When we bought our house in San Francisco in 2008, we didn’t really know if we’d be able to afford it. We knew we’d have to do some work on it and we didn’t really know where that money would come from. But I’d just gotten a check for $50,000 from my first book, and since my then-husband and I pretty much lived paycheck to paycheck, I didn’t think I’d ever have tens of thousands of dollars in one place again.
I felt like it was now or never.
So we leapt. It was the tail end of the era when you could put 10% down, which is good because we certainly didn’t have more than that. And that house has quadrupled in value.