When I graduated college, I landed my dream job as a crime reporter at a daily newspaper. No hyperbole: As a kid, I had pretended to be a reporter, pecking away at a typewriter while wearing a fedora with candy cigarettes hanging out of my mouth, embracing cliches like “I’m on deadline!” when my mom would call me for dinner.
But dream salary at my newspaper job? Ehh, not so much. I was earning a $38,000 annual salary in idyllic (read: expensive!) Boulder, bringing home $1,030 paychecks after taxes and the like. Factor in inflation, and it’s possible I had a more lucrative gig selling articles to my grandmother when I was a kid.
Still, I was committed to doing this whole newspaper career thing, and, I also wanted to be a homeowner, partly because I was worried about eventually getting priced out of Colorado’s rental market. (My apartment jumped from $950 to $1,200 a month over five years; newspaper reporters were prone to pay cuts). So, I took a side job bartending for about 20 hours a week to create a home savings account.
It took me five years, but I saved $40,000 for a 20 percent down payment. I purchased a newly constructed three-bedroom, three-bathroom townhome for just under $200,000 in Westminster, which is close to downtown Denver and Boulder. Thanks to Colorado’s booming real estate market (hi, all you newcomers!), my home has appreciated by a little more than $100,000 in six years. My mortgage, taxes, and HOA payments combined are now only $1,305, comparable to what I was paying in rent in a one-bedroom apartment, with a small office nook.
While having to sacrifice a lot in my 20s, I’m ultimately so grateful that I decided to work a second job and save for a home. Here are the five most important lessons I learned:
from https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ways-to-save-for-down-payment-261310
from waaaay over here —> How I Saved $40K in 5 Years for a Down Payment
from Sofia Consola
via How I Saved $40K in 5 Years for a Down Payment
