Season 2, Episode 2: “I’m Not Ready to Buy a House—But How Do I *Get Ready* to Get Ready?”

Piggy  0:01 

Listeners, we would like to thank our Patreon donors. So, thanks to Savannah, Kathleen, Sarah, Reggie, and Leslie. And an extra special thanks to Susan and Susan. Susans, you are sparkling land mermaids of thrift.

Kitty  0:19 

I love Susans. They’re like the good version of Karen, I think.

Piggy  0:23 

No, they are the good version.

Kitty  0:25 

They use that I’m-going-to-speak-to-your-manager energy for justice and righteousness,

Piggy  0:28 

For truth and justice and the American way.

Kitty  0:33 

Yeah, that too. But like the World War Two, American way, like we’re the good guys American way.

Piggy  0:53 

(intro music)

I feel like that’s the great thing about the quarantine is … well, hmm, there’s nothing good about the fact that we’re in a global pandemic right now and people are dying. That is not great.

The interesting thing about us being quarantined for weeks and weeks … And by the way listeners, whenever you’re hearing this, we’re recording in March or April. I don’t even know what time it is any more.

The interesting thing is — it’s going on for weeks, so like first week of quarantine you’re like, “Great, I’m gonna clean the house. I’m gonna read a book. I’m going to do the things that I’ve been putting off for a while.”

For me that was like … dedicated readers will know, I just lost my job recently. So like, for me, that was a lot of woodworking, refinishing the outdoor table, like all of these chores. And then after week one you’re like, “Okay, well, ummm, week two. You know, I was really productive last week so I’ll just, you know, play a lot of video games, maybe read another book, like binge a shitty show.”

So by week three you’re like, “Oh no, I need dedicated projects. Like I need to keep my boredom organized.”

Kitty  2:20 

The Netflix queue is getting shorter, dangerously short.

Piggy  2:25 

Shit. Like, thank God for the dog because I’m walking and hiking. And that’s about it right now. I feel so bad for people who don’t have dogs right now because they don’t have a reason to leave the house.

Kitty  2:37 

Something that I did today, my baby brother lives in an apartment with his brother from another mother, as well as his girlfriend. The three of them live together, and they have this precious family unit. So it’s like, alright, I’m gonna bring you a couple of things that I know that you guys weren’t able to find, and I’ll just drop them off on the front step. And I was about to roll out of my house when I texted my little brother, and I was like, “Um, do you want me to bring my dogs? Would you like to have the dogs for a night?”

And he was like, “YES, yes, I would.” And God bless them, I went and maintained a six foot distance. We didn’t hug. We didn’t linger near each other at all, but I just kind of like threw them into their apartment. And then I closed the door, and from out in the hallway, as soon as the door shut, I hear them all go, “(what I’d best term an excited Scooby Doo sound).”

And they’re just like so excited to have two dogs overnight.

Piggy  3:38 

You’re the fucking Mother Theresa.

Kitty  3:41 

About a half an hour after I left, I get a text from my little brother’s roommate’s parents, And they were like, “Thank you so much. Our family group chat is filled with pictures of them looking so happy with the dog.”

Dogs are always a good idea, but especially right now. For anyone who doesn’t have dogs, I’m so sorry. I wish you had dogs. I wish I had dogs to give you.

Piggy  4:06 

I will Skype meeting my dog with you. If you just want to like look at him, and like imagine petting him…

Kitty  4:13 

New Patreon level, we will send you our dogs, you know. Put them in an envelope, and just mail them to you.

Anyway, I’m Kitty.

Piggy  4:26 

And I’m Piggy.

Kitty  4:27 

And we are the bitches in Bitches Get Riches.

Piggy  4:29 

We’re a couple of high school kids who gained the power to transform into any animal we touch from a dying alien prince.

Kitty  4:34 

And we are here to save the Earth from evil brain controlling slugs.

Piggy  4:38 

Our time on this planet is limited.

Kitty  4:40 

So let’s get started.

Piggy  4:42 

Today’s letter comes from us from our Tumblr Ask Box, and you can follow us on Tumblr. And that’s Tumblr with no “e”.

Kitty  4:49 

Oh no, do we have to say that?

No, you’re right, we probably do.

Piggy  4:54 

But I feel like with the kids, the kids are the ones that use the Tumblr. Right?

Kitty  4:59 

The kids don’t know that there should be an “e” in Tumblr, c’mon.

Piggy  5:04 

Anyway, regardless. This comes from an anonymous reader, and they say, “Hi bitches. I’m only 20 years old, so I know this is unrealistic, but my greatest wish in life is to own a teeny, tiny cottage somewhere with a garden. I don’t even care where in the world I have to live to make it happen. Like I said, I’m realistic. I know that I probably won’t get my little cottage for a long time. All the same, I know absolutely nothing about how to work towards that goal. So do you have any advice for a young, aspiring homeowner? How does buying a house even work? Thank you.”

