Kathleen Caught, Consultant Investors Group

****** and I have decided not to use my RRSP's to bring down his current debt. We kind of discussed it and decided that it would take a lot longer to re-save up than we want. And we can't buy a house without it!

July 6th isn't that far away. It's not so much the major expense of buying a house that freaking us out, it's all the small upfront costs! So, inspections, lawyers, land transfers, insurance, and the list goes on. Except for the insurance part, I don't even know what order to start in! By the way, what are your fees for putting everything together for us? (probably a good question to ask from the start!), we're (I'm) trying to calculate everything out and make sure we're not missing anything. I like numbers! I like goals! I like plans! As well, Would you happen to know what the going rate for a lawyer is? I was speaking to a friend who just recently bought a home and she said she paid about $1500. That seems a little pricey to me!

So we're kind of looking at a few houses, we were going to actually start hard core looking at houses at the end of April. We gave ourselves a time line for everything! As your book suggests that we do a time line, we made a big and a small. Currently on the big time line, there's buy a house, get married and have kids! haha The more immediate timeline is really just this year and what we want to accomplish as a couple. SO obviously buy a house is on there, but also things like fitness goals that we are doing together, I pulled out a lot of my art supplies that were in storage and want to be in full force by Christmas (That's how I plan to save on Christmas gifts - make them instead!), little things like that. The houses that we're looking at our out along the 417 areas. The few that we're kind of using as a price guide for area and type put us in the $140000 - $170000 range. We have the 5% down for that range already, it's the other costs that have our head in a whirl right now! The major thing that we're worried about is the monthly's on that. What do you think we'd be looking at for that range on a monthly scale?

Wow the closer we get to all this, the more stressed I get! I really just don't want to miss anything and then you know we're stuck with a house that we can't afford and blah blah, you're probably use to this! haha

Anyways, that's where we're at!