Building your first home

It’s a tough one and it all depends on your appetite for risk. I bought a unit and stuck strictly to my budget. How secure is your job? Your partner’s? Prospects for earning more money etc? What happens if rates go up? Lots of variables. Not really a definitive answer but maybe sime food for thought. One of the most exciting times of my life was moving into my OWN place for the very first time. Good luck!

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I’ve probably taken more of a risk in the past because in the end I just think stuff it. It’s only a house. If things go bad you just sell it. But you still need to be able to enjoy life. Don’t cut yourself short of that.

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are you building a dedicated john wick viewing room?

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The ‘yet’ part is the key here. Assuming that at some stage you will, that means you’ll have a period of time where there is only one income, and then even after that it’s maybe two incomes + childcare (+ so much more.)

Work out your worst case scenario financially, and see if you can still cover the mortgage.

We overextended ourselves a fair bit and got a much bigger house than we needed, which was fine in the first few years, but admittedly has been a bit tough since my daughter came along.

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Don’t just think of the up-front cost and pressure: $50,000 now could be many hundreds of thousands by the time you retire.

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To be honest our version of a big night is going to the movies. I can’t see our life being affected overly, I don’t know what other people do that inpedes lifestyle without money. I watch sports, visit me mates every odd weekend, see family and that’s it really. We don’t party, club (anymore) or go out for drinks every weekend, we basically live as 80 year olds (hence our ability to go from 0 to 40K in two years) and before that pay off a wedding on two casual jobs that wasn’t paying much.

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Doesn’t really apply if you’re building a house. You have to be sure you can pay for it to be finished and ready to move in. Once it’s built, if you have to sell you’ll probably get your money back; but if you have to sell it half done you will lose a lot.

I call it the WING room. Includes a bath, WING pantry with WING HOLDERS and a special edition John Wick.

Don’t over stretch yourself to have bigger, Australians have the biggest homes in the world and to be honest you won’t even use all that spare space, it’ll be filled with junk. Play it safe, have a smaller mortgage and live comfortably

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I think I discussed this earlier in the thread, but we do plan on having some one day, hopefully, and that’s why we’re having backup cash stored. It’s hard, because I don’t think we’ll have another chance to build if we don’t do it now, there’s no chance we build if she gets pregnant and we plan on moving back to my parents whilst we build for a few months to save up some extra money. Otherwise it pushes back everything 5-10 years as I’ve been told by many that it’s hard to save whilst having a kid. We both really love this design so it’s doing my head in a bit ha.

You’re doing some good homework and that’s the key. Make sure you know what you want then buy it and you’ll have no regrets.

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Consider that almost all of your waking time will be spent in the living room/kitchen area.
This is something a lot of people forget when they make mods to a standard plan and incur lots of extra costs.

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I wasn’t really talking about cutting yourself that short that you can’t afford to finish the place. If things are that tight you shouldn’t be building at all.

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Yeah I don’t think that we’re that tight that we can’t finish the house, LOL. I don’t think the banks would ever approve us if we could only afford to get half a house done.

Remember interest rates are not always going to be this low as they are now. At some point they will go up again. Also at some point, you may have a couple of small children and be the only bread winner so, you need to think clearly and add those two things into your equation. Do not heavily overcommit. You want to be able to enjoy your home with your family and still be able to afford a day out. Not working another two part time jobs, to pay your mortgage.

While the thoughts about getting something bigger feels amazing, think and plan carefully for your future. Children are amazing and fantastic but expensive to keep. You don’t realise that until you have kids.

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You must not have been to Texas. The good Ol’ boys and girls in Houston have the biggest homes in the world, all at a relative surprisingly low cost.

On average Australians have the biggest homes in the world

Would not want to do it here @ $18,000 a square.

I think before too much longer we will be moving back to times similar to those I grew up in and many here on BB. Most family members living in a sort of nuclear family again. Cheaper, better standard of living and no paying out outrageous sums of hard earned dollars on child care.

I notice bell bottoms must be back in. Knew I should have put my old clobber in a box in the garage in moth balls. What goes round comes round again if you live long enough. Gawd oh no, I’m sounding a lot like my parents.

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Looking to extend our Cal Bungalow due to kids getting bigger.

Anyone got any good architects or builders they’d recommend I check out their stuff for some inspiration?

This isn’t my first home, in fact currently I’m in about my 12th home. In fact it’s not even a home; it’s a weekender in the Otways. But it’s extremely exciting that the first step has been taken: the stump plan has been pegged out.

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