Finance Girlies: Money Conversations for Gen Z and Millennial Women

Behind the scenes of Millennial home buying with Hillary Gale / 29

Subscriber Episode • • Emily Batdorf & Cassidy Horton • Season 1 • Episode 29

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Hillary Gale joins us for the most honest conversation about millennial homeownership we've ever had. As a copywriter, agency owner, and two-time homeowner, Hillary shares every detail of her home buying journey — from feeling like homeownership was "impossible" to closing on her second house this year.

But this isn't just about the numbers (though she shares all of those too). Hillary gets real about the guilt, shame, and anxiety that came with both purchases, plus the "oh crap" moments that nobody warns you about.

Hillary Gale is a finance copywriter and owner of Moneta Copy, where she works with financial advisors and coaches on their websites, emails, and content. She also hosts The Finance Marketing Podcast.


✨Episode Highlights ✨

  • [02:30] Hillary's background and why homeownership felt "impossible"
  • [05:00] The financial reality when she bought her first home
  • [11:00] How she actually started the home buying process
  • [16:00] Why Hillary and her husband decided to buy their second home during "bad" market conditions
  • [25:00] The numbers: What they paid, what they sold for, and current mortgage payment
  • [30:00] How they make their mortgage payment work
  • [40:00] The immediate "oh crap" moments in their new house
  • [48:00] How being self-employed affected getting approved
  • [51:00] What Hillary loves about homeownership vs. renting
  • [58:00] Hillary's advice for people who stuck


✨Resources✨

Connect with Hillary:

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💻Visit The Finance Girlies website: 
https://www.thefinancegirlies.com/

💖Email us your money questions: 
hello@thefinancegirlies.com

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https://www.instagram.com/thefinancegirlies/


SPEAKER_01

Are you drowning in money questions but too embarrassed to ask? Tired of scrolling endlessly through conflicting financial advice that leaves you more confused than when you started? Welcome to the Finance Girlies Podcast, your cozy corner for all things finance. I'm your host, Emily.

SPEAKER_02

And I'm your host, Cassidy. We're both finance writers for brands like Forbes Advisor, USA Today Blueprint, and Yahoo Finance. Throughout our careers and personal lives, we have come to one realization. When we keep our money worries to ourselves, we end up feeling alone. That's why each episode we tackle those burning questions you've been afraid to ask with no judgment, no jargon, just real talk about real money. Ready to finally get answers? Let's dive in. Okay, girlies, we are so excited about today's episode. We're bringing on one of our longtime friends and fellow finance writers, and if I'm being very truthful, maybe like an honorary finance girly, and that is Hillary Gale to talk about her home buying journey.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you, girlies, so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01

We're so glad you're here. And for the listeners, we actually met Hillary a few years ago in a copywriting group called Write Your Way to Freedom. And back then we were all kind of newish to freelancing and just starting to carve out our little corners in the finance writing world.

SPEAKER_02

And we instantly connected because we were some of the only personal finance writers in the group. And it's been so cool to watch each other grow over the years. And now Hillary is a two-time homeowner, which is wild to think about.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and she recently reached out and said she'd be willing to come on the podcast and share about her path to homeownership with all of the numbers and math and emotions that go with it. And so obviously we said yes.

SPEAKER_02

Emily and I are not homeowners for context. We still rent, and even though Hillary is a homeowner, I feel like between the three of us, we probably have maybe some unconventional views on homeownership, um, at least maybe a little bit non-traditional. And so we hope that this conversation is like very honest, very encouraging, and filled with a lot of helpful nuggets. If you have also been feeling like home ownership is out of reach for you, or you're like grappling with is this something that I really want to do or should do or is it not? And so we hope that you just leave this conversation feeling like you're not alone and that you have like maybe some little mindset things to think about. Hillary, welcome to the finance girlies. Before we dive in, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, like what you do for work, where you live, what stage of the home buying journey you're in now?

