Thinking of Buying a House? Here’s What to Expect

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Getting ready to start house hunting? Get tips on how you find and buy a house you love that is still affordable! 

Are You Ready to Buy a House?

Right now with the national median listing price in December was $340,000, chances are buying a house – it’s typically the biggest purchase a family makes.

Depending on where you live it can be a hot seller’s market, making it even more difficult to find a place that you love.

That’s why it’s so important to go in prepared not financially, but with an understanding of what home ownership truly looks like. 

Certified Financial Planner and Accredited Financial Counselor® Adam Hagerman is here to help sort through things including the whole rent vs buy debate. 

Before you start house hunting, you want to make sure this is the best move for you and your family. 

In this episode, we’ll get into:

• How the buying process work – qualifying for a mortgage, finding an agent, house hunting, and closing
• Bad advice and myths people hear about buying a house
• What you truly need to focus on when you’re buying so you’ll be happy and not house poor

Let’s get started!

Resources on Buying a House

If you’re looking to buy, here are some resources to help you find an affordable place you love!

• Best Budget and Money Apps: Personal Capital, Tiller, Mint
• Jumpstart Your Marriage and Your Money
• Grow Your Stash Faster: High Yield Savings with CiT Bank
• Jumpstart Your Marriage and Your Money
• Buying a Home <- Want to save thousands of dollars while buying your dream home? Adam's course takes you through contemplation to closing
• How to Snag a Great Deal When Buying a House
• What You Need to Know About Mortgages

Thank You to Our Sponsor Coastal!

Support for this podcast comes from Coastal Credit Union! If you’re living in the Raleigh Durham area and looking to bank better, come check out Coastal today.

See how Coastal can help you with your mortgage needs!

What to Expect When Buying a House

Smart Way to Buy Your House

Elle Martinez: I'm excited to have you talk about one of those big wins families can have if they get it right which is, buying a house and finding a house that they love and that they can afford.

I am looking forward to chatting with you getting your expertise on the smart way to do this.

Adam Hagerman: Yeah. Happy to give as much help as I can in. Yeah.

Elle Martinez: You're coming at this from the lens of a financial planner. I bring this up because sometimes people don't understand, especially now when you get so much free advice and there's different communities and. Many of them are helpful, but the difference between, like us, we're going to just have a conversation about the big ideas, but with a financial planner, they can get someone who can work with them with their particular needs.

You've gotten educated on the ins and outs of finances, like you cover a lot of different topics compared to perhaps a more typical personal financial blogger.

Adam Hagerman: Yeah. We can certainly talk about a lot of other topics that are out there. It's kind of like medicine in a way. I always say I'm practicing financial planning and financial education, just because there are definitely topics that I learned about a long time ago that I had to pass.

Exams to get credentialed and all that kind of stuff. And I haven't talked about them in eight years and I'll be the first to tell somebody to that. I'm not comfortable talking about those types of things. There are many others out there that can help with those, with those topics and provide much better recommendations then than I can.

So I'm not somebody to Tell them exactly what they need to do. Just so it looks smart.

Elle Martinez: Well, I think we're all looking for good advice, especially with this topic, which is buying a house because for most families, this is the biggest purchase that they're going to make.

This is a commitment. There's more to just what you see with your mortgage payment. So I want to jump in with that because when you were looking for a house, everybody has an opinion about buying one.

Like the best way to find a deal, the, the tax breaks, you know how it's going to make you some money, but I want to demystify just a few of these.

I wrote down a couple, but if you heard any really good ones, please share them with me. Which is How true is this, or is this something that you can just completely ignore?

The first one I've heard when people are deciding if first of all buying a house is right for them, is renting is basically throwing away your money.

Adam Hagerman: Yeah. So first I'll say most people that talk to you about buying a home or saying, you should definitely buy a home. I think most people are trying to justify their own decision.

