Tales of a First-Time Home Buyer: Cheers! To Our First Mortgage Payment

So the day is finally here…the due date of the first mortgage payment for the new house. The whole process still doesn’t make sense to me. We settled June 2nd and the first mortgage payment wasn’t due until August 1st. My mortgage guy must have explained it to me a thousand times, but I still don’t really get it.

He said that the first mortgage payment is different than a rent payment for example. Typically when you move into a place where you pay rent instead of a mortgage, management has you pay up front, whether it be a security deposit or the first month’s rent, before you even move in. When you buy a property, it’s the opposite. Your first month’s mortgage payment lags behind one entire month. But don’t get too excited, it comes after you’ve already paid thousands of dollars in closing costs, utility activations, insurance, appraisals, and seemingly endless other fees.

Well, we took full advantage of the system. We closed June 2nd, but it must be one full month, so instead of our first mortgage payment being due July 1, it was due August 1. We had an entire extra month to save before we had to start paying. But alas, the free ride is over now, and I put our first mortgage payment in the mail just last week. Living cost-free was fun while it lasted.

The time for planning and budgeting and worrying about money is over, now all we have to do is execute our plan. We know what we make, we know our expenses, and we know exactly how much is left over. And over the years, each time one of us gets a raise, it will be icing on the cake. I always tell my wife: we will probably never make any less than we do right now for the rest of our lives (barring losing our jobs, which has recently become a reality for many--so we must always prepare for the unexpected). But in theory, if we can afford to live here now, we’ll be fine in the future.

It’s a strange thing to toast to, but a few nights ago my wife and I had a glass of wine and toasted to our first mortgage payment. It signifies the next step in the natural progression of our lives. Things are tight now, but like our new house, we will grow into our new mortgage payment and become more and more comfortable as time passes. For now, we’ll settle for toasting to special occasions with cheap wine. Cheers!