When the economy hurts you

This post is mostly intended for people who do not know us. It's a little blunt about our financial situation over the last year, but wanted to write it because I read a lot of coupon/money saving blogs and wanted to share our journey with money.


I have always been a frugal gal.  I paid for my own things at a very early age and worked hard throughout high school to save money for college. Sometimes even working 40 hours in one weekend as a high schooler.


It should not have surprised me, that I would end up falling in love with a hard working guy even more frugal than myself.


We were married at age 21 and both graduated with bachelors degrees at age 22 DEBT FREE.


We  scraped together our pennies (all $30,000 of them) and put a 20% down payment on a condo in the Chicago area in 2008 at the age of 22. We knew we would be in the area for a few years and our monthly mortgage payment was a little cheaper than our rent would have been. We were excited at the prospect of selling our condo in 3-5 years as the property increased in value. Everyone told us this was one of the best investments we could make. 


I took a job outside of my field of social work as a nanny to help pay the bills while my husband attended grad school. We continued paying every bill in cash. We kept a very strict budget: $18 a month on dates, $5 a week on clothing and decorating. We couponed like crazy.  We were known as craigslist fanatics and we're proud of it!


People were incredibly generous to us. Our 1986 Dodge Daytona broke down and a lady who hardly knew us handed us a $5,000 check to replace our car. A family from our church offered to pay for all of Joel's school books. Joel's parents graciously handed us a check every semester to help pay for school and paid our cell phone bills every month. We didn't pay for everything on our own, words can't describe the gratitude we have for the people who helped us. But, if we hadn't budgeted the money given to us, it would have been extremely easy to just waste any money we had.


Joel graduated from grad school last summer, debt free. He completed a 3-4 year grad program in just two years while working 30 hours a week and graduated with honors. Yep, I'm  very proud of my man for doing this!  Because we take our budget spreadsheets very seriously, we paid everything in cash and saved an additional $10,000 during grad school. I was working as a nanny. My family paid me well, but let's be honest, we weren't making a 6 figure income or anything! 


A few years ago, we thought we'd be reaping the benefits of our hard work right now. We thought we'd have at least a $40,000 down payment for our next home and be completely debt free at the age of 25.


We needed to move across the country last summer because of my husband's job situation.  Except, the economy was not on our side.  Our condo association recently changed their rules to not allow renters into the building, so anyone who must move is forced to sell. In addition to the housing market, this drove the prices of condo's in our Chicago neighborhood extremely low.


After 4 months of sitting on the market and another 4 months under contract, our condo sold a few weeks ago for  60% less than what we paid 2.5 years ago. We lost our $30,000 down payment, a few thousand we placed into renovations, and a few thousand on mortgage payments we paid while living in our new city. We are still waiting to see what type of hit a short sale will have on our perfect credit score.


We often wish we would not have purchased our condo. At the time, we made the best decision we could make. We did everything the books tell you to do: 20% down payment, pay all bills in cash, etc. No one planned for the housing market to take a turn like it did. Unfortunately, the economy hurt us, a lot. 


Even though we have literally lost 18 months of my full-time pay check (Yep, heartbreaking looking at it that way!) Because of our strict budget, we are still much farther ahead financially than most 25 year olds our age. We consider ourselves blessed.


We know how to enjoy life without a daily trip to Starbucks, new cars, and cable. We save a small portion of each pay check for retirement and have a blast on our free date nights.  We make a hobby of couponing, shopping clearance racks and thrift stores, and we know how to appreciate a good Craigslist find. We never buy anything we cannot afford and always give a portion of our money away.


Because of the economy, we get to practice a few more years of frugal living while we save up for yet another down payment for a house. When I say a few more years of frugal living, I mean a lifetime. I really don't think you can take frugality out of us. It's just not possible.