How did everyone.......

Save for their first home. ??? Maybe I'm in a different situation than most being that I am already married, have 2 children BUT no home of my own. we currently live in an apartment in my in laws house.. At first we were supposed to buy the house from them when they retired but now my mother in law doesn't want to go anywhere for a long while!!! So we're stuck .. I am ok with money but really can't seem to just put that extra $ away... HELP!!!!!

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$ from the wedding, plus about 6 months of saving.

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We used the money from our wedding.

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DH lived at home for 5 years working full time after college and saved $$$ that way.

Then we got married and used only a percentage of that for closing costs, etc.

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We saved money over the last 4 years of our marriage. DH already bought a house 10 years ago so we have been living here since we moved back from Ireland. We saved our tax returns, bonuses and tried to save 1k a month in order to get the down payment for our new house. We decided against selling our current home and we will be renting it.

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We used our wedding money and rented a small apartment for 2 years, which saved us lots of money.

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our wedding money was a big chunk of our downpayment.

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we both lived at home after college - now we will be able to replenish our savings with our wedding $$.

my advice for you would be make a budget and stick to it!

good luck

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we seriously saved for about 3 years. We would just keep our goal in mind. When we started looking at the 2 year mark we were shocked to know that we didn't have enough. And also, what are these closing costs? We had to save for another year.

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We had money in the bank on our wedding day...and then gifts that we received were added to that. That was our starting point for saving for our house. The rest was banking solidly for 18 months...and we cashed in some stock.

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Thanks everyone.. I guess it's just time to get motivated and get down to budgeting... I guess I just seem so overwhelmed right now with it being summer and having the two of them in summer camp. It just seems like I will never be able to save enough... Ahhhh!!!!!!!!!!

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We decided not to have an "Oheka" wedding so we could buy a house. It worked out pretty well for us.

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We had some from our wedding and my parents had saved money my entire life for both my sister and I so we would be able to have a downpayment on a house or whatever we needed when we got older.

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Just remember you don't HAVE to have 20% or even 10% to put down. If you can afford the payments and have good credit, you CAN get a house without a huge amount in savings.

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We used our savings and money from our wedding. There are ways to afford a house without saving a ton of money.

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- wedding money
- bonuses
- savings
- I cashed in all of my savings bonds that I had since I was born.

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-lived at home and saved after college (3 years)
-wedding $
-only put down 10% and closing costs (wanted to make sure we had a bunch in the bank after closing in case of emergency)

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You would be surprised how little or even no down payment is required to buy a house. People do 100% financing in some cases with no money down. If you and DH have good credit scores, this may be an option for you.

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Lived at home during and after college...and just started putting everything away when i started working FT...DH and I opened a joint svings acct that we would only deposit into and we each took money from each paycheck and put it away....put whatever you can away, even if its a few $...every little bit will help

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if you're within the income range, you could apply for a SONYMA loan... it's a first time home owner loan through NYS which requires as little as 3% down, and gives a 30 year interest rate as low as 5.75%....

They even can help with closing costs.... there are restrictions, of course, but it may be a big help if you don't make too much $$$, and you qualify.... you can read up on it on the web...

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sonyma- little down, just on dh's income at the time, pulled from IRA(I think)- no penalty for 1st time homebuyer and gift from relative.

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wedding $$
18 months of saving little by little

We put 3% down (which was almost of our savings) and asked for a 3% sellers concession which will cover about 2/3rds of our closing costs.

There are ways to do it if you are sure you can afford the monthly mortgage/taxes/insurance payment.