As One Chapter Ends, Another Begins.

Taxes are done, and what a relief to finally put everything involving our house, behind us. What an experience to go through, but hey that's the hand we were dealt and we played it. I wish things would have worked out differently with our first house, but unfortunately we were put in a bad spot when the market crashed. We probably could have played it a little differently, but we were feeling a little trapped its been 3 years since we decided to sell the house and it's still worth $60,000 less then we paid for it. We would have been in our 40s by the time our investment broke even.  

A while back I had a friend who was always down and out, complaining about how life dealt him a shitty hand. I used to tell him that "If you are unhappy where you are in life , but do nothing to change it, you have no one to blame but yourself. " Well, I don't like to be a hypocrite so I had to follow my own advice and try to sell the house. 3 years later here we are ready to put the past behind us (as far as the house is concerned).

So, as of this tax season we don't owe any property taxes, we don't owe our lender for a massive upside down mortgage. We are officially debt free (for the most part, ;-D). Our credit is going to need a little TLC, but luckily there is some compassion out there for people that where put in our position and although it won't be easy I would rather build from this point rather then throwing my money into an upside down mortgage for the next 5-10 years, I know a lot of people would have handled the situation differently, and I don't think they would be wrong. We just did what we had to. There will be a time for us to own our own home again, but for now we are content renting, where we can move around freely and if something breaks in the rental we are not responsible. We have a lower monthly payment which gives us breathing room to save up for future endeavors

we certainly have a long way to go in life, many things we want to accomplish,  and having $100,000 in lost equity to make up is something that will no longer be holding us back. Was it the right move? Did we make a mistake? Did we open up doors to new possibilities? You can drive yourself crazy worrying about this stuff, but we did the best we could with what we had and at the end of the day we did what we believed in and that's all that matters.