to buy, how much land we want, hell, what flowers we want in the garden. I want a house of my own. I dream about it – what kind of kitchen and bathrooms we’ll have, the big wrap-around porch I want, a special little room for all of my books. A shed where he can keep all of his tools and do all of his little projects. A place in the yard where he can park his boat, and the travel trailer we eventually want to buy.

Maybe it’s just that we’re a bit older and (hopefully) wiser. We don’t want to buy a house until we have a good solid down payment saved up. Also, Chris doesn’t have any credit at all (not good, not bad, NONE), so if we bought a house now, the loan would be based only on my earnings (I’ve checked), and I hate to think what kind of house we’d get based on that! We’re working on the credit thing, I had to get him a secured credit card to start out. How do people get started? How did he get to be 39 without EVER buying anything on credit? I wonder if we got a joint credit card if it would happen any faster? Not that my credit is perfect, but at least I have some.

But, it’s still frustrating to see these kids buying houses, and we can’t – or won’t. We could probably find someone to loan us the money, even with his lack of credit. And there’s the whole first time homebuyer’s deal, where you don’t have to have a down payment, but I’m not sure if we’d qualify for that since I think my name is on the Tulsa house with Mom’s.

I just keep promising myself that one day I’ll have a home of my own.