My husband and I moved to South Florida in May 2018 and we live in a wonderful apartment in the city. I love the building that we live in but we are ready to find our "forever" home. Grant it, the pros of living in the apartment are great: if something breaks, you call maintenance to come and fix it, don't have to cut any grass, lower utility bills...….basically, no responsibility on our part.
With both of us working from home, we just need more space. As we started to look at homes in the area, a thought came through my mind: I want us to be able to live off of one of our paychecks. When I say one, I am talking one of husbands and one of mines. If we are getting paid twice of month, we would only live off the first payment. The second payment is used to put towards a goal, charity, investments or etc.
The next thought, is this even possible. South Florida homes are way more expensive than Southwestern Pennsylvania. Will we find one that would fit in the budget in the right location? Will we get the things that we want in our "forever" home? I know for sure, we will probably have to live outside of the city versus the current city living I have grown to love. So what did I do?
I pulled out my handy dandy spreadsheet (which will be MyFondi soon!) and started working my magic on the budget. As I analyzed each line, I started adding, removing and adjusting items to see what we would be able to afford as a monthly payment for our house. After making my adjustments, I got us to a number that will allow us to stay within one paycheck. Now we can now look at houses within this payment range (fingers crossed).
If we can keep our numbers in this range, we can do so much more within our household. I wish I would have thought about this when we initially moved down to Florida. Well, when I first started in my career. At the time I wasn't really think about my finances and this is why MyFondi is so important. We want to make sure our future generations are thinking about these things sooner rather than later!
Have you thought about living on one paycheck? Do you think it is possible? Let us know in the comments.