Happy house

Has it really been 12 days since my last blog post? Yes? Time flies when you're buying your first home.

It's finally official: Taylor and I have vacated our Fairfield apartment and are now settling into our new home in Cincinnati! We put our offer in on February 4th, and on May 29th we finally closed on the house--one day before we were due to move out of our apartment. If you are thinking, "Wow, they really cut it close," you'd be right. The house was a short sale, and was probably the most complicated transaction we will ever make in our lifetime. All I will say is thank goodness for our attorney. We really owe him one (er...more than one...he was pretty expensive, actually).

As I write this, I am surrounded by boxes and a growing list of "to-dos" on a paper plate (we haven't found the box with all of our paper quite yet). Home ownership is pretty interesting. Although our monthly mortgage payments are actually lower than our rent, we have a significant increase in other expenses to accompany that payment. For example, taxes and insurance. Plumbing repairs (oh yes--despite paying a plumber to fix a leak in the upstairs bathroom before closing, we found that our downstairs toilet also leaks not only in the bathroom but in the basement, as well.) Appliances. Tools. Basically, everything we never needed when under the thumb of a landlord.

But you know what? It's all worth it. It's worth it that we own land on which we can grow our own food. It's worth it that we can finally paint the walls any color other than white if we so choose. That we have more space for us and our things. That we are building equity. The crummy thing about renting is that when we handed over our rent check at the beginning of each month, we never saw it again. Sure it paid for a roof over our head, but that was it. It just met a basic need in the moment--there was no investment. Of course, that's what poverty is really about--living in the 'now.'

We still don't have a lot of money, but we're smart with the money we do have. After a year of scrimping and saving, of food stamps and hand-me-downs, we're moving up. That, after all, was the goal. We knew we wouldn't live in poverty forever, but we certainly never dreamed we'd be in our 4 bedroom, 2 bath cape cod so soon. Yet, as we continue to move forward, I think it's important to keep looking back. I don't ever want to forget what it was like to not have enough.