Right. We all want to make sure that we do things right ourselves and we're not doing the wrong thing. So if we can kind of get other people to follow along with what we've done, maybe some what we may consider mistakes in our life, we feel much better about our decisions. So I think that's where a lot of these myths come from too, or these opinions that people have.

We're just trying to, to justify our own decisions in life. We all want to do what's best for us. And again, if we get other people along for the ride, then Hey, we'll feel better about our decisions. But, you know, getting back to the renting is, is throwing your money away.

Oh, man, I hear that one all the time. All the, a lot of one-on-one appointments that I get, or. People that want to, you know, Oh, I want to buy a home in the future because you know, this rent's on my budget and I'm just wasting this money. It's going nowhere. I'm not building any equity in, you know, I don't, I don't really agree with the statement.

Renting is throwing your money away because you're not really. You're paying for a roof over your head. It's not like you're paying a thousand dollars a month for rent and giving it to a company. And then they say, Oh, here's your cardboard box. You're still out on the street. Right.

You've got a roof over your head. You've got shelter and protection and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, that is a big benefit of it.

You can kind of compare renting is throwing your money away to, to food too. I mean, isn't food really throwing your money away too. Right? You think about it. You eat it.

And you pose of it later. I know that's kind of gross to think about, but it was kind of the same thing. Right. You're kind of wasting money that way too. So, it provides a roof over your head. It provides flexibility. Homeownership is definitely a more permanent decision. It's not easy to kind of pick up and go if you're a homeowner, right.

You've got to then make a decision of, Oh, do I want to. Rent this place out then, and that's not always the best decision or I got to sell it. Now, it's going to take me a couple months to unload this thing. Am I going to lose money? Do I get rid of it quickly? So renting provides flexibility. It's really easy to just say, you know what?

I don't want to live in this neighborhood anymore. I'm going to go so you can, you know, you might have to pay a little bit money to break a lease if you're under a lease, but that's probably not that expensive in the grand scheme of things compared to getting re you know, unloading a home that you purchase.

Renting also a big benefit. We kind of already alluded to it as little to no maintenance costs and maintenance effort. You're free to use your time for other things. You're not outside raking leaves you and I just made a comment before we hopped on here.

Like we bought, we've got these huge trees in our neighborhood. You've got huge trees in your neighborhood and they just unload stuff every single day of the year. And you're always like five steps behind keeping up with all this stuff.

The biggest mistake a lot of people make too is that stuff goes out of style over time.

Your kitchen may not need new things in it because stuff has hasn't broken, but things were different in the nineties than they are today. Aesthetics are different. What they like to look at is different. So that little to no maintenance costs that idea of renting something and if something breaks, you just call somebody up and they come out and they fix it and they pay for it.

Oh man. I wish I was living in that world right now.

Elle Martinez: I know for us, we're really happy we bought our home, but I think it's important to come with it with clear eyes.

A lot of personal financial decisions you have to run the numbers and you have to weigh the pros and cons. Especially when you're talking about with maintenance, you know, for some people they're like, I just. I don't have the time. I don't have the energy. And so they may lean more, even if the numbers line up for them to buy a house, they may decide, you know what, I would feel more comfortable renting.

I like that flexibility. I like not having to worry about maintenance. I love talking to you about this because we're going to be looking both at the numbers of course, but then also mentally, is this something that you really want to do? Is it the best move for you and your family?

I want to go into the next one which I've seen this over and over again is if you can afford rent, you can afford a mortgage.

Adam Hagerman: That comes right in the same topic of renting is throwing your money away. I mean I did a calculator online. My mortgage payment's going to be the same as what I'm paying your rent, and then I'm going to start making equity.

So I'm going to be. Like making money in this transaction. It's like you know, investing in the stock market or something here.

Yeah, it's just, it's not that simple. It's not as simple to say, Oh my mortgage payments equal to, or less than what I'm paying rent. It's going to be gangbusters for me here.

It's technically true when you think about, okay, yeah, the mortgage is equal or less to rent, but you're not thinking about all those other expenses that come with it.

