Tuesday, July 21, 2009

The Road to Verrado - Part 1

The road to Verrado is called "Verrado Way." No, really. When you're driving on I-10, you get off on "Verrado Way" to drive into Verrado.

But, that is not the "road to Verrado" I'm referring to. I'm referring to our journey to buy a house in Verrado.

As I previously mentioned, my dream of Verrado started in 2003. The actual road to Verrado started just about a year ago when we signed a 1.5 year lease at our current house. The plan was to spend a year recovering from such a quick move to Arizona (because, wow! It was a lot of work!), and six months to build a home.

We found a builder we liked and a home we loved. We weren't in a rush to build ... we had just moved and were content where we were. But when I visited the model home (yet once again) in April, I was told the builder was ceasing operations - the economy and crashing real estate market in the Phoenix area were to blame. I was crushed! She told us of two options 1) Buy a resale home at a later day (this particular model was, after all, the most popular home in Verrado) 2) Buy the pricey spec home they still had available.

Option 1 was a possibility - sometime in the future. Option 2 wasn't an option. We weren't ready to buy a home, and weren't ready to pay the price they wanted.

So we gave up the dream. And it hurt. But, we recalled how blessed we are to have actually sold our house in Santa Fe last year rather quickly ... and how blessed we were to be renting a house rather than: 1) Owning a home in the Phoenix area which had lost most of it's value and 2) losing a house due to foreclosure, as so many people in our community had been (as you may have heard, the Phoenix-area real estate market crashed HARD ... one of the hardest crashes in the country).

We considered ourselves blessed and content ... and just moved on with our life. In the meantime, we paid off all my credit cards, which is an AMAZING feeling ... I highly recommend doing it yourself. And I highly recommend you read Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover." Seriously ... go out and buy it or check it out at your local library - and READ IT!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of "The Road to Verrado." :)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was wondering how the book was. Dan listens to Dave almost every night and we are starting to do what he says to do and we see the difference.

Jonathan, Jennifer, Christian, Scarlett and Chloe said...

The book is excellent! It really gives you a different look on the money you have and how you spend it. Jonathan gave the book to his parents, I gave it to Liz, and to my best friend, too.

And in just a few months, all of my credit cards were paid off (but that takes work, determination, and committment ... it's not a fast, easy road. We just happend to have the ability to do it quickly.)