This is so depressing.

Kitty  5:39 

(dramatic) I’m so upset that this disgusting, hyper privileged reader dares to believe that they may one day own a teeny, tiny cottage anywhere.

Piggy  5:54 

(dramatic) The fucking nerve.

Kitty  5:55 

(dramatic) Anywhere in the world. How dare you? Say 50 Hail Marys, 10 Our Fathers, and then go fuck yourself.

Piggy  6:04 

No, I’m seriously depressed by this. What have we gotten to that a 20 year old these days is like, “It’s an unrealistic dream for me to own a small house with a garden.” That just makes me so depressed, you know. Because let’s be clear, this should be a completely realistic goal, and they say multiple times that it’s unrealistic.

Kitty  6:30 

This is like, “Dear bitches, I’m in a class in college, which I find to be quite easy. And my goal is to get an average grade, which is a C. There’s no way I could possibly…” Like, “Yes! This is extremely accessible. This is the most accessible dream.”

Piggy  6:53 

But they feel like it’s not!

They just feel like it’s not, which to me says so much more about, you know … they’re 20, right? So they’re young. And we’re not 20 anymore.

Kitty  7:04 

(stilted) I am. Oh, you know how I’m on Tik Tok. And how I am so frustrated because I can’t buy alcohol, you know.

Piggy  7:16 

Whatever, I still have fun.

Kitty  7:18 

And also I know about the big musicians of the day, such as…

Piggy  7:23 

Yeah, tell me one of those musicians.

Kitty  7:26 

Ummm, Perry Como.

Piggy  7:28 

Oh, okay, okay.

I actually have been hanging out with my friends’ 10 year olds.

Kitty  7:36 

Frozen. You can just say Frozen, and 10 year olds will give you a standing ovation.

Piggy  7:42 

Oh, yes, Frozen. No, Frozen 2 now, bitch. No, but I know a musician that the kids are into these days. Would you like to know what I know?

Kitty  7:51 

You mean it’s not Perry Como?

Piggy  7:53 

No, it’s Billy Eilish.

Kitty  7:58 

Is that Eilish (eye-lish)? I thought it was ellish. Oh, wait. What was that sound? Was that the sound of a thousand people immediately clicking unsubscribe?

Piggy  8:09 

Sure was.

Kitty  8:13 

I did it! I did it! Don’t worry. All the youngs are gone.

Piggy  8:16 

Now, that they’re gone, prunes and the good ol’ days.

Kitty  8:16 

Let’s brag about our regular VMs, but then also get some real talk about how our knees keep clicking.

Piggy  8:28 

Your knees. For me, it’s the hip. Anyway, the point being — because we do have a point, somewhere amidst this shit fucker we have a point — this 20 year old is young, and I just shudder to think of the media and the news that they are absorbing that they think that this completely reasonable dream is unreasonable.

Like it is scary. You do hear about stocks plummeting and whatever, and homeownership is going down. It’s all very scary and Doomsday-esque, and I don’t really blame them for thinking that their, again, very reasonable goal is an unrealistic dream.

Kitty  9:06 

Well, I think a lot of this gets back to something that I think about. When I was 17, 18, the amount of money I could really understand — like what does this buy? — I understood what $1 bought, and I understood what 10 or $100 bought. I even kind of sort of understood what $1,000 would buy.

But when you talked about a year of college being $40,000, that was kind of beyond me. Your ability to process how much money that is kind of plateaus off because you just have no experience with making any purchase more than like maybe — oh, I don’t know, like maybe the cost of a new computer might be like the top top top of the thing that like a teenager might think about buying.

And so, I think, the cost of a home could be in that plateau for this reader, where it just seems like $100,000 or $150,000 is inconceivable. That’s so much money, I will never earn that much.

Piggy  10:13 

The experience is one thing before you understand the value of X amount of money. But the other thing is like, if they’re 20, and they lack the financial education to understand what a mortgage is, they might see like — oh my God, my little cottage in the woods is gonna cost me $100,000, it’ll take me forever to save up that. I’ll never save that up.

When really it’s like, no, you can. You can save up, you know, $10,000, and buy that cottage in the woods, and then you have a mortgage or whatever. And I mean I guess that’s why they’re asking how does buying a house even work.

Kitty  10:45 

Yeah. And this is something that I think we haven’t written much about up to this point because you do need a certain level of financial stability to think about purchasing a home.

Piggy  10:53 

Oh yeah, you got to level up towards it. Don’t beat that boss on the first level.

Kitty  10:57 

It’s like level 30 or 40. It’s not level two, and it’s not level 99. Okay, like calm down. I think we will be writing more about it in the future. So, stay tuned on that, but as sort of a spoiler alert to our philosophy: There’s no situation you could be in where we would say a teeny, tiny cottage, literally anywhere that has a small garden attached to it is unrealistic, give up your dream. That is an accessible dream, no matter where you are.

