What did you do to save $$$...Follow

I can't speak from experience, but financially speaking it's always better to own than to rent. It's a good investment, and when you rent you're more or less throwing your money away. Yes, you are paying for a home, but you get nothing except the immediate return. While owning that money for the mortgage is going somewhere other than someone else's pocket.

Not to mention purchasing a house and moving is always a stressful ordeal, doing whilst your lady is pregnant or even after she has the ankle-biter is just adding to the stress.

Short answer, get a home first.

Move first. There are many reasons.

Nexa

Move first, buy the house, then have baby. For one buying is always better. For two moving with a baby will be a *****. For three it will let you become accustomed to your new financial obligations before baby comes along and throws it all out of wack. I also suggest waiting a year or two before having a baby after getting married. The first year changes your life drastically, even if you've been living with the person prior to getting married.

Filling out paperwork in Malawian on the fly is a *****.

Is it best to have the kid first then move or dump a fat down-payment down on a house and start a mortgage before the baby.


That second one for sure.

I figure if you worry about being able to afford children you will never have them. The reasoning is simple. Regardless how much money people make, there is never any left at the end of the day because they tend to live outside their means. If you have a child, that won't change anything except where you prioritize your money. I personally had 2 children before I moved into a purchased house, then I had two more. Really no difference in my opinion.

Depends on the pre-nup

I was going to say, talk to a friend that has a setup you would like and ask about how much more a month he/she spends. Include diapers, childcare, anything you can think of, and then work this estimate into your budget before you buy a house. While you can always make do, it's best if you have an idea of how much you'll need to have on hand once baby comes along so you can price your mortgage accordingly.

I'm aphauled at you women being all 'oh don't make me move when I'm teh preggers'.

Make your man do the packing and quit yer ******** If you can't manage that, then you've let the leash out too far. Give it a few pulls if you know what's good for ya.

Additionally, money wise, if you use my principle about living within one's means, you may choose a house that you can afford now, then after children, you might have to move into something more modest because of the new expenses that you did not bargain for. Unless you are the planner of planners, these are things you should consider. Also, factor in movers if the ***** has a bun brewing. That should shut her up good.

I heart you.

That is a myth the real estate industry loves to perpetuate. In some cases it holds true but certainly not always.

Close to always, though. Even if you bought right at the peak of the market and ended up completely upside down on your mortgage for years, you'd still be better off in the long run nearly always.

Of course if you include interest, then you lose money on any house you will ever buy unless you pay cash or get one hell of a return on it.

If you assume rents stay static for 30 years.

You may as well throw in the Rent Fairy to your carefully considered premise.

You're a ******* ******. Shut the **** up and sit back in the corner, ***.

My point, Smash, is that there are too many variable involved in any given circumstance to make such a sweeping statment like it's a universal truth, or even that it is close to always. You can't just make assumptions on what "the long term" will be these days because the simple fact of the matter is that compared to the past, a lot less people are living in their homes for 30+ years now. Depending on the type and term of the financing vs. investment potential, the length of time one stays in a home, fluctuating property values, and just plain ****-poor luck passed off as Acts of God you can't automatically make the assumption that you would be better off investing in real property that you reside in than you would be investing in other, more lucrative ventures while residing in a home that you don't own. People too earnestly believe that 100% of the time that their money would have been better spent on purchasing a home than elsewhere and all I'm saying is that without the proper financial planning and forsight it isn't all that difficult to get the **** end of the stick.