Renting Vs. Owning A Home, And The Impact On Our Finances

I wrote quite awhile ago about Renting Vs. Owning your own home.
To update, we put our house on the market mid to late january, had a buyer with our first showing, and finally closed late April. We've been renting since the beginning of March though, as we decided to vacate our house while we had the time. We have now lived in our rental for three months, and have been paying rent for four months.

Renting has it's ups and downs to be honest. My dishwasher just broke, and all I had to do was call the property management office and they took care of it. Now it's fixed! With our house, we had a European dishwasher that was broken, and we didnt even bother to fix it because the service fee alone for a company that could fix it was $125.00. And we just didn't have the money. My rental is being fixed up outside, painted, new trim etc. We have a fence too. Unfortunately, we didn't have the money for any of that when we owned our home. I guess a downside to renting is that it just isn't ours. I can't really see too many "downs" to renting right now to be honest with you.

So, the impact on our finances...

Our mortage payment, with taxes, and insurance included was $1863.00 a month. Ouch! Our rent here is $1025.00. We also do not have a water bill anymore, as we're on a well, so that has saved us $50.00 a month. Just with those factors, we're saving $888.00 a month!!

We did splurge and enroll at the YMCA, which costs us $77.50. That brings us to $810.00 a month saved.

Our middle child is no longer in pre-k, so I am saving money on that, but I also use the money from her pre-k to go to childcare at the YMCA for the baby when I work out. So that balances itself out.

We've also added internet costs, as we purchased a much needed computer with our tax returns. My hubby also has internet for his lap top, so both internet costs are around $100.00 a month, bringing us down to $710.00 a month saved. However, our home internet bill will go up another $20 in a few months, but that doesn't bother me at all. So we're saving around $700 a month, give or take a few bucks.

Now, we have not started a savings account yet, as we're waiting for the summer miles for my hubby to start rolling in. That has just started happening, so I will be doing that shortly.

We don't have a lot of debt, just our van, and two small credit cards. Our credit card balances are less than $1500 together and our van is around $11,800.00. I always pay more than the minimum of the credit cards, and we just pay the van as it is, the payment due each month.

We still hope to purchase another home, but it probably won't be here. We plan to move out of state to somewhere cheaper. And probably not for at least 3-5 years. We want to have a nice sizeable downpayment for a nice sizeable house on some property.

And don't forget, I have posted a few times today, so don't forget to read those as well. I updated on my weight loss!