My husband and I need to buy a house within the next two years. Currently, he makes $3800 a month net, and I make $2400 net.
My students loans are $43,000 (private, 6.8%) and $23,000 (federal, 3.5%) and I pay $900 a month. My car is $480 a month. My husband owns his car outright. We have no credit card debt after paying it off just this fall. We have four cats and pay $250 a month for their food and supplies. Our car insurance together for our two cars is $160. Rent is $600. Phones are $200. Internet is $75. Gas is roughly $60. Netflix/Spotify/Hulu is $40. One cat has to go to a groomer and that’s $70. We spend about $300-$500 on groceries and have stopped eating out.
Our expenses together are roughly $3500.
My husband wants to stay where we are and pay the $43,000 private loan off. I can’t stand living in a small drafty apartment anymore and want to spend an extra $800 a month on my own to bring down the loans while he saves $1500. This leaves us $500 in case one of the cats gets sick or something else happens. After 18 months he’ll have $27,000 saved and I’ll have paid an extra $14,400 down on my loan, which moves my payoff date up by five years from Dec 2028 to Oct 2023.
My income is really tied up in my student loans so I would love to pay them off faster but I also can’t live here forever. The ceilings are collapsing, the floors are rotting. It’s over 100 years old and not doing well. I think it’s just a matter of time before something serious happens and it’s impossible to find a place to rent that would accept four cats.
I’m not sure what the smartest thing is to do here. We’re looking at houses from $150,000 - $200,000 but those in upstate NY can be a gamble. I bought a car last year that cost way too much money and we had to dig ourselves out of $10,000 in negative equity (which is why my current car payment is so high).
We’ve lived here for three years and I was unemployed for six months, and I’m bipolar and prone to mania, so saving money has been difficult. I’m trying to get rid of the student loans on my own since they’re not my husband’s responsibility but not having ANY money for 2.5 years is kind of depressing. I don’t know what to do here—we can make an impact either way but I’m so bad with money I’m afraid I’ll make the wrong choice.
Submitted November 15, 2020 at 07:53PM by wickawickawacha https://ift.tt/36I5gAV
