All Forum Posts by: Justin W

Ah okay gotcha. I've heard some real horror stories about HOAs (though the people who told me these stories didn't call them that). Part of me wants to buy my own place and rehab it and not worry about that stuff.

Just FYI - I have NO accumulated debt - no medical, student, or credit card. My girlfriend is the one who's a bit saddled. I live entirely within my means, though I don't save (one of my big flaws). I pay off all my credit cards (most of which is auto-pay bills and such) in full every month.

But that's all good advice. What's an HOA?

There are a lot of condos around here that haven't sold as well as the developers had hoped - to the point where they're actually switching them to being rental properties. Grove Pointe, right next to my current apartment, is a great example of that.

I'm okay with living in a place that's not so luxurious - to be blunt, I've lived in some real hellholes in my day and put up with it. I can deal. I'm not looking to live high on the hog - just have a place to keep my stuff, cook food sometimes, and have a party or two.

As for my girlfriend - her debt is about 10K of credit card debt. She's in a debt management program and dropping over $300 per month on paying it back and she should be done in a few years. Her spending habits suck, but she's slowly getting better. And the way I see it, she pays for her indulgences (shoes, food, clothes) and I pay for mine (DJ gear, electronic gadgets, computers). I hear what you're saying though. I don't think spending is a "crackhead" level problem for her, but it's definitely something to think about.

I did a little reading on Land Contract - it seems like a TERRIBLE idea! Seems like I have little more rights than a renter, and that situation is exactly what I'm trying to get out of!

Interesting. I'll have to hit up the search function. Stuff around here is inflated, but not by as much as a lot of other places - property, space, and land here is still very valuable.

30K! Yikes. Can you direct me to somewhere I can read about Subject To and Land Contract deals?

If I don't have a mortgage, what do my payments look like?

So I'm 25 now, and I have a very serious girlfriend who, in the next year or two, may become my fiancee, and I want to make sure that we're both taken care of. My income is about $35.5K per year. (She makes about 42K per year, but she's in a lot of debt and a lot of her disposable income goes towards paying that off - she should be done paying off her debt in 3-4 years). It's just as well though, since I want to take care of this myself.

So I'm lucky enough to have a generous grandmother who scrimped and saved for 88 years and gave me (and all of my cousins and siblings!) $10K to invest on a house / condo. She also said that she might be able to help a bit more when it comes time to buy. She left this intentionally vague, both for me to be flexible, and also so some of her more greed-headed grandchildren don't go nuts.

Anyway, I'm trying to figure out how to make this money grow so I can buy a condo in my city (Jersey City) - there's a lot of redevelopment happening in my parts of town (Downtown, Journal Square, Newport Pavonia) and a lot of bad neighborhoods as well (Greenville, Westside, The Heights). I'm not really interested in becoming a landlord, nor am I interested in making a fortune - I just want to take care of myself and my future family.

You can get some really fantastic two bedroom condos for between $300K and $500K and when you go above that you can get something really quite posh. I know this is probably astoundingly overpriced to most of you, but that's the NYC metro area, and it's the market I'm in.

Right now I've got that $10K in a CD and it'll mature at the beginning of August for an extra $250 (big friggin whoop). I know I can be doing better with this money. I've got pretty good credit I think (the most I ever did was miss a credit card payment once, and occasionally overdrew on my checking account when I was in college). I'm thinking that a mutual fund might be a good idea? I'm open to any and all suggestions at this point.

Sweet zombie jesus on a pogo stick! A dead rape victim? That's insane. Crap like that is the kind of thing that haunts dreams forever.

Man, I was just in a gun shop the other day, and now I'm REALLY interested in getting a pistol (and fitting my lady with one too... :( )