Impulse Buys

I'm a planner. Leigh is a budgeter. This works extremely well for us and most of our decisions are a long time coming, having given them a lot of thought and strategically placing the culmination of these decisions on our calendars. It's nice to dream about what you want to do and to achieve and then enjoy the process of making those dreams come true.

But sometimes your dreams seem a little too far off, so you don't plan for them, until they come true right before your eyes. That's when it's fun to live life on impulse and just go for it, especially if you know you can handle the aftermath of the impulse. The best examples from our lives together have to do with moving to new cities: the summer we ran away to Seattle, moving to Buffalo sight-unseen so I could go to an affordable and respected law school, buying my Yaris on a whim, taking a job in France and arranging for Leigh to spend 3 months with me, moving to Alaska to start over. These are some of the best decisions we've ever made and most of them were done in a heartbeat. These decisions changed our lives.

That's what happened this week. On Saturday I saw a cute little house listed for sale. I wasn't looking to buy, I just like to browse at real estate from time to time to get an idea of our options in the area. The house was listed for $185,000. It has 2 bedrooms, 1040 square feet, and it's recently updated. Similar homes often sell for $200-215,000 and are not so updated. We decided to take a look at it, just to look, and to see if we can get pre-approved for a mortgage, just to find out. We were prepared to just look and walk away knowing we didn't have a down payment. I called our mortgage company, we called our parents, we asked a few favors. Next thing we know our families have promised to advance us the down payment and the mortgage terms were very reasonable.

So today we bought the house! We made and offer, it was countered, and we agreed on a price and terms everyone was happy with. It happened so fast and we are completely in love with this house. Allow me to take you on a brief tour:

This is our house. It's "semi-attached" meaning we share a wall with the neighbor but it's not a condo or part of an HOA. We have a front driveway and the previous owner installed a side driveway for RVs or toys, complete with hookups for electric, etc. The house is located less than 1 mile from two different parks, one of which is on the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail and the bike route to work.
This is the entry way into the split-level area, with the living room on the right. It's bigger than our current living room and has beautiful finishings.
Leigh goes gaga every time she looks at the kitchen. It's also recently renovated, the counters are tall, and it has a window looking to the backyard.
The BEST part is the backyard. It's HUGE for such a small house and it already has garden and flower plots, a greenhouse and a storage shed. This was the biggest selling point for us. We can already imagine our Juneau Cat playing outside, us planting vegetables and flowers and grilling on the back porch. If all goes well and there are no hiccups, we will close in mid-July and move in slowly since our lease isn't complete until the end of August. Our square footage will double and we'll be so close to work and our favorite neighborhoods!

Today a dream came true for us. We found a home that is clean, comfortable, affordable and has all the extras we were hoping for. The best part is that we own this, so every payment made goes toward building equity rather than lining the pockets of an apathetic landlord. So exciting!!!

So here's to diving in head-first!