Piggy  11:32 

Let’s focus on the practical side of this, shall we?

Kitty  11:35 

Yeah, so if your goal is to be able to own a modest home, what I would say is there’s a couple of things you should do before that. I think getting to the point where, other than a potential mortgage, you would be debt free, is not a necessity, but it will be very valuable. And it will also likely improve your credit score over time so that you can get a better interest rate from your mortgage lender. Having a healthy emergency fund. Again, not an absolute necessity, but I think a very, very good idea. The thing about when you own a home versus renting a home, if the boiler explodes, if the water heater starts leaking all over the basement floor, like those are now things that you have to deal with. Having an emergency fund is a really good idea.

And then also saving up enough for a down payment. So as we’re talking, I think one of the things that will be the most in flux in the coming year is how the current crisis will affect the housing market. So we want to be kind of careful with stipulating. We may see some changes to the market in the next year that are unusual.

But in general, you can buy a house once you’ve saved up maybe between 5% to 10% of that home’s value. It’s a great idea to save 20% or more. So I think it really depends on your area and the particular market that you’re buying in, but I would say that the best steps to take would be to work to become debt free, other than a potential mortgage, and to improve your credit score, which those two things really go hand in hand.

Work to build a nice healthy emergency fund. And then once your emergency fund is looking really good, now start to think of all or part of it as becoming your home down payment.

Piggy  13:35 

Absolutely. And I want to add to that, one thing you should always be doing throughout your career, but especially during that earlier stage, is increasing your income. You know, you can only save so much money. This is the frightening truth about the financial independence retire early movement, but you can only save so much money. You have unlimited earning potential.

Kitty  14:00 

*snaps*

Piggy  14:01 

So that’s just how the fuckin’ math works. So if you want to buy a house and become financially stable, have that emergency fund, become debt free, increasing your income is a great way to do that. So, you know, make sure you’re taking opportunities to educate yourself and improve your skills so that you’re qualified for higher paying jobs and then put yourself out there to get those higher paying jobs.

Once you have a mortgage, and that’s operating under the assumption that somebody who’s 20 years old is not going to pay cash for a house. So everyone’s having a mortgage. Once you have that mortgage, you’re gonna want a nice solid income that’s more than you need to pay the mortgage every month so that if anything happens —  you lose your job, or you get sick or something untoward happens — you can still afford your mortgage, despite losing some income. So definitely keep that income up.

Kitty  14:57 

Yeah, when I was applying for mortgages. I was told, “Oh, bitch, you can afford like a half a million dollar house!” And I was like, “That — no? No, I definitely cannot.”

(voicing the lenders) “No, we think you have that much money. You could give us that much money every week.” Don’t rely too heavily on financial calculators and sites like Zillow that have built in things where you tell them your income and they say, “Oh, we think you could afford a million dollar house baby, baby, baby.”

Piggy  15:29 

And definitely don’t trust your lender / real estate agent because they get paid based on how much money you spend. So, they are definitely incentivized to get you to buy as much fucking house as you can. Like we had the same experience where our lender was like approved us for probably about $100,000 more than we wanted to spend, and so we put a cap on ourselves. And then we ended up spending even less than that.

So, you know, you understand how much you can afford, or you will by the time that you’re ready to buy a house. Don’t let anybody sort of sway outside of your budget.

Kitty  16:04 

Exactly. I have a good friend who is looking for sort of this exact description of a home, like a tiny cottage type deal. And, this home absolutely exists for you to go out and find. It may take you a couple of years to get your debts in the right place, to get your credit in the right place, to get your income in the right place.

So one thing that you can do that’s productive, while you’re sort of waiting for those things to improve over time, that is more fun is: You can just get to know the market. You know, this letter writer says that they’re open to living anywhere. So, start thinking about: what kind of climate do I want to live in, what kind of amenities do I want to have nearby, what’s my budget, what do I need to be within driving or flying distance to? Which areas are going to be the most affected by climate change?

Think about all of those things. Do all of that research, and then say like, “Alright I’ve picked this small town in this state that I haven’t been to. I think it could be perfect.” Go plan a road trip to go there and actually check it out in person.

Piggy  17:21 

You really did this.

Kitty  17:23 

I did. Yeah, I did do this. I was pretty sure right out of college that I wanted to move to Asheville, North Carolina. And I went there. And I was like, this place rocks, it’s amazing. It’s where I want to retire, but it’s not where I want to spend my 20s.

And that was a very valuable thing for me to understand. So also, just become a great armchair realtor. Be on Zillow, all the time. Be looking at what’s in the market. When you’ve only looked at three or four houses, it’s really hard to gauge the value. If it’s a good value or not a great deal.

