I would love to be able to own my own home someday; however, I am petrified of the entire mortgage process. I keep thinking that what if after I bought a home and something needs to be repaired; what if I don't have the money to get it fixed?
Then there's the situation with my fiance who filed BK almost two year's ago: How will this "effect" the process when we're ready to buy a home (probably in about 3 years)? I know it will have a huge negative affect on the mortgage process, but we're hopeful. And then, what really has me concerned is that I'm a little too old to even begin applying for a mortgage...but I am truly tired of renting and not having anything to "show" for it (although the benefit (to me) of renting is that if something goes wrong, all I have to do is get in touch with the maintenance of the property that I'm renting, and the problem will be fixed.
I still have a few baddies on my CR, but I've made major progress in cleaning up my reports; but I'm afraid that no matter how squeaky clean my reports will be, that something is going to cause a setback; and I have to admit, I have no patience...
The one truly useful piece of long-term advice I found going through this entire process: do the budgetting exercise. Right now even, I went through a "I can afford this / I can't afford this" bit of waffling this past week (when I'm already way pregnant on this exercise but I digress) but putting hard numbers down demonstrated I could make this work though some things will need to change in my life.
I never have spent that much compared to my income nor compared to many others but even I was surprised when I realized my estimate of monthly expenses was 30% off from what I was actually spending. Even if you don't really need to change a darned thing it can give some places to optimize and for me is worth way more than the hours worth of time it took to import the transactions from all my credit cards for the last six months. Could've done that on the free trial version of YNAB even, though I paid the $60 and likely will be one of the smartest financial value decisions I've ever made.
I know "budget" is an obscene word in our consumer focused society, but if you're suffering from anxiety on this like I did, ignoring the negative connotations associated with it is incredibly smart.
How I explain this whenever I get a SO I don't know, but it's another one of those canary conversations I think... saw a recent video on CNNMoney that 43% of people don't know what their spouse makes: that is simply astounding to me.
The actual process itself isn't as bad as some make it out to be if your ducks are in a row: I have all sorts of dirt on my file and the only negative that came out to haunt me was a paid tax lien which only shows as Released rather than Paid, and so Chase had to request information from the courts that it was indeed paid. Vagaries of credit reporting and the State of California FTB.
I don't know the rules regarding BK's but depending on the time period from the BK might affect some mortgage types that you can qualify on; have to admit never really paid attention to BK's as that was one of the few derogs I didn't have to sort out. Knock on wood that never happens in the future either, I'd hate if I got as knowledgeable on BK's as I was forced to get on IRS tax liens 
@Anonymous wrote:Just to add to my previous post... home depot, lowes, menards even ace have classes every weekend on some type of project. Most are free. You can learn almost anything you will need to know, from replacing a faucet, to painting, to far more advanced skills like laying flooring. There are also online tools. I had to take a homebuyers class, and they give you basically an annual checklist of things to check in your home. Fixing things when they are minor maintainance issues is much cheaper than waiting til things blow up!
That's handy to know; was talking to a buddy of mine and he gave a list of things that were pretty much replace straight away unless you saw receipts within the last year (like for the water heater) or the model of toilet in use.
I'm not very handy on fixing things having lived in apartments for 20 years (I'll do simple stuff but anything more complicated, yo landlord!) and I likely should go check that out looking at the budget numbers. While I did put $350 in slush fund / month, fact is when I'm contributing 20% of my income now over half a year to try to max my 401K contribution, my income in vs. budget out is only positive by like 100 / month. Oi vey, I have to keep reminding myself that the principal payment is just a different type of investment and not an expense per se... oh well looking forward to next year when I can scale back my contribution to something more reasonable, and also to that mortgage interest deduction come tax time
