I haven’t owned a home yet. I am still waiting for our lives to settle permanently. My husband is in grad school, and then will move on to a post doc before he gets a permenant job. So we have been living in apartments and duplexes.

When we do decide to buy a home, these things will come into consideration.

1. Location: We obviously want to live close to the job, where ever it may be, but also consider doing your research first. Is the neighborhood safe? Whats the crime rate? Is it near schools?  Having children, these are all important factors. I love reading the “Best Places To Raise Kids” lists, I always want to move to the best place. My kids safety is always important.
2. Talk to neighbors, check newspapers, go to city hall, find out everything you can about the property. Previous owners, any crime their etc. You don’t want to move in and then find out that it was a meth house or something.
3. Needs and wants:  When you are looking, you need to consider what you need and want. How many bedrooms do you really need, dishwasher? Washer and dryer hook ups etc. As a mother I know that a dishwasher and laundry hookups are a must.
4. Mortgage: Can you afford to buy a new home, will you qualify for a loan.  Buying a house can be a really big deal and cost a lot.  It’s best to sit down and look at all your options and figure what is best, and more importantly what you can afford. For us, we will receive the Va Home loan, which will be a blessing when we buy our first home.
5. New or fixer: We have always talked about just buying a fixer upper as a new house. It would be cheap and easy to clean up.  With that, you have to consider how much you can afford for remodeling. How much has to be done to the house for it to be really liveable and comfortable etc.

I can’t wait to buy my First home. It’s going to be one of my biggest accomplishments.

Disclosure: I wrote this post with Information sourced from Genworth Financial.

When I got married I did everything backwards. we did not have any money or family around. My then boyfriend was leaving for an overseas deployment, so we made a split decision and got married. We married in a court house and even kept our marriage a secret.  10 months after our marriage my husband was deployed and I had to learn how to balance our finances myself.

Here are some of my tips for post-marriage financial decisions.

Payments and debts- figure out what each of your debts and bills are and make a financial plan on what you can pay off and a monthly budget. Now that you are married your debts become each others debts.  We payed as much money towards our car payment to finally get it payed off and out of the way. Trust me having a  budget can save your marriage.

Save- you saved for your big wedding, now that it’s over you still need to save. You never know when something unexpected will come up and you need money.  I had my first child 2 weeks before my husband left on deployment. Luckily we had money saved up to fly my family out to help me while he was gone.

Plan ahead- Start planning ahead, can you afford a family now or is it a better idea for you to wait. The biggest thing is you want to make sure you and your spouse are on the same page about family planning. A child is a lot of money and you need to be prepared.

Do not finance- I guess it could be okay to finance a car if you can really not afford one straight out.  It is a bad idea to finance furniture or appliances, especially from Rent to own companies.  Always look for deals and second hand. All of our furniture was second hand when we first got married, except our bed.  The furniture lasted us a long time and saved us a lot of money.

Disclosure:  This Article was written using Genworth Financial Educational Resources