02 March 2014

House Hunting: Part One Our Economic Recovery after Meniere's

A dear friend sat me down and did the math with me.  Now that I'm working full time again (finally) Don and I can afford a house.  It will literally be cheaper than rent, and good lord, we can afford a house!

Our path to even this point where we are even thinking about a house, has been long and hard.  When we first got married we made good money.  I made a LOT working at two fire stations, and we were doing quite well. But when you lose a job, you lose a lot more sometimes, like insurance.  Although we had some disability retirement and disability insurance (NOT the same as Social Security Disability), we still went from making 60,000 a year between the two of us to far less than 30,000.  It doesn't seem like much, but when you half your income AND have no health coverage AND have new health expenses you didn't have, things get tight QUICK.

Thank God I found the job I have now, and was promoted. I thank God every day.  We don't make what we did when I was working at the fire station, but we are getting there, slowly.  And we have some things paid off now too.  So we are in good shape again, financially.  It's about time.

So once we realized what we were paying in rent we could do even less and get a house, well we have started looking.  Our economic recovery after Meniere's has been slower than I'd like, but it could have been worse.  I also thank God its been on the good side of bad.

Looking for a house when you know you have serious balance issues is a chore.  So far everything we've liked online has been under contract or not good for the kind of loan we are going for.  But I look at all of these houses and wonder, can I make it up the steps?  Is the bathroom designed to keep me from falling our of the shower? Do I need to factor all of this in, or do we add rails and handicapped bars later?  Lots of questions you know. LOTS.

Its exciting to be looking for a house. Very exciting (and scary).