I finally hit 20% down and it felt weirdly anticlimactic

I spent two years saving up for a 20% down payment on a $275k house in Columbus. When I finally had the $55k saved, I realized I was just handing over all that cash and getting nothing back except a slightly lower monthly payment. What convinced me to change my mind was a guy at work who put down 5% on his place and said the extra $200 a month was worth keeping his savings for emergencies. Has anyone else been surprised by how little the big milestones actually change things?

2 comments

2 Comments

eva_gibson12d ago

Wait, you had 55k sitting there and still decided to do 5% down? That's wild. I would've just put the extra cash in my mattress and slept on it.

mia44212d ago

UGH, okay so this is EXACTLY what my friend Jenna did and it was a total mess. She had like 60k saved up, bought a house with 5% down, and then her water heater died like two months later. She had to put the whole thing on a credit card because she didn't want to touch her savings. Now she's paying interest on that AND her mortgage, and she complains about it every time we grab coffee. I mean, I get wanting a big safety net but honestly it just made her life harder in the end.