After moving into our beach-close twin-home, I went to enroll my soon-to-be kindergartner at the neighborhood school the following weekday. Even though our dream had always been to send our kids to private school (heck, I wanted to be a teacher so I could teach where my kids could attend), we were sending him to public school because a California six figure salary couldn't afford private school, a four bedroom rental, a car loan, and the difference of our Arizona mortgage left us after our tenants paid us rent. I filled out the stack of paperwork, handed it to the office lady, and almost fainted when she said, "ok, he will be student number 33 in his class." Say, what? Thirty-three kindergartners and one teacher? Um, ok, thanks. I left the school and cried the mile and a half home. This wasn't what I'd imagined. All I could envision now was my super shy son curled up in a corner, successfully hiding from the teacher because he was so overwhelmed by starting two weeks late AND never having attended pre-school. I wasn't worried about this academic abilities. No, this was all purely personality-based fears.
Just as I had done to discover our new college that had led us to Vacationland in the first place, I got on the internet to scour what my other school options were. And lo and behold there was a tiny Christian school less than 3 miles from our new home. Somehow, God provided for us as we proceeded to pay (supplemented by my tuition discount only income) for private school, and move one more time over the following 5 years. We finally short sold our upside down Arizona home in 2011, and left the private school in 2013. The end of 2013 had brought the end of all the consumer debt we'd accrued from our years in Arizona "where everything will be cheaper," so it seemed like maybe we should think about buying a home in Southern California! Our landlord who was going through a divorce, informed us that he was selling the house we lived in that was in a neighborhood we'd grown to love. So maybe it was time to buy, right? But because we short sold our last house, we had no equity and therefore no down payment. Also attributed to our "smart" AZ move was the attempt at a zero down, not-til-later adjustable arm loan, that was discovered by a third of America to be a cheap ploy at hoodwinking the middle class. So there was no way we were doing that again!
So, the next step up was to consider 3.5% down. Ok, so what's 3.5% on the cheapest decent house you can find in coastal North County, you might ask? Well, that number lies somewhere right around 500,000 for a fixer that's not big enough, nice enough, or worth it enough to sell your mother for the down payment chunk we did not have lying around (and no one else in our family did either). We did manage to scrape together the money for closing costs and most of the down payment over the next year (during which we had to move again into a not-as-nice rental for the same amount we were previously paying just to stay in the area that we were in) In the blink of an eye and a turn of the economy, home prices had climbed, and now that same 500k crappy fixer in Carlsbad was now only to be found in North-you-will-probably-get-robbed-or-shot Oceanside or way-too-far-inland-for-a-reasonable-commute Vista.
Wah-wah. Now what?
No comments:
Post a Comment