When life gives you lemons, make lemonade

I don't think I need to explain ourselves and the decisions we've made about renting an apartment but with all this hype I've made about buying a house and it being cheaper than renting maybe I just need to explain how stressful and overwhelming becoming a homeowner is. You see, our mortgage would have been around $200 but when you add flood insurance, house insurance, taxes, electric, garbage, internet, cable and bills that have absolutley nothing to do with a house it all adds up very fast and it costs even more than rent would each month! (In the end after putting everything out on paper and what we would need to buy a house we realized we mentally are not ready for this. We would have no money left and not be able to live a life, we would go through our savings in no time fixing up a house.)

I think it hit me when Ryan's parents asked me how much each one of those things were to cost each month and I had never even heard of some of them. (All I kept seeing was dollar signs.)

Our budget was very small to begin with (we were only putting the mortgage in my name because Ryan has student loans and that would count against us.) It was so small that we had to compromise with the location of a house which would have been Holiday/New Port Richey and if you know the area then you know that's not the most happening part of town. Every time we went over the boarder to Pasco County I just got this pit in my stomach thinking that "I've never once thought I wanted to live here."

With all that said we've made the decision to rent. (Yes it will be expensive to get everything started but we won't be living paycheck to paycheck.) In that process we will save up some more money, start paying off Ryan's student loans all in hope of finding the right house in the right location in a year or 2. We both agreed that we thought we had to buy a house because it was the next thing you do in life after you get married, but that is certainly not the case.

Our new place is in Palm Harbor in the most central location of all, right off of 19 (this is just about where we wanted to be all along!) It's just a 1/1 but the living room is very spacious and it even has a fireplace. We're on the first floor (perfect for Gizmo and Barney) and only a few steps away from the pool and clubhouse that has a gym, workout class room and even a sauna. As soon as we drove onto the property we fell in love with the surroundings, everything is covered by trees and it is very very quite (at least it was on a Monday afternoon.)

living room

kitchen and hallway

living room and dining area

kitchen

living room and front door

hallway

huge laundry room

sink outside of the bathroom

bathroom

master bedroom

hugeeeeee walk in closet

fireplace

front door and porch 

outside of our building

my dad and I already put up shades to block the sun