All Forum Posts by: Michelle Melchione

Thanks Stephen! I was starting to question if we're not actually in as good of a spot as I thought we were.

I definitely have a clearer understanding on lease options now. I'm just going to process everything for a while and focus on getting out of debt first, then I'll see where everythings at and how were feeling. I spoke with my grandma and she thinks there could be a collapse coming and now is the time to prepare for it. But she also doesnt think its a bad idea to purchase in Pueblo, as its prices don't fluctuate much, in good times and bad.

If we got our current house with a VA loan and have lived in it for a year-and-a-half (since refi) , I believe that satisfies the primary residence requirement . Could we now rent it out and buy a new house using remaining VA entitlement and having the rest on an fha loan? We would be living in the new house. And then what would be the options for pulling out equity of the now rental house?

Or could we pull out the equity first without restarting the occupancy requirement?

At 26 and 29 with two kids, in your own opinions, should we be more focused on clearing our debt in the short term, and worry about investing a couple years from now? And what would you personally do with the equity we've built, if you were me? A lot of people have kind of touched on it, but I'm curious.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to post. That was just a basic scenario, I would definitely do all the correct calculations when analyzing a real deal, including vacancies and expenses. I would make sure it cash flows with my grandmas guidence. 

Everyone has given me lots of advice and things to think about that I wouldnt have thought of on my own, so thanks again everyone.

I need to investigate the life insurance and 401k as I dont really know how they're working or what were paying for them. But that's a whole different issue.

I'm not trying to rush for financing, but if an ana6zing deal comes up in the next couple months or so I'm trying to figure out the smartest thing to do. After we get back from Hogwarts I'll be following up with Grandma about the house she might have so sale, and everything else. She probably has some tricks and tips that haven't  been brought up yet as well.

All these answers just lead me to more questions. So another possibility was waiting to pay off the car loans after financing and using that for the reserves. And then just rebuilding reserves for like 6 months.Which is where the refi on cars could work, 20000 for reserves and 11000 to refi would help the interest and lower the payments. We could get to around 26% DTI with a car refinance, and still have 20000 cash reserves. I keep forgeting to add in his VA disability, so with the car loans our total DTI is 30%. Im not sure what cash value on life insurances means, we have like $150000 policy combined. He has 500 vested stock, which I have no idea what its worth, and I think a portion of the rest (10000 shares) will be vested soon. Weve got about $12000 in 401k.

I believe we should hope for the best, and prepare for the worst.

Welcome, I'm new, but not in the business, yet. Completely irrelevant but I actually lived in Modesto for a little bit in 2nd grade. I actually lived a lot of places, but you are the third person in two days since joining thats from one of the random places I've resided. I know this is not helpful. What are the cons of being a realtor?

Welcome, I'm also new and have a very similar story, minus the bad purchase. We've always been terrible with our money. I'm 26, my husbands 29 making $110000. We're now trying to buckle down and figure out whether to get completely out of car debt (bad, terrible rates) or look to invest first, using equity from our house we bought 2 years ago thats appreciated  $100000.