Finessing the Plan

So last night I was in a total depression over this North Carolina thing. But Denis and I talked about it and came up with a plan of action. Denis said that if we move to NC he wants a custom home. That’s it. No sense moving down there if we aren’t going to build. And if we can build a custom home for the same price we would pay for pre-existing, it makes sense to build.

So, having gotten that decision made, we had to form a plan of attack to achieve that goal. Denis talked to his manager about capital gains taxes and verified that when we sell our house we will NOT have to pay capital gains because we’ll be well under the $500K limit. That’s a relief – it means we don’t have to dump all the money into a house right away.

What we plan on doing first is buying the land – hopefully in the next 6-8 months (although Denis has hinted that if we find land on our vacation he has no problem going for it and buying it now). Once we have the land we’ll figure out what kind of house we can put on the lot and begin working on floorplans.

We’ve decided that we’ll concentrate on the floorplan and the exterior of the house. Meaning that when we go to build we’ll make sure the OUTSIDE of the house is top-notch, as well as the guts of the house (plumbing, HVAC, etc.). You can’t scrimp on those things since they last the life of the house. As for the “extras” we’ll go with average stuff – formica countertops instead of granite, plain faucets and sinks instead of fancy, cheap carpeting (I’d love to do bamboo floors eventually) – all the cool gadgets and things will have to wait. We’re going to build a fancy-looking house, but it’ll be straight vanilla when it comes to the details. This will allow us to keep housebuilding costs down while still making sure to build a quality house.

As for paying for that house, and a mortgage, we’ll put 60% of the money we make on the sale of our current house into the new house construction and have a modest mortgage, and put the other 40% in savings. Then once I get a job we’ll use my salary and the 40% to pay bills. Based on our basic calculations we’ll be able to live a decent lifestyle for about two years combining those two money sources. That’s more than enough time for Denis to supplement with his real estate business and get that rolling.

So I went from freaking out that we’re stuck in NJ forever even though we can’t afford it to being totally excited that Denis and I actually took the time to formulate a plan that will work.

We also discussed the baby thing – we both want a third. We both agreed that we didn’t want to NOT have a third. I also said I don’t want to wait too long to have a third because since we have a boy and a girl already we have all the clothes that third will need and diapers and formula will be the only expense in the first year. So yes, we’ll go for a third instead of waiting for money to drop in our lap. As Denis said, there’s a woman in our church with seven kids and SHE did it alone after her divorce – so can we with both parents and only three kids.

Not surprisingly, my headache that I’ve been nursing for a couple days is completely gone.