How did you afford to buy a home?

GalLaura · September 2014

Feel free to tell as much or as as little as you like! I have so many questions about this!

riansmommie · September 2014

I put other only because it's not a military house, but we bought using our VA loan. One of the benefits of being military and it's def a great deal!

musicalsilver · September 2014

I put our parents gave us some money. We had a tiny courthouse wedding, and as my dad had promised, the money he'd spend on a wedding was therefore our wedding present. DH's parents did something similar. Between that and our savings, we were able to afford a downpayment.

LaBellaVida · September 2014

I put military house. We don't live in a military house, but the military gives us housing allowance.

momofcatan · September 2014

I put other. Our parents paid for a large wedding, 400 guests, mostly their friends and family. Mostly cash gifts (and some other savings from living at home and working during college) = downpayment.

needanustart · September 2014

My parents are awesome. They re-wrote their will and gave one of my sisters and I the difference we needed for 20% down when we bought our houses. They want to see us have fun with our inheritance while they are alive and I want to copy that!

cynthia2007 · September 2014

I handle our finances so over the years I put away the extra we had from taxes, my bonus money I didn't spend, any extra cash we got and didn't spend from bday/Christmas gifts etc and kept it an unknown from DH (we agreed to this bc he used to be a bad spender) so we were able to put 20% down on our house we just got in March. He was happily shocked at how much we were able to put down at the closing

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[Deleted User] · September 2014

We used the money we received from our wedding gifts ($10,000) plus some additional savings (I believe $6000).

itsStackie · September 2014

My parents had stock set aside for this for me, so we paid the down payment after selling the stock.

WasNotWas · September 2014

Our money. He bought the house in IL while we were dating and we put 40% down on our FL house.

kh59 · September 2014

We didn't get or need help with our down payment, but it wasn't even a five-digit number. We got an FHA loan on a house in a relatively affordable area (woohoo Rust Belt city living!), so we only needed a 3.5% down payment on a house price that was already well below the national average. There's a nice 4-bedroom around the corner from me for sale right now listed at $88k if anyone wants to be neighbors. :-)

ASmallWonder · September 2014

We paid the down payment but the reason we could afford it was because I had gotten laid off from a job I'd been at for 10 years and I got a very fair severance package.

daffy2k · September 2014

We saved for about a year, but we were lucky since at the time we were living in my dad's house rent-free (my dad lives across the country but at the time still had the house I grew up in here). Very minimal expenses and DH's amazing job we were able to save up 25% for our first place.

BunnyLove416 · September 2014

SS - We're a mix, we'd been squirreling away money specifically to buy a house for the last few years and after the fire some friends of ours put together one of those funds for us and people were incredibly generous, most of the downpayment came from our savings but the fund made up the last little bit to get us to 20% down. My ILs also gave us some money towards the closing costs, they did it for each of my H's sisters too. We're really lucky to have all these people.

slepert · September 2014

We paid the down payment. I had started putting money into Edward Jones since high school. So the intent with that was to cash it out for the house. Plus it was losing money so time to cash out anyways. We were also very lucky to live in my grandparents old house for $400 a month for a couple of years. that helped us save a lot of money also. But had to move! could not raise a child there, way to old and to many things wrong with it.