It's just the maintenance cost. I mean, You know, it's, it's crazy. Like I have to buy, you know, $10 filters for my HVAC system, like every three months or something, you know we have to have a humidifier in the house.

There's so many extra expenses that come with home ownership that it's, it's usually several hundred dollars extra per month to save up just for those maintenance items. That's not even including, those remodels and stuff that you want to do.

You know, I don't like the way the bathroom looks, so I'm going to have to spend several thousand dollars to get it remodeled and all that kind of stuff.

Then you've got the even bigger things like replacing a roof periodically, or the washing machine dies after five years. There's just so many other expenses that, it's easy to overlook them. It's easy to put those blinders on and say, you know, Oh, this is great. I'm going to be making money here.

It's just not that simple. Even if you're buying a new home, they're putting builder grade types of materials in that don't last as long. So you're going to have to replace a lot of those things pretty quickly, and you got to start saving for it.

It's gotta be a part of your monthly budget and you've got to hold onto that money.

Some people will budget $200 a month for home maintenance, but then you know, that money leaks out of your budget somewhere else, you spend it on something else.

A couple of years later, when you should have been saving that $200 a month to replace the roof, it's gone, the money's not there.

Then you're taking on debt or pulling from your emergency fund for something that's not an emergency and, pulling from your vacation fund. That's not a path that you want to go down.

Elle Martinez: Yeah. I think there are a lot of joys with home ownership, but you have to understand, how it works.

You really have to look at the numbers. And part of that reason is like, where do you live? There are some fantastic calculators where you could see with how fast rents are rising. I know in some areas buying a home can definitely make a lot of sense if you're going to stay there.

I think in our area, I ran the numbers on our house so we're four, almost five years in. We're good. But for others, you may see that, the maintenance, like you mentioned, all these home ownership costs, I would be better off renting or saving and practicing.

I think I was talking with JimWang one time and he was mentioning , if you're saving up for something, the best thing you could do is before you actually get it practice, like you already have it.

If you're thinking of a mortgage, see how much you can save set aside that, that house maintenance fund, can you have that discipline? Because then you develop a habit, that's going to be a huge help with buying a house.

Adam Hagerman: Once you get into that mindset of, once you kind of flip that switch on, and you're saying, I want to buy a house.

Sometimes it goes very, very quickly. You don't have that ability to test the waters. You don't have the ability to. If it works and then you end up making a decision that you think is going to work for you. And after you buy the house several months down the road, you go, wow, this probably wasn't the best decision I made here.

I'm having to cut back on a lot of things where my credit card debts creeping up and, you know, you find yourself in a bad position.

Elle Martinez: Definitely test the waters.

And I do want to talk about this because this is bad advice that I hear over and over again, which is buy as much house as you can afford.

I put quotes in a afford because we'll get into this a little bit later.

When you talk with lenders mortgage brokers, it's funny what they think you can afford. So can we just talk about how this is not a great strategy when you're buying a house?

Adam Hagerman: Yeah, afford is definitely a keyword there. Sometimes I also focus on the word, you too, because what can you afford?

Not what somebody else thinks that you can afford, because all those calculators out there on, especially when you get on the bank websites and the mortgage lenders and real estate agents and all those types of things, right?

A lot of their home affordability types of calculators, try to fit everybody in the same box and not everybody's in the same box.

You got to understand that the recommended percentages that many of those calculators use are based on how much they're willing to lend you.

You are looked at as risk and how risky is it that you are not going to pay your mortgage? That's all as a lender, that's all we care about is whether you're going to be able to pay this or not, or we're going to be screwed later because you can't pay the mortgage.

That's really all they're thinking about. They're not thinking about how much you want to have for a vacation every year, if you want to remodel that kitchen in five years or not. If you want to send your kids to private K through 12 school, if you want to have, you know, eight dogs in your house. They have no idea if you want those types of things in your budget.

So it's important for you to define what's affordable to you based on what your other financial goals are. And there's, yeah, there's a lot of leg work that you need to do in the beginning to, to figure that stuff out.

