Tag Archives: home ownership

Know Your Number

As we are getting closer to the dream of finally being homeowners, I have been keeping an eye on our credit report to make sure nothing bad happens.  I began monitoring our credit report two years ago when we started paying off debt and have enjoyed watching our scores rise….slowly…but in the right direction.  Monitoring our credit has been a great tool for us because it has allowed us to educate ourselves on how credit scores are calculated and how the whole system works.  By monitoring I have been able to raise our scores across the board by informing different bureaus that they were not reporting on a ‘good’ account.

We have invested a lot of time and money into repairing our credit which is why it is so important to us that we continue to monitor it.  After paying off the bad debt at the beginning of last year, we enlisted the help of a local company to help us clean up our credit as well…..another reason that I monitor it so closely.  I like receiving an email whenever something new is reported to any of the bureaus and love it even more when I am notified that a score has increased!

What do you do to keep your credit in check?  Do you know how you can get your free credit score?

Prepping to be homeowners

As I have shared on this blog before, the Alex and I have been working very hard to repair our credit history so that we can finally become homeowners.

Given our less than stellar credit history we are aware that buying our first home will be no easy task. We have been doing what we can to save money for a down payment and have started perusing the real estate ads.

We have both settled with the fact that because our credit has suffered over the years we will most likely start off our journey is homeowners with a not so great interest rate. Yes, that is a hard thing to swallow but we are willing to tough it out until we become eligible for a mortgage refinance down the road.

As we wait for our newest family member to arrive, along with the new year, we are anxious and hopeful that we can get this process going and be in our own home within the next 6 months.

For those of you out there who are homeowners, do you have any tips as to how to go about the home buying process for the first (and hopefully ONLY) time?