SPEAKER_00

Yes, absolutely. So, like you guys, I'm also a finance writer. I work mostly with financial advisors and financial coaches. So really small business owners or very small teams, kind of like solo entrepreneur kind of vibes. Um, I work with them on things like their websites and their emails, if they're doing blogs and all of that good stuff. So uh that's kind of the niche within the niche that I have chosen in finance writing. I live in Firestone, Colorado with my little family. We moved here, we moved to this area in 2019. So we've been here for six years almost, which feels hard to believe. And yeah, I'm excited to get into the nitty-gritty of homeownership. I think it's important to say that before I bought a home, probably up until a month or two before I bought a home, I also very much felt like homeownership was always going to be out of reach for me. Like it just felt like something that was a thing in the past and that like millennials couldn't really afford to buy homes. And I very much fell in that camp. And so I really love to talk about the homeownership process because I feel like it's one of those things that when I did realize it was possible, it was like, oh, okay, I can figure this out just like anything else because this is a goal that I have. So and yeah, just to answer your last question, where I'm at in the home buying journey, we just bought our second home. So we're recording this in June. Um, and we just bought our second home, like our next home. We don't own two homes now. We sold our first home and bought our second home in February of this year. So we've been in this new home for three months or so, maybe just a little bit over three months. Nice. Congrats. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, so let's rewind a little bit and first talk about when buying your first home became a real goal for you. Where were you financially and career-wise at the time? And then for your second home, what made you want to buy again?

SPEAKER_00

So, going all the way back, so we bought our first home in 2019, and we had been living in Colorado for a year. We ended up moving to a uh part of Colorado that we didn't really love. And to kind of give you some numbers, we lived in east of Denver. Our rent for a little duplex that we were renting, it was about $18.50 a month, which was about like $700 more than what we had been used to paying before we moved to Colorado. So that felt like a pretty big jump for us. And when we moved here, I had taught full-time for a year at my last university, and then I had a really hard time getting a job when we moved to Colorado. So I looked for a job for like three months here, and then I worked for a bank for like six months, making like $13 an hour. Like my paychecks were like $700 every two weeks. And of course, Shane and I were splitting rent, but like to have $1,400 coming in a month and your rent being like $1,800 or $1850, like things were really, really tight, really, really tight. So I worked there for six months, and this is kind of the crazy part. Six months later is when we bought our home. So, like just to kind of give some context, I was not at a point where I like had tons and tons of money saved up or anything like that. So then after I stopped working at the bank, I started working for an insurance agency while I was still looking for a teaching job because I was making more money. I think I was making $40,000 a year as opposed to like $27,000 a year. So things did start to feel a little bit looser. It wasn't like panicking every single month, but you know, it still wasn't like a ton of money. And for context, my husband, I think he was making like $80,000 a year, between $60,000 and $80,000, depending on how much overtime he was able to get. So we were like that $100,000 to $120,000 income range when we decided to buy a home. So the reason that we decided to buy is because I ended up getting a job in a city that was like an hour and a half away from where my husband's job was. And so we needed to find a place in the middle, which was the Longmont Firestone area that we're in now. And we started looking at rentals in the area, and they were just horrible. They were so like gross and they were more expensive, and we just didn't see anything that we liked. So we were like, okay, we need to move to this area. There doesn't seem to be a lot in terms of like renting, because we also had three dogs. We couldn't just like move into a one-bedroom apartment. Yeah. And so we were like, let's look at home ownership. And I feel like I've been talking, but I have a couple other background things that I want to share. Keep going. When I was when I was working at the bank, they put on this little workshop for employees about becoming first-time homeowners. And so Shane and I had gone to that workshop probably I want to say in the spring of 2019. So a few months before we had actually bought the home. And it was just so eye-opening for us. There was so much that we learned that we didn't know because we just had never actually looked into like what are the options? What does it mean to get a 30-year mortgage versus a 15-year mortgage? We had heard the Dave Ramsey advice, like you should only get a 15-year mortgage and blah, blah, blah. And of course, that payment felt totally out of reach for us. So we we really learned a lot of different options and like I think kind of took the shame out of the home buying process a little bit. It was like, oh no, you can put down 5% and you pay private mortgage insurance on top of that because you're not putting 20% down, but that's like $90 a month. And like everyone does it, like there's no shame around that. If that allows you to get into a home that you can afford, why would you not do that? And the other reason that we were kind of motivated to go into home the home buying process is because the landlord that we were renting from at the time, he had just decided to put that home on the market, and it just felt very violating almost to suddenly have to have all these people come in and look at the space that we were living in, and like it would be like an hour's notice, and we would have to be out of the house so somebody could come in and like look at the home, and we had really no control over that. So it was just kind of this confluent of things that was like we'd always wanted to own a home, it always felt very out of reach, but it was like, okay, can we actually figure this out and can we do this?

