Six Lessons I Learned In my First Six Months as a Homeowner
Seems hard to believe that my husband and I closed on our house six months ago today. It’s been an interesting road since then — both fun and busy at the same time. I’ve learned a lot in my first six months, and I want to share some of those lessons with you.
Home ownership is expensive.
Though the seller picked up most of the tab on the closing costs, we still had to pay about $2,000 when we closed on our home. We’ve also had to buy a lot of things since we moved into our home. Some of these things you’ve read about in other posts — we had a fence put up, a shed put in the back, and bought some new furniture. We covered some of these costs with money that my family gave us, some we covered with small personal loans that we took out, and others have been charged to credit cards. We’re being careful not to spend too much though, or charge too much to our credit cards. We still have a ways to go, but we’re getting there slowly.
Home ownership is fun.
I’ve gotten a lot of great ideas for ways I can decorate different areas and things I want to do in our home. I’m still trying to figure out how and when I’m going to do some of these things, so be sure to stay tuned for future updates.
Home ownership is time-consuming.
Sometimes it seems like a lot of our time is taken up with different tasks we need to do around our home. Kevin has spent a lot of time working on outside stuff, like mowing, blowing leaves and edging. And once the snow starts falling (a small amount already fell today!) I’m sure he’ll be spending time shoveling snow.
You can save a lot of money if you know how to do it yourself.
Kevin and I (especially Kevin) know how to do a lot of the basic repairs and improvements we’ve done inside our home. As I mentioned though, we have had to hire people to do some of the larger tasks like taking out a few trees in our yard, and put up a fence.
Your realtor can be a great source of information and recommendations for contractors.
When we moved in and decided to have a few trees taken out, our realtor was able to recommend someone to do it for us — her husband! He owns his own tree company, so we hired them to take the trees out. She’s also recommended other places to us for things like getting our fence put up.
In all, it’s worth it.
Even though it’s time consuming and expensive, I love being a homeowner. We live in an area that’s much quieter than the apartment complex we lived in before, we’re paying off a loan instead of paying rent, and the improvements we’re making to our home will hopefully increase the property value so we can sell it in a few years and buy a better one!