Elle Martinez: Yeah. I think this is why it's so important. Even when we bought our first house, I thought that was low back then. Now it's almost ridiculous that people are encouraged.

Like, Oh my goodness, look how much you can afford, but one piece of advice is run the numbers yourselves.

Like you mentioned, what your personal goals are.

Do you guys want to go on vacation down the line? Are you going to put aside something for the kids for college, if that's what you want to do?

If you don't define that those calculations will give you a misrepresentation of what you can afford. Because when we ran the numbers, Adam, I swear to you.

It was like twice the budget we had anticipated and yeah, we could afford that, but we could not afford any single thing outside of that house.

Adam Hagerman: Yeah. That's the whole term of housepoor. Right. And there's so much whole life and there's a lot of people that will say, it'll just be a, for a year or two, because then I'm going to get that big raise or Things will work out, you know, I'll cut back on stuff.

If you've been spending your money the same way for several years, and you've grown accustomed to some niceties and different things like that.

You may say, we're just going to cut back on those things so we can get in this house, like, that's a really hard thing to break and it's a rarity that somebody can be that disciplined and actually do it.

That's where it's like, don't lie to yourself. Right.

Elle Martinez: Yeah. And then the last one, and this was interesting because when I heard this, I don't know if this happens with anybody else, but when I heard this advice, it wasn't from a tax professional who was buy a house for the tax breaks.

Could you kind of go through that? Are there any tax benefits to being a home owner? If so, is that a big factor when you're making a decision to buy a home or the other things we talked about more important?

Adam Hagerman: Yeah, before the tax cuts and jobs act, I think that's what it was called that was passed in 2017, that went into effect in 2018. The tax breaks were certainly somewhat better than they are today.

With the new tax law, the, the benefits of this have actually diminished quite a bit. So your primary residence, you're able to deduct your mortgage interest. Sometimes you're able to deduct your private mortgage insurance. If you have to pay that and your real estate taxes as well, you can deduct those things.

The first thing I'll say is it's a deduction, not a credit, which means that to get the deduction or to to save money on your taxes, you're going to spend a dollar in interest to maybe save 20 cents 25 cents, something like that. So you're still spending money.

It's not like a complete wash. The government's going to give me all my interests that I paid back. Absolutely not.

The second thing is kind of goes back to that hurdle that I mentioned where people on their tax return and get a standard deduction, regardless of if they own a home or not.

With the new tax law in 2017, that standard deduction was increased immensely so the benefits of home ownership or deducting that mortgage interest in real estate taxes it definitely is much lower now, especially for married individuals.

Single individuals still have, if you file your taxes single, the, the benefits of deducting mortgage interest and real estate taxes is a little bit higher than a married individual, but married couples. I don't know, off the top of my head what the standard deduction is, but it's like 24,800, something like that.

So you have to have more than $24,800 in interest, real estate taxes and other types of itemized deductions for you to even benefit from that deduction.

However, it's only that first dollar then after that 24,800, anyway, that's now going to benefit you because you again, would have got the 24,800, regardless of if you had mortgage interest or not.

So the tax benefits just really are not there anymore in the grand scheme of things, it's going to be different for everyone.

A lot of that's going to depend on where you're buying your house in a high cost of living area if it is you're going to have higher mortgage interest than somebody who lives in, you know the countryside in Nebraska where homes are less expensive and you'll have a lower mortgage and lower mortgage interest.

Elle Martinez: Yeah, these are all different things to consider. We've talked about myths and a lot of it, because I feel like if you just buy a home with these in the back of your mind, you're really setting yourself up for disappointment and getting a home you really can't afford.

But I want to switch it. Let's say a family they've run the numbers they've saved. They know that they do want to stay in this area for a while. Buying a home is on their list.

What can they do now to start setting things up before they call and try to find a real estate agent before they talk to lenders?

What are some things they can do to kind of get those pieces in place?

