All Forum Posts by: Kayla Wagenmann

@Scott Jensen I plan to talk to somebody about my retirement accounts.

Side note: does anybody in Minneapolis have any recommendations?

I have a Betterment Traditional IRA. I have only lost money since rolling over my pension from money from UCLA last summer. I'm guessing I just rolled over at exactly the wrong time.

My 403b at my current employer is performing quite well. But I really don't know the ins and outs of retirement accounts.

@Lee Fahy

Our neighbors have said we can stay another year, thankfully. This will give us plenty of time to save to buy.

Agreed, finding a rental with a pit bull mix and two cats is quite difficult, especially with any negative history. The situation is quite uncomplicated. At the end of the day, dogs are dogs. Many dogs kill rabbits, squirrels and small animals outdoors all the time. Unfortunately, our dog is held to higher standards because of his breed. He has never been aggressive towards people. If he had, this would be an entirely different situation.

He is a dog with a high prey drive outside. Inside, he is quite different. He lives peacefully with both of our cats.

We had anticipated a much different situation when we adopted him. Unfortunately, our circumstances changed shortly after getting him. If I could go back in time, I definitely wouldn't have adopted him. But we did, and it's our responsibility as pet owners to not just throw him away because it is inconvenient to us.

He was in our fenced in backyard when this happened, and it's been a very unfortunate situation for everyone involved.

I am very grateful for our neighbors understanding and flexibility with the situation.

@Jordan Moorhead

I will have to check with my plans. Most of my money is in a traditional IRA as a rollover from my job in California. I need to look into moving this over to my 403b at my new job. I also need to check with my current plan to make sure I can take a loan

@Theresa Harris

We heavily considered rehoming our dog but do not have the heart to do it. There is nobody that can take him for the time that we need. He is an 8 year old rescue that we got 2 years ago. He has a lot of special needs and we don't feel right rehoming him because we feel he has already experienced enough trauma.

My partner's income is very new. I have been, for the most part, supporting us both for about 3 years. I anticipate that his new stable employment will allow me to accelerate my savings rate. Right now, I'm able to save about $600 per month while covering all living expenses and my debt payments. We spend about $300-400 every two weeks on variable expenses (food, gas, household items, etc.) So I don't feel like we are living an extravagant lifestyle.

Debt is definitely a large burden for me though. I'm kind of kicking myself now because I was funneling an extra $600-800 per month towards debt instead of saving. And now we need that cash to secure a place to live.

The only thing that keeps me hopeful is the fact that I have not accrued any additional debt in the past 2 years after being extremely financially irresponsible in my early 20s.

My biggest fear is that a mortgage will be another financial mistake. But I have also been looking into house hacking for the past 1.5 years. I just thought I had more time to save and get our financial house in order before making the jump. But now I have to consider the pros and cons of moving into another, more expensive rental or buying.

Also, it seems as though our neighbors just generally would prefer that we move after the trauma of the incident. They have been gracious enough to tell us there is no "rush". But on the other hand, they have told us that they "would appreciate us finding another place to live". That's Minnesota nice for saying "we don't want you to live here anymore and our mom is your landlord so good luck."

@Randy Bloch

Unfortunately I don't have any family that can lend me money. I do feel that my jobs are pretty secure. In addition, nursing is generally in high demand, so if I were to lose both jobs, I could easily find another. My resume for my career is pretty top notch so my worries for being unemployed is pretty low, even in the event of a recession.

I didn't realize that I wouldn't be able to count the rental income to qualify. But this shouldn't matter since I want the payment to be something I am comfortable paying if there should be a vacancy. Especially considering we don't have much for cash reserves.

The nice thing about working in a hospital as an RN us that it's really easy to pick up extra shifts since we are chronically understaffed. I can bring in an extra $2k in 3 days if I need to. I just don't want to kill myself working that much if I don't need to. But if a furnace blew, at least I could make extra money to avoid debt.

The nice thing about being a nurse is that there is always opportunity to pick up.

