heading in the right direction

it's been about a month since my last post, mainly because there isn't much to report.  we are starting to use CrazyDaddy's credit cards so we can prove we are worth people to the credit monster *sigh* and i am still having an issue with this BUT it's what has to be done.  the budget we have set up with a credit counselor is on track so we should see CrazyDaddy's score hit the magic number around Feb/Mar time frame *woohoo*  i must give kudos to my wonderful husband during all of this.  i am very frustrated by this situation and it goes against my core to use a credit card because (in my mind) why do we need something if we don't have the cash for it?  CrazyDaddy has allowed me to bitch and moan about it all and has kept the mood positive.  it's what we have to do to get the ball rolling on the american dream so it's more than worth it.  we aren't allowing ourselves to go crazy, just showing usage and payment to appease the credit gods :)  CrazyDaddy set up the budget and the credit counselor was very impressed with it and told him to run with it.  CrazyDaddy has been running the budget ever since.  he's a great guy, i tell you what *swoon*
so here i sit, on christmas eve morning, in a small cold house just chugging along with the thought in a few months we will be home owners.  OH and both of the 2 homes we like are still on the market!  the #1 home did have an offer in on it but apparently it fell through because it is not a pending sale any longer.  there have also been several other homes come up on the market in the area.  there are so many positives for this i know we are doing the right thing by feeding the credit monster but i still don't like it
hope y'all have a wonderful holiday and we will update this soon!

you make enough but.....

can someone PLEASE explain to me how we can make more than enough and qualify for less than 4.5% apr on a home loan but our credit score is not high enough for a lender to feel "comfortable" lending us money?!?!
i can..........it's because of our lifestyle!  i can hear y'all now "well you must be HORRIBLE people and never pay your bills on time!"  actually, CrazyDaddy and i have paid cash for almost everything in hour house.  after watching our parents and grandparents struggle with credit debit when we were growing up made us vow (when we first started out) to only buy what we could afford.  the old adage of "only buy what you can afford" was drilled into us when we were kids very well.  apparently it should have the footnote *unless you want to ever buy a house and then you need to live in debt to prove you can afford it* SERIOUSLY!!!  to say our mouths dropped yesterday when the loan officer said "you make more than enough money to qualify and you'd only be charged 4.3% apr BUT since you don't really have any credit we can't lend to you" would be an understatement.  even HE sounded amazed by this turn of events! 
in case you haven't gathered by now we were denied a VA home loan because, basically, we don't have enough debt.  i swear, i keep having more and more doubts that our country is the greatest country on earth.  how much sense is it to penalize those of us who have lived within our means, paid our bills on time and not fed into the credit monster?  i still do not want to feed into the never ending cycle of living on credit but what else can we do?  eventually CrazyDaddy will leave the navy and we will not have a choice but to either rent or live in our car.  so unless we give in and let the monster bite our hands off we will be repeating this.  if this doesn't prove the rich get richer and the poor are damned to get poorer i don't know what would.  i mean the lender isn't even looking at the FICO score......the magical number we have all been told to keep an eye on if you wanted to be a home owner but NOPE they (the lender) actually look at whatever your middle of the road score is......ours was 40 points lower than our FICO!!  oh, did i say ours, i meant to say CrazyDaddy's because according to the credit bureaus i don't even exist!!!!!
we've seen people who have repossessions, bankruptcies or robbing peter to pay paul every day to survive be able to buy homes!  apparently us having little to no credit because we've been living within our means makes us bad candidates for homeownership!  are you fucking kidding me!!!  i'm completely embarrassed that this is the way our society works. i constantly teach my children that you only need what you can afford and if you don't have the money for it you don't need it but rather want it.  no wonder people have a confusion when it comes to need vs. want.  i mean, you NEED a hose but the banks WANT you to spread yourself so finically thin to prove you deserve it.  this is bunk!!!  this is what is wrong with our society!  the banks and government want to ensure that every last tom, dick and harry are in debt up to their eyeballs!  they don't feel comfortable lending to a family who have worked damned hard for everything they have in life and made sure not to owe more than they can afford but lenders have no qualms giving to those who have over extended themselves!!  *eye roll* 
now we have to work with a loan counselor to help us raise our credit score in order to buy a home.  i am trying to remind myself that if we are careful we won't end up circling the drain once we start really using the credit cards.  our kids deserve some sort of normalcy right?  in order to secure that we want to buy a home.  in the long run homeownership will secure not only our financial future (right) but also our children's..............right...........RIGHT!!!  now it looks like the next few months we will be living on borrowed money (credit cards) to prove that we can pay back debts owed.  i guess paying our bills and buying everything with cash isn't the american way.  it's projected that by march or so we will have lived on credit long enough to prove we will pay them back.
i knew this would be a crazy ride but never in my life did i expect this to happen!