Adam Hagerman: You already alluded to it, figuring out what you can afford to spend a little bit more time talking about that. You know, determining what you can afford is, is a tough thing to do, right? Because again, you want to just lean on those calculators to tell you, and you just can't do that.

What I recommend clients do that come to me and talk about some of this stuff is I recommend that they back into what they can afford.

I have them kind of go through exercises to help them. What are your financial goals? So outside of just wanting to buy a house, what are your other financial goals?

How much do you want to have for a vacation every year? Do you want to start saving for your kids' college education, as you said earlier how much do you want to save for retirement?

Thinking about those financial goals and then taking them and plugging them into a longer-term budget in that longer term budget lead the housing section blank for now, and then fill out that budget as you would want to see that budget, how you want to have your money available for things, put that stuff in there.

Once you've got those things in there, you can then kind of see, well, what's left over and then what's left over is probably going to help you to find once you can afford for a house.

There are other calculators out there where you can kind of say, like, here's what I can afford as my payments.

They can tell you then how much a house you're going to be able to buy at whatever the current interest rates are.

You kind of have to back into it instead of looking at it on the surface. So, that's a really important step to do is just figure out what you can afford first.

When you tell your real estate agent then, and your mortgage broker, what it is that you can afford, they're going to try to tell you that you can, Oh, you can afford more than that or those types of things, but you got to say, ‘Nope, Nope. This is exactly what I can afford.'

You might have a comfortable number and a slightly uncomfortable number and that's okay, because you might need to be a little bit flexible, especially in a, in a hot market.

You might have to put in a higher bid than than maybe you're somewhat comfortable. You'd ideally like it at this number, but maybe you have a little bit of flexibility. So you want to know what those numbers are too.

Again, avoid those phrases, like when I make more money, things will be better.

You certainly would to determine what your down payment is going to be. At a minimum, I usually recommend at least 5% down. I live in a high cost of living area as do you so, you know, getting that, that 20% down, a lot of books will say, or other websites will say is pretty tough.

I mean, it's a pretty big hurdle to, to do in a, in a high cost of living area. I usually recommend at least 5% down because that'll get you into a conventional mortgage.

You'll probably have to pay private mortgage insurance, PMI, but that's at least the kind of first level that I would recommend somebody get at.

You're also going to need another two to 3% for closing costs on top of that 5%. So you gotta make sure that you've got that money as well.

You also want to make you make sure you have a cash reserve for your emergency fund, right? You don't want to dip into your emergency fund for this down payment and then go into home ownership that an emergency fund.

That is a horrible idea because there's just so many things that will pop up now you're, you're much more likely to have some of those unexpected expenses that you need that emergency fund for. Those closing costs are big too.

When it comes to like credits, you know, ideally you want to have a FICO score of 740 or higher, and that number can change from year to year.

It depends on what kind of market it is. So like back when the housing bubble burst in the late 2007, 2008, I think that threshold went up to seven 60 for awhile.

It's probably about740 now to ensure that you're going to get the best interest rate that any kind of lenders got to offer.

What you also need to know about credit scores is that the lender will look at all three of the credit bureaus.

They'll actually look at the middle score for you to determine what your interest rate is. So if you've got your three FICO scores, Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian and one score is 740, the other one's 720 and the other one's 710.

They're actually gonna use the 720 to determine whatyour interest rate is so you may not get the best interest rate, in that example.

You got to try to get that FICO score out as best as you possibly can to get that best interest rate. Usually once you surpass a certain point, I mean, getting it any higher than that, it's not really going to benefit you in terms of interest rates.

Elle Martinez: Yeah I do want to point out for those who watched this or listened to this, that it does take time. If you look at your credit report And you see an error, it doesn't, unfortunately, immediately you go away when you contact the credit Bureau.

Sometimes there's back and forth so definitely before you call your, your mortgage lender or you start shopping around for real estate agents set the pieces up.

