mortgages and house payments

so basically the only thing consuming my mind nowadays is this new house. . .its not just as easy as i was hoping. i cant just hand them 100 grand and lets get on with it. so mortgage rates have been all over the place lately .. when we started getting ready to put money down the rate was around 6.5, then we locked in at 6.375 thinking that would be good and now a week later, its below 6. suffice to say i made the guy allow us to change the rate at no charge to us since it was his idea to "lock"

in addition to locking a rate (which every 8th of a % is about 30 dollars a month for 30 YEARS), you have to pay closing costs. . which just sound like a bunch of extra fees that really dont get you anywhere. you have "stamps", you have lender fees, brokers fees, water assesment fees, etc etc . .. basically its over 10 extra thousand dollars up front on top of the % down that you want to put.

our plan is to put 76,500 down. this is 15% of the entire amount of the house (510,000) .. .so on top of that money we have to put down 13,000 in closing plus first month, plus another 18,000 for flooring and window upgrades, plus another 4000 for countertops, appliance upgrades and lighting upgrades...so upfront we somehow had to come up with 111,500. . .

in order to save up that kind of money you clearly have to make some sacrifices .. which we have for certain, and then again we havent

christine and i both have been on weekly allowances for 7 months. each of us started by getting 100 every 2 weeks and that had to pay for anything and everthing you wanted to do outside of gas and grocery, we later lowered to 80 every 2 weeks and even tried 60, but that just was too hard . .so we stuck with 80..

christines pay check, our tax returns, her 2nd job at bjs, and her summer school and my job at my parents business on saturdays dont hurt by any means. . .but saving this kind of money in 7 months is something i hope to never have to do again! on the bright side christine did the musical Big River, we had Disney season passes, and access to go to Dodgers games . .so it wasnt like we did nothing the last 7 months. we really look forward to having room to actually entertain and have friends and family over. . . .