The house-buying post has me curious...

[sparkythelawyer]

How many of you had zero CC debt and a 20% down payment with money to spare when you bought?

I really am curious.  

This will not be our financial situation next year when we buy.

[cbwm1]

LOL, not us!

[candreco]

We had no CC debt and money to spare both times we bought, but only 10% down (and not enough $ to spare to reach 20%). 10% down isn't unusual in my HCOL area.

[Deleted]

This was not the situation for xH and I.

[urbancowgirl]

We did. We saved for years and it was really scary to see all of that money leave our bank account.

[Deleted]

We didn't have any cc debt, but didn't put any money down for out house. We had 6 months living expenses in savings.

[underwaterrhymes]

We did not.

I don't feel bad about it one bit.

[papie]

We did.  And we still had about $20K in the bank for unexpected expenses.  We lived super tightly when we first moved in together and got married, saving $$, cutting cable/cellphones/car/etc, in an appartment.  It was really important to us to find ourselves in a very secure situation before buying. 

I am not saying everyone should do that.  But everyone should at least work on getting debt free or only on low interest debt, and have a decent DP and a small efund before buying imo. 

[Yankees21]

We didn't have any CC debt, but only put 10% down. We were new in our careers, so hadn't had a ton of time to save up the full 20%, but felt fine with 10% and knew we'd be able to save at a pretty decent rate going forward.

[mrsjuleshs]

0 credit card debt. We just had 1 car payment. We put 0 down.

[fortnightlily]

We did, but we were only able to do it because neither of us have student loan debt, and we both have reasonably high-paying jobs. We spent the 4.5 years after getting married living entirely off of my salary and banking DH's into the 'house fund'.

[kadams767]

We put down 20% and had about $25k left over as our emergency funds. We didn't have any CC debt, but I had student loans and a car payment at the time.

[cutecloud]

We haven't bought a house yet but if we buy in the next few years like we're expecting to, we'll have no student loans, probably a car payment, (hopefully) no credit card debt, 6 months e-fund ... But we'll be lucky to get to 10% down! And 20% is just unrealistic for us.

[hbear]

Zero cc debt, 10% down.

When I bought my first condo by myself, I had zero debt and put 5% down.

[fryjack2]

We did, but we spent a year and a half living in my cheap ass apartment together saving. Neither of us had CC debt,we paid off student loans and then started the house fund. We made a game out of how much we could save/who spent the least amount of money/cheapest healthy meals/etc.

We were very lucky that we both made good money and we didn't own a car, or have kids or pets, or have any of the fancy shit people have like electronic stuff. We are pretty minimalist. The hardest part for me was not shopping for clothes and trying not to eat out every meal. But the biggest factor in doing what you asked, was our income.

We are trying to save right now for a 2nd home and its definitely going to take a long time. I'm part time, nanny is expensive, preschool will be expensive, and we have the added cost of twins and their needs.

[janegold]

Not I!

[silva]

hahahahaha!! no. But that was right before the bubble burst.

[ooglie26]

I had CC debt when I bought my house. I didn't have to put a huge down payment on it, because I qualified for a first time homeowner program.

[who22]

We did. We only put 10% down though so we could finish building the garage that was already started on the property and to buy paint for the house. We only had a little left in student loans that we were able to pay off within a year of buying.

[copperboom]

We did.

[pillowpants]

No CC debt with both house purchases. 3% DP with the current house purchase.

[darkling_glory]

Zero credit card debt, 8% down.

[keyslover]

Aug 27, 2013 9:26:14 GMT -5 cbwm1 said:

LOL, not us!

Right there with you.  We bought in 06 and were very stupid.

[soozy87]

No debt at all, 20% down.

[lpcats]

We did. We live well below our means and saved heavily before buying.

[cbwm1]

Aug 27, 2013 9:36:53 GMT -5 keyslover said:

Aug 27, 2013 9:26:14 GMT -5 cbwm1 said:

LOL, not us!

Right there with you.  We bought in 06 and were very stupid.

 
We bought in '07. It was fine until we had a baby, then there were a few *really* tight years, but we made it through without any major disasters.

We're working on paying off CC debt now so that next year when we put our townhouse on the market, we'll be in a much better position.

However, I will have student loan debt until the day I die.

[sergey]

We will when we buy our next place (no cc or student loan debt but we do have a car payment and a small mortgage on a commercial property we'll have paid off next year) with 30% down but to be fair it's a vacation home/rental, not our forever home, so it's well below what we could actually afford house-wise.

[melodramatic26]

First home, not even close. But we bought below our means. Stayed and saved for 10 years.

Now, we are building. We only use our credit card, but we do pay it off every month. We are putting 20% down. We have a 2 year emergency fund and are ahead of schedule with our retirement funds.

We have been aggressively saving for about 6 years. Obviously we won't be saving as much now, but will be able to continue with our necessary retirement savings and keep our emergency funds and investments.

[firedancer49]

HAHA. Nope.

[luckyval]

No - we had around $8,000 in combined student loan and CC debt

And we put down around 10%