@Bill Brandt

I would definitely prefer to have a large cash cushion before making our first purchase. Unfortunately the current situation is that we have to pay more in rent plus moving costs or try to figure out how to buy.

Duplexes in our area are listed between 200k and 400k. I'd be more comfortable staying near the lower end. Rent would likely increase to $1,500 or more given our pet situation.

I had no problem renting at $1,200 for another two years. But the idea of spending more than that hurts a lot.

@Kayla Wagenmann I should also mention that I only been a nurse for 3 years, two of which were spent in LA with a crazy cost of living. My boyfriend was unable to find stable employment in LA, so my income went to supporting us. We were able to cash flow our cross country move and save enough to avoid any additional debt while we job searched when we returned to Minnesota.

Prior to being a nurse, I worked in community mental health making about 30k per year, as did he before we moved to LA. So all my retirement savings have been from the past 3 years. Which is still not where I want it to be. My goal is to be making out my retirement but I obviously need to prioritize debt at this point. I'm still contributing to get my match though! ;)

@Randy Bloch we would prefer to stay in Minneapolis since we are most familiar with the market and neighborhoods. We would consider the northern metro area as well. My boyfriend is definitely interested in doing rehab on a property, but considering that we don't have much excess cash, I am hesitant to go for something that needs significant rehab even though I'd love to add value.

If we could find something, we definitely would stay in the unit that needs the most work so we could make improvements while renting out the nicer side.

@Bill Brandt I definitely see the concern. Unfortunately, I spent my early 20s making poor financial decisions that I'm still paying for. We are both carry student loan debt and old consumer debt (old credit card debt that has been refinanced into personal loans). I have been focusing on debt pay down and saving an emergency fund. We have not accumulated any additional debt for 2 years, but still have a long way to go. I have figured that if I pay an extra $1k towards debt for 1.5 years, all of my consumer debt would be gone. I could afford to do this but wonder if my money is best spent on investing. My personal loan is a 6% interest rate (9k) and my car loan is 4% (5k). The rest is wrapped up in student loans, which I make income based payments on. I am on track for student loan forgiveness (PSLF) in 7 years since I work in a nonprofit.

Also, our income only recently increase to 100k since my partner finally found a full time job (30k) after being underemployed or unemployed for the past few years.

With all that said, I wanted to take the safe approach and save money before buying. Unfortunately, our current situation forces us to move way sooner than we anticipated. We have a pitbull mix and two cats. So I know that whoever decides to rent to us will probably be charging us way more than $1200 which will really slow down our long term goals. I just don't want to be impulsive either. So any thoughts are appreciated!

My partner and I have been considering purchasing a duplex as an investment for our first home. We moved back to Minneapolis last year after living in Los Angeles for 2 years. We have been renting for the past year at $1200/month.

Sadly, I do not qualify for an FHA loan at this time because I took a second job in April that effectively split my income in half. I was informed that I need to work both jobs for two consecutive years for the lender to count both jobs as income. My total income did not change when I took the new job. I reduced my hours at my first job to take the second. I make $72k between the two jobs with the potential to make more with overtime as I'm a nurse.

A couple weeks ago, our dog tragically killed our upstairs neighbor's cat when we let him outside in our fenced yard. Our neighbor is the son of our landlord, who we have had a relationship with for the past 9 years. Our neighbors have informed us that they plan to get another cat and would be uncomfortable with us living there with our dog. They said it is "no rush" but would "appreciate" if we found somewhere else to live.

We had planned on taking the next 1.5-2 years to save money for a duplex. The idea of paying for moving expenses just to move into another rental makes me feel sick. We would likely end up spending more on rent since we have a dog and two cats and this makes finding a rental difficult.

How difficult is it to find owner financing deals? We don't have a lot of money saved up (only 2,500). I do have a personal line of credit with a 10k limit at 10% interest that I could use if needed. I also have about 20k in retirement funds that I would prefer not to tap into but would consider for the right deal. My partner and I make about 100k in combined income.

Any advice would be appreciated. Do you think it is worth our time to explore seller financing or should we just bite the bullet, find another rental, and continue to save until we can qualify for an FHA loan in 2 years?