the hunt begins

since our last entry we were able to get the ball rolling AND find a pretty awesome realtor.  unlike the guy from Century21 this man has really worked with us.  i contacted him tuesday, right before thanksgiving and he found a few properties for us and set up viewings for the 4 we liked as well.  oh, and all of this was while he was out of state for TurkeyDay! while he was showing CrazyDaddy, the gene pool and i around we found out we couldn't have picked a better realtor!  see, i choose him simply because of 2 reasons.  first, his reviews online were from tons and tons of buyers.  he even had a few people who bought a home with his help use him when they sold too.  repeat business for a realtor rates high in my book, how bout yours?  also the 3 people i contacted based off of reviews one of them actually refereed me to him!  we later found out he has a large family (5 kids), been married around 13 years and his wife homeschooled for a while too.  could we ask for more in a realtor to walk us through this process?  i think NOT!!  we looked at 8 homes on saturday and when it was all said and done we fell in love with 2 of them. i must admit, i was bummed with one because we thought it was our dream home but quickly realized it wasn't once inside.  it's funny how deceiving pictures and written descriptions can be.  i know whatever we find will be perfect for us.  it will be where we are supposed to be at this point in time.
  CrazyDaddy is calling first thing in the morning and trying to take part of the day off so we can get paperwork done and get our offer in on this house!  he says it's our dream home.  it's a large cookie cutter home which means there is no work needed in order to move in.  it will need a fridge BUT it fits the one we already have picked out so that's a plus.  also it's a short sale which means it may take a while to get the bank who is trying to get rid of the house a while to sell us the house.  OH and then there was an offer put in on saturday as well *boooooo*  this house is pretty awesome.  new carpet, big (just shy of 3,000sqft), garden tub and stand up shower in the master bathroom, 2 fireplaces, a HUGE living room downstairs, a HUGE pantry, and HUGE kitchen great for entertainment and a fenced in back yard.  plus it's a corner lot which i think is rather nice.  it's pretty solidly built too.  i couldn't hear CrazyDaddy or our realtor K tromping around upstairs.  all 3 kids were rather calm in the house too.  i feel like this could easily be our house.  i hope this is our house but it may not be our house.  like i said someone else has put in an offer and since it's a short sale (this is just the step before a foreclosure) the bank is going to try and ensure they get all they are owed on this house.  this being a short sale has tugged a bit on my heart strings.  i'm not super sensitive but some of the things we found in this house really hit me.  the couple who used to own the home had measurements for all of their kids on the side of the bar wall.  they also had tick marks for her belly during her last pregnancy on the wall too.  it was hard to see this.  to think that maybe something happened where they just couldn't afford their home anymore.  then K mentioned how some people just turn the home over to the bank so to not ruin their credit with a foreclosure.  granted the short sale stays there for a few years but it's a lot less devastating than a foreclosure.  yes, that made me feel a bit better but it was (and is) still hard to think their was a family who just bought this house last year to raise their children and now have had to give up their home.  i fear that this may turn into a nasty bidding war but CrazyDaddy ensures me we won't get into that.  we will offer the asking price and then that's about it.  granted the asking price isn't much BUT we've got a back up house.

this house here i have dubbed the BradyBunchHouse.  why, well why not!  you can't tell me when you look at this house you don't instantly hear the theme song to the brady bunch!  i could almost hear "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!" when we pulled up lol  it's not as new as the Qhome (which was built just a year ago) but the inside has been completely remolded!  there are hardwood floors through out the house, energy saving windows, newer appliances in the kitchen, a beautifully landscaped front yard and yard that is fenced in all but a small area in the front.  the basement is completely furnished too. there are 2 fireplaces in this home.  it is 800sqft smaller than the Qhome but that's not that much.  the lay out is a little odd since it's an older home from the 60's.  the only thing left that should be done before another resale is the kitchen.  which, after some research on my part may not be that expensive.  also CrazyDaddy has been pouring over the VA home loan papers and we can actually get refinanced for upgrades and our home loan all at the same time.  which means we could get this house AND update the kitchen all at the same time.  i personally love this house more but, alas, i have been out voted.  CrazyDaddy, BabyL, C and MK have all (in their own way) voiced how much they love the Qhome.  this home has been on the market since july so i highly doubt if we wait for our offer on the Qhome to be accepted/denyed that this one will be gone.