That way and we'll kind of get into this when you are in the middle of the, the house hunt, that's one taken care of and two, your mind is focused on this stuff, because sometimes I've seen people that get so excited about, you know, these low rates and they could go up at any time that they're willing to go with the bad credit score and get the not so great rates.

Now they're kind of stuck here. They're going to get not a bad home, but maybe they could have afforded a little bit more, maybe a house in a better condition, which in turn is less maintenance costs. A lot of this, you know, involves looking at the pieces together, what's best for your situation.

But I do want to talk about this a little more.

Fast forward, everything looks go with the credit score. They got the down payment and they're with their agent. They talk with the mortgage lender and they're hunting for a house at him. And this happened to us. It can be overwhelming.

We live in Raleigh and I've been here 12 years. It's definitely grown market has changed tremendously and I was helping my mom buy a home in the area and everything was moving fast. It was a matter of days, the house was on the market and the house was sold. So how do you one deal with that?

How do you keep the emotions in check? Because again, this is the biggest purchase typically a family makes.

Adam Hagerman: Yeah that is tough. There's a lot of external pressures in those highly stressful situations of the market's fast because then your real estate agent is going to be like, you've got to put in an offer today or this thing's good. Gone, you know, you got to put in probably 20, 20,000 higher than what the asking prices.

You have a lot of those external pressures and what you have to just kind of sit back and say is, you know, those people don't have my best interest in mind.

They're just looking to make the sale to make the commission, to get the mortgage set up for me, because they're going to make money off of that.

You have to take that step back and say, this is my decision, and I need to make the best decision for me.

You going out with your mom was, that's actually a great thing because anybody that's buying at home, I recommend that they have what are referred to as their level headed friend.

You have to have this level headed friend, to come with you to showings, to sit down with them before you go out there and say, this is what I can afford. Hold me to it.

Right. We all have those friends too, that are like, Oh yeah, this is a great house. You know, that's not the friend you want to take with you.

You want to take that person that, maybe you can probably tell from the, you know, see their life anyway. They're pretty reasonable and in what they do, and they make good decisions for themselves as well. You have to have that level, head and friend , to take with you to those showings, to hold your feet to the fire to say, no, you can't afford this.

This is not in your price range. Or you know, did you look at this over here? Because when we're buying a house, we are excited. Everybody's excited. I think people put a lot of blinders on, right. You've got these blinders on and going in and just looking at this house and you're saying, ‘ This is great. This is perfect'.

And that other level headed friend might be able to say, did you see that crack on the wall, outside the foundation? Or did you look at the neighbor's house? They had barbed wire on their fence. That seems a little odd. Don't you think?

Because most people looking at that kind of stuff, you know, the dog that's barking down the street and it's always barking.

These are things that can be too late once you buy the house, right? You move in. You're like, wow, that neighbor does have barbed wire on the fence. I didn't notice that last time.

Why are the police over there today? You know, it's hard to see some of this stuff and having that person be able to just keep you accountable is a big thing.

You also want to have a wishlist created, be prepared. To not check all the boxes, because that will certainly happen.

You're not going to get everything that you want in a home that you purchased, but are there some sacrifices you're willing to make?

You know, what is like a 10 I absolutely needed or a five, you know, I really want that, but it's not that big of a deal or is it kinda like, Oh, I really want open concept. It was a big thing on Home and Garden, television or whatever.

So where years ago you know, is it easy to, you know, just knock down a wall to get that open concept that's going to be, not something that you need to have moved in, ready kind of thing.

So. No, I had that wishlist ready to go and again, be prepared not to check all of those boxes.

As you're looking at homes, take a pen and paper with you, take a measuring tape take your camera or cell phone, you know, measure your bed before you go look at a house and take that measuring tape.

Then it have a school piece of paper that says what the size of your bed is and the master and the master bedroom

I've seen some people have their beds and they take them in and then they're like, okay, this room is like, all it is is bed. That's all it is right now.

Cause that was that's the master bedroom too. How's your stuff going to fit in there?

