I have been thinking about whether Joy and I should rent an apartment or buy a home for the time we will be living in Orlando. I know that we'd both be really excited about owning a home, but we'd need to make sure that it makes good financial sense to do so. I have been wanting some information on how to calculate the differences between buying a house and renting an apartment. I learned all of this over a year ago in my Real Estate class, but I lost the fancy calculator we had then, and I've forgotten most of the formulas.
This is where this cool website comes into the picture. They have a really cool library of information available to everyone, and I didn't even need to sign up for anything. It had a calculator and after some reading I remembered a number of the formulas I had learned. I'm now so happy I wanted to tell someone!
That's a tough one. Owning a home would be an awesome use of your money, but are you sure that you are staying in Orlando? Would it make sense to buy a home to live in it for two years, then sell it when you're done with seminary? If you are sure that God has you in Orlando for a while then I say go for it.
On the other hand, can you afford a home? Homes in Orlando are very expensive. You might be better off living in an apartment for a little while and then waiting until you are out of school with a full-time job.
I'm not discouraging you from buying a home, I honestly don't know much about it. I just know that's it's a huge step and you might want to have a good source of income before you pull out a morgage.
Posted by: Jessica at November 28, 2004 02:58 AMHey,
I'm a student at Appalachian State University in NC. I was doing a search for "real" info on the Southwestern Company and saw that you did it this past summer. I was just wondering, what did you think of it all? Was it something you'd recommend? Thanks.
Mike
Posted by: Mike at November 30, 2004 06:47 PMI have a summer's worth of thoughts about the program. It is incredibly intense as you've probably heard. I would recommend the program to some people and not to others. I don't know all that much about you, so I won't recommend it to you knowing so little about you.
I can tell you that I had a tremendous learning experience. I probably wouldn't do it again if I knew at the outset what was going to happen to me during that summer, but that is because I had a few unique trials.
If you want to dialogue about it more write back. I am going to keep this first response shorter to see how interested you are in hearing more.
In my blog I wrote regularly about my experience with Southwestern. I don't know if you saw it all, but if not you can see it all at once by clicking on this category link. It is in reverse chronological order so scroll to the bottom and scroll up as you read. You'll get a good glimpse of what my summer was like.
southwestern
Very cool that you are thinking about buying a home. I too have thought of that recently. I have been renting for a year and realized that I could have been investing it in a home.
Goodluck to you!