so tomorrow, on CrazyDaddy's and mine 13th wedding anniversary we will be putting in our offer for our very first home.  wish us luck!!

a kick in the pants to get things started

CrazyDaddy and i have been married 13 years (this month), have been through multiple deployments/duty stations, have 3 demon spawn and i still stay we aren't really grown ups.  why, you may be asking......simple, we don't (nor have we ever) owned a house.  well after the past few months events and then the latest fiasco i feel the universe just gave us the kick in the pants and by us i mean me.  see, CrazyDaddy has been trying to get me to buy a house for the last 8 years but i just didn't feel ready.  i always say the universe will tell me when it's time.  well, after you read this you will see the universe didn't just whisper it but rather SCREAM "get off your butt and buy a house already!!!"
see we've been on the housing list for over a year in an attempts to get a 4 bedroom home.  why shouldn't our children all have a room.  we are not going to make MK share a room with BabyL nor C share one with him either.  i mean there is a 8 and almost 11 year age difference between BabyL and his siblings.  it's not fair to the older ones.  well, it's become clear the Navy isn't going to afford us this opportunity via base housing so we started to look for rental property.  we finally found one up north that fit all of our criteria!  the main one being 4 bedrooms and excepting larger dogs since Dakota is tipping the scales at almost 60lbs. after playing phone tag and trying to decipher poorly written emails (at best) from a realtor we set up a time.  CrazyDaddy took time off work and we packed everyone up to make the (little over) 2 hour drive to the property.  once we got to the house we found out that the realtor would be a bit late so i took the opportunity to feed BabyL while we waited.  CrazyDaddy took the time to scope the outside of the property.  when i was done he came over as insisted i look around to.  hell, why not!  the realtor was no where to be seen and it was already 10 minutes after he said he'd arrive.  the first thing i notice is yard decor that was left in over grown weeds in the flower beds.  odd :/  then we head to the back yard............it was like tromp through a redneck forest!  there was a rusted grill grate half buried in the yard, dog poop randomly thrown around the yard, moldy dog toys peeking out of the over grown patches of grass and other trash strewn about the yard.  rusted broken wind chimes adorned the molded broken wooden porch.  as we peered through the downstairs windows we saw broken curtains dangling from the windows.  we also notice trash on the floor and a dvd player sitting on the counter.  once the realtor arrived, about 45 min late, we were let in.  instantly we saw paint peeling off of the banister leading and holes in the wall.  once in the kitchen i found out that the dishwasher wasn't attached to the counter like it should be when i almost pulled it out *oops* then CrazyDaddy found chips strewn about in the pantry.  not to mention (ok i'm mentioning it lol) the stick residue all over the counter and floors in the kitchen and the living room.  as we continued through the rooms we found chipped windows and walls.  profanity (not that we don't cuss but still) carved into walls, backs of doors and toilet seats!  there were stickers and drawing all over several of the doors and walls.  then the final straw was when we walked into the *cough* finished basement and there was a huge water bulge in the celling because a pipe had burst and there was several inches of water on the ground!  they seriously thought this house was worth $1500 a month!!!  needless to say CrazyDaddy and i were beside ourselves but the real kicker was what we saw as we left.  there was a teenaged boy standing next to our car (which was in the driveway) talking on a cell phone.  we were trying to figure out what he was doing and then as he walked in front of us it clicked......he was the owners kid!!  the owners of the property were RIGHT NEXT DOOR!!!  how could anyone do this to a property is all i have to ask.  that was seriously the ONLY property in the area that is open too.
after i calmed down and started to replay the last year of our life i finally realized what needed to be done.  i guess it's time to finally grow up and buy a house.  i wanted to wait to buy until CrazyDaddy was ready to retire.  i had this grand dream that we'd just buy land and build our dream home.  after doing research and quickly realizing over the last year that it takes debt to build credit i've realized that is not going to happen. UNLESS we start buying homes now.  so, much to the surprise to CrazyDaddy i said "let's start the paper work and get your VA loan to buy us a house."

thus begins our journey into adulthood!!
hopefully very soon we will see this------------->