A lot of people will show homes too that are not staged. They're still being lived in by the other individual and sometimes they might have really small furniture. Sometimes they might have huge humongous furniture and that humongous furniture makes the room look really small.

You feel like it's small then, but it's really not. If you put your furniture in there, probably wouldn't be. You have to sometimes remove the clutter too, when you're looking at seven weeks.

You also want to be, just be aware of other things too, right? Not just the house itself, the external components for the house, you know, like what was the commute like to get to that place?

Did you have to make strange U-turns or sit at a red light for 10 minutes, even though the house was like right over there, like I'm on a, kind of a major highway here and there's a red light right out here. I can see my house from that red light. The red light takes five minutes.

That's five minutes to your commute and it's stressful knowing that your house is right there.

You just want to get there. You have to think about that too. Is there heavy traffic?

When you're looking at house two, are there weird items in weird places? I think my brother and sister-in-law are looking to buy a home in Portland, Oregon a couple of years ago.

He was well aware of some of the things around the house. He noticed this like big flower pot with no Flower in it, outside of the house, just kind of sitting there.

He's like kind of random. Let me see, what's behind that thing. And you move it and it's like, Oh my God, there's a crack in the foundation or, Oh wow. Animals I can get in here.

Yeah. He's just some, some strange stuff that people will cover up because then they hope that you don't see it.

They hope when you get into inspection later, if you decide to put an offer in that you know that you're not going to notice those . Once you have a house it's your responsibility now.

So you gotta be aware. In those fast markets it's easy to forget about those things, but you gotta get some habits in place to make sure you're checking all the boxes as you go and look at some of these places.

As you kind of said earlier with your mom, if it's not meant to be, it's just not meant to be.

It might be a place that you can see yourself living in, but if the things don't work out, if somebody else beats you to it, and you're just not comfortable pulling the trigger on it, they might be making a mistake and they might regret that mistake later.

You're not going to see it, but you might be regretting it yourself if you end up purchasing it.

Elle Martinez: Yeah. There's so many different factors. I know. I feel great about the home she's in and it took a hunt, but like you mentioned, Having your ideal budget and then what you can, you still can comfortably afford half that range was definitely helpful when we were looking at homes.

I'm happy to say, we don't call it a forever home, but this looks like this is going to be her retirement home.

She wanted to be closer to the grand babies, but she has something that she can comfortably afford.

I know like we can go on and on for this. This is such a big topic and we've only scratched the surface adam.

Because of your experience as a financial planner, countless families make good decisions, make bad decisions with their finances, and you know the ins and outs of what conversations they should be having and things they need to know.

You actually have a course that focuses in on this. Do you mind talking a little bit more about this?

Adam Hagerman: Sure. Yeah. So I have a course it's buying a home from contemplation to closing and the big thing that you need to know.

It's like over four hours of content.

Some of the things that we talked about today are a part of that course, but you know, a fraction of that course.

I talk a lot about. The types of mortgages that are out there, what might be available, what are the pros and cons of different mortgages benefits for first time home buyers, if there are any they're not, but you know, everybody always thinks that, Oh, first-time home buyers.

I'm a first time home buyer. I'm going to save some money. Somebody is going to give me some money because I'm a first time home buyer and that's just not, that's not accurate.

Then the, the weird things of looking at homes. What type of home do you want? All those types of things.

Elle Martinez: I love that. And I think that's a big hurdle for a lot of families. They feel like, Oh, if I. I'm seeking this unbiased advice from a financial planner, it's going to cost me an arm and a leg.

First of all, I think, if you're looking for a comprehensive thing that is really an investment, someone who guides you.

When you showed me these affordable courses, just for the house alone, 20 bucks a month. Can save you thousands of dollars or in the case where you say, you know what, I'm buying a house just right now is not the move for me?

That is priceless. So definitely educating yourself, especially with big purchases like this absolutely matters. I will have links in the show notes to Adam's course, or if you just want to go now it's couple money.com/buy a house.

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Music Credit

Our theme song is from Staircases. Additional music by various artists from Audiio.