Real Estate, Budgets, & Uncertainty
Beth & I don’t want to jinx ourselves by over planning for a move to Nashville but we also can’t wait to do the work till I am offered the position and have two weeks to move. There is a balance which is actually pretty easy to achieve due to the many unknown monetary variables, i.e. my salary, Beth’s salary, Beth’s student loan bill (She just consolidated and we don’t know the monthly bill yet.), and other bills that will soon be passed from our parents to us. We’re trying to hammer out a budget to get a price we would like to spend on a rental property but its impossible to narrow a range with so many empty spaces in our budget. (Apple’s Numbers spreadsheet software is super sweet.)
I believe we would still be debating about the type of place to live even if we had a complete budget. Our requirements are few in numbers; we demand our own washer/dryer and convenient (hopefully free) parking. I never would have thought that I would have to list parking as a requirement! There are other wants such as two bedrooms, an ample kitchen (I wish for a gas range.), and a movie theatre with no less than seating for 12. One of the previous wishes is not true. I’ll let you figure out which one.
And we couldn’t forget about other obvious points like location. I know where I would be working at but Beth doesn’t. We won’t know where she’ll get a job at but we can at least plan for a more central location. For example, it would be stupid for us to focus on living west of the city since I would be in West End. My selfish wish is a place close enough where I could bike to work. It’s doable but definitely limits the area.
What type of place should we live in? A huge, 3 bedroom home 30 minutes outside of town? A 1 bedroom loft downtown? There is an array of rental places we have found and haven’t ruled out any particular type… yet. Having much more space that we have now sounds nice but pushing ourselves even further out of the box and into a downtown loft with high quality features is a move that we have both agreed could only be made now when we’re young.
Now I need those missing numbers to fill in our budget.