If it’s overpriced, like how do you know? If you’ve seen 100 or 1,000 homes, you’re going to have a much better idea, especially if you’re in one area. Now, I would say dedicate half of your energy, maybe a little bit more than half of your energy, to getting your income up, getting your credit up, really getting your savings up, getting prepared.

And then do the other half of the fun shit. Do the research. Make the Pinterest boards. Go on the road trips. Have fun with thinking about what you want, but think deeply and in the long term.

Piggy  18:35 

Exactly, exactly. And I kind of hesitate to go more than that, with this question. Because I feel like the nitty gritty of finding a lender, finding a realtor, and actually signing the paperwork — they’re not there yet. You can learn so much just by going on Zillow. It’s real estate everywhere, and you can just scroll through houses and see what things cost and just get a sense for, you know, how much you really need to save if you want to do 5%, 10% or 20% down payment.

You can look at these houses; you can do that research. And honestly, I feel like that stage, for me personally when we were shopping for our house, or even before that point, it really put my mind at ease to look at what was available and what it cost. Because that made it realistic. I was no longer sort of dreaming this pie in the sky of like, “Well, I need a house with a yard for my dog”.

I was just so intimidated by how much that could possibly cost. And, you know, what would that set me back compared to my rent every month? But looking at the houses on Zillow and just scrolling through real estate listings, just kind of quelled those fears.

Kitty  19:56 

Yes.

I’ll give a final recommendation, which I’ve given to a lot of my friends who are looking for their first home. The television show, used to be on HGTV, probably on YouTube or something or some Russian site: Holmes on Homes.

It is a gorgeous Canadian television show hosted by a guy named Mike Holmes, and he is this beautiful, gruff, terse man, usually in like dad jeans.

And he is a home inspector, and his whole thing is taking you through how to spot expensive, hidden problems in a home versus problems that appear terrible and obvious, but are actually like super easy to fix and purely cosmetic. Because you may, while you’re on Zillow, you may occasionally find stuff that’s like, “Oh my God, why is this house like $40,000 less than everything else in the area?”

Piggy  21:03 

It’s because there’s water in the basement!

Kitty  21:05 

100% of the time it’s because there’s water in the basement!

Or “Oh, this is in a flood plain, and it requires expensive flood insurance. And like once a year, you’re gonna get a bunch of water in your basement in the springtime. Whatever. You will start to develop a little bit more of a sense of like that Dad-ly skill of what is a major issue.

Yeah, work on those Dad-ly skills.

Piggy  21:28 

Them Dad instincts.

Kitty  21:30 

Yeah, get your Daddy energy up up up, way up, get it up there.

Piggy  21:35 

Absolutely.

Kitty  21:36 

Are you good with that?

Piggy  21:38 

Oh yeah, I’m good with that.

Kitty  21:39 

Okay, listeners, if there’s a question that you’d like for us to answer go to bitchesgetriches.com and click “Ask the Bitches”.

Piggy  21:46 

There’s only one way to guarantee that we’ll answer your question, and that’s to become a Patreon donor.

Kitty  21:50 

If you like what we do and you want us to keep going, please become a Patreon donor and support us with whatever donation amount you’re comfortable with.

Piggy  21:58 

And we also have a merch store where you can buy t-shirts and printable worksheets and more.

Kitty  22:02 

Finally, there are some free things you can do to say thanks. Please rate and review us on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, whatever you use. It bumps us up on the charts and makes us easier to find.

Follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and Pinterest. And subscribe to our articles so you never miss a new one. You can do all of that at bitchesgetriches.com.

Piggy  22:21 

Uh, hey, is there anything else they should know?

Kitty  22:24 

Yeah, if there was any toy from my childhood that I could just like have back again. There was a Polly Pocket set that looked like a big purple star. It was one of the really big ones, and inside there was a castle. It had a special little stable for my for my horse drawn carriage.

I think there was a prince involved, but like you better believe I threw that away. It was amazing they had like the little compartments that were hidden underneath the grand dining room and the horse stable and, obviously, the little hot air balloon that can crank up and down because you need that. Obviously.

And looking at old photos of them, I was just really moved by the beauty of the UX design of having this travel toy for children, that also included storage for all the component parts. A very self-contained thing, and I just want everyone really go out and appreciate the aesthetic, the majesty, the beauty of the Polly Pocket.

And its masculine counterpart, Mighty Max. Did you know about these?

Piggy  23:45 

No.

Kitty  23:46 

It’s pretty weird. It’s Polly Pockets for boys. The interiors are kind of janky, but the exteriors had like molten dragon eggs, and like leering minotaur pieces.

If you just need a moment of zen, go to Google image search and type in Polly Pocket and/or Mighty Max, and just enjoy the perfection of those toys.

Piggy  24:09 

Good to know.

Piggy & Kitty  24:11 

Bitches out!