If you were to choose, would you rather have a house but has little money, or would you prefer to have plenty of money but has no house?
- Living from one place to another
When I was 6 years old, my parents were able to build a small house for our family, thanks to my father's income from working abroad. But, when he returned here in the Philippines to pursue his teaching career, we moved out of our tiny house in the province to a rental house in the city. Though my father was a public-school teacher, I know that he could not afford to build a house for us because we could not even afford to pay our monthly rent, which made us transfer from one house to another until I was in college.
Based on this experience, I have then dreamt of having my own house someday. However, when I got married, my husband and I started living together by renting a house. We rented out a house for almost 3 years since we can't afford to buy or build a house of our own yet! Luckily, after 2 years, we were able to purchase a small lot and started building our dream house.
- Building the foundation
- From the ground to the top
- With a house, but has no money
- If I could go back...
- We should have compared and listed the prices of materials, and considered which fits our budget.
- We should have stuck on building a smaller house first (since we initially wanted to stop renting), and then plan for expansion once we have enough savings.
- We should have avoided buying new furniture and used our old ones instead.
- We should have stopped taking out loans and halted the construction when our deductions took more than half of our gross income.
- We should have had a budget to know how much more can we spend.