Reply to how on earth can we save a down payment?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Hmm, all the talk of not having children until later and saving like crazy from early on is irrelevant to OP. She cannot undo it nor change some other stuff that's already done (cc debts, income tax repayments).
So, from what I see - only place OP can really shave things off - cable and phone. The rest is hard to change now. 
OP, stick to the budget and just hang in here: childcare costs are not forever, it will end soon, so do your debt repayments (hopefully); you'll have a bit more cash on hand to save for down payment (and you can only have 5% to start with). Good luck!
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It may be irrelevant to OP's situation, but it's relevant to the question.

OP asked: 
[quote]Is there anyone with children, that works full time, that bought a home in this area without employer or family support, that didn't leverage previously owned property, or can into some unexpected money? [/quote]

And my answer was yes. We scrimped and saved and had kids later.  That's how people do it.  If you didn't, fine, but don't gripe about "everyone else having family money" because that wasn't the case for many of us.  [/quote]

NP here.  Not that simple.  DH and I did scrimp and save, paid off all my student loans and lived very, very frugally for some years and we were able to buy a condo with a significant DP.  Did everything "right" except we bought in '06, a very small condo and considered it a "starter" home.  Back then it was "buy now or you'll be priced out forever" and even my dad thought it was a great investment.  Yeah, I know, hindsight...

We thought we'd be fine even at very modest appreciation.  We went ahead and had a baby in '07, another in '10.  It became apparent in 2010 that living in a tiny 1 BR condo with 2 kids was not going to work for very long without making mommy crazy.  Long story short, we moved in with my parents to make it easier to sell the condo, but even with money we saved to bring to the table at closing, it was not nearly enough.  Continued making payments for 2 years after we'd moved out.  Listed for a year with no offers, finally gave up and threw in the towel (keeping it as a rental did not work financially) and now in 2014 our credit has recovered - but we are never going to get our DP back, and now with 2 kids, it's a LOT harder.

When I think about how we'd lived to save money so quickly, and the way things would have been for us without the crisis, or if we'd just timed things a little differently, it makes me sad.   DH and I would have been better off jetting to the Bahamas than throwing it away like we did.   
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Yep, timing sucks. When I think of DH and my older friends (like in their early 40s) and how EASY they had it -- buying starter homes for starter prices, having huge DPs thanks to ever-increasing sales prices, etc -- it's a little infuriating.

But, que sera, sera, right? The only thing we could do was bow out until 2011, and save like madmen. Honestly, in 2006 (when we both finished our grad degrees and had real jobs, a natural time to buy a starter home) we were basically like, "well, if we're priced out forever, but our mortgage for 1000 sq ft would be $2500/month and our rent is $1000/month, is that so bad?" It ended up being a good strategy, but again -- we could have been the ones stuck waiting outside forever while you came out smelling like roses. Just goes to show a lot of what people credit to good decisions or "hard work" is just luck, and generational luck is the hardest to get people to admit -- don't even get me started on boomers who complain about millenials  :roll:

I feel for you guys. Hopefully since your parents are local, you can either move back in with them or you can use them as cheap/free childcare for a few years to build your DP back up? I know that's what I would do if my parents weren't several hours away (my sister literally pays nothing for childcare, whereas it's basically a second mortgage for us!).[/quote]

Nope, my parents aren't local anymore - we moved here from another state. And they're divorced now, my mom is sweet but unreliable, yada yada. 
We aren't going to be able to really save at a really good clip until the kids are beyond the daycare years.  
Right now, we'll be lucky to hold onto our cash.
On the bright side, I don't see the need for a SFH, so when the time comes I think we'll be OK with a fixer-upper TH.  We're more than OK sending DCs to a HS that has other people besides rich white people.  DH isn't handy, but I am.[/quote]

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