And so it begins...

As first-time homebuyers in the greater Boston area, home choices are very limited. My wife and I knew that we needed to be near public transportation because we couldn’t afford a house and two cars. I knew we needed a yard because the idea of putting on shoes and walking the dog every time nature called on a cold, New England winter night was chilling (pun intended). And pee pads aren’t really an option for an 84-pound labradoodle. To boot, we weren't exactly shopping in the hub of affordable housing either. So, needless to say, our home buying adventure turned out to be exactly that.

We had the great displeasure of visiting some of the most visually offensive residential structures in suburban Boston. One house had no floor boards. A realtor shooed us away from one tiny home (800sqft) that had a Taj Mahal price tag. And then there was the experience of what will forever be burned in our memories as the “cat pee house.” I’ll let your imaginative process run wild with that one.

But there was one tiny bungalow that caught our eye. I’m not sure exactly what it was, but as soon as we both laid eyes on the sea-foam green little house, we both thought: “This is it.” It wasn’t love at first sight, but we could afford it, it had floors, and there was no discernable trace of feline urine to be found.

So, after we pledged to pay down our $304,000 mortgage for the rest of our lives, the journey began.