SPEAKER_03

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02

So between like your landlord putting the house that you're renting up for sale, and then you working at this bank and having access to this educational workshop situation that really helped kind of bust some mist, it sounds like, and help you feel more prepared. Those two things kind of came together, and you were like, Maybe exactly.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. It it went from this thing of like, I think we need to have a hundred thousand dollars saved just to like buy a home, not even like emergency funds and stuff like that, to I actually think we could do this for like $14,000, which I would have to go back and look up the actual numbers that we used, but I want to say it was like $14,000 to $16,000 all in on a down payment and closing costs to get into our home. And the home that we ended up buying, it was perfect for us for a starter home. The mortgage payment at the time we did end up refinancing, the mortgage payment at the time was $18.70 a month, so it was like $20 more than what we were paying in rent for a better area and a bigger space.

SPEAKER_01

That's incredible. Can you just talk through once you were like, oh, this might be in reach, what were your next steps for that first home?

SPEAKER_00

We literally, so we got on Zillow and we were just like looking at some home prices, and we were like, hey, there's some homes here that are like $300,000 up to $350. We just went to like the mortgage calculators that you can go to on like nerd wallet or bank rate or whatever it was. And we just kind of started running some numbers and we started figuring out that like with what the interest rates were at the time, which when we we got into our home, um, I think our interest rate was like 4.25%. We were like, oh wow, this is like $1,900 or like whatever, you know, this is like right around what we're paying right now to own a home. That's pretty cool. So we were looking on Zillow, we like confirmed that the area we were looking at had homes at the price that we were like felt like we could afford. And then on Zillow, there's just like a talk with a realtor button that you can click, you know. We literally clicked that button. This realtor called us. We he was like, tell me about your situation. And so we told him everything. This is like on a Friday night, and he was like, Okay, cool, like let's get you a pre-approval letter from a lender um so we can like really see what the numbers are and then look, let's schedule some showing. So we were just like, okay, like let's just do this and see. You know, at this point we weren't, we still weren't totally like, is this for us? But it felt like kind of a natural next step to just be like, let's just see. And the other thing that I should mention too is that after this workshop that we went to, we actually went to a mortgage lender at the bank that I worked at just to have like a pre-qualification conversation, just to like share, like, yeah, this is like the debts that we have, this is how much income we make, like what could we potentially get approved for? And he looked at all of our stuff and he was like, you could probably get approved for up to like a $500,000 mortgage as well. So yeah, I think that's the other thing too that people don't realize is that is you'll get approved for a lot more than you think you will. Now that does not mean that that's like you should buy a home at that price because it's probably out of your budget if you're like also saving and have other expenses and things like that. But that also told us that like we're not gonna have a problem getting into like a $300,000 home.

SPEAKER_01

So this was before you were even serious about buying a house. You were like, let's just talk to this person at a bank.

SPEAKER_00

Yep. Uh-huh. And you can literally just go into any bank that offers mortgages and say, like, I just want to see how much I can get, I could potentially get approved for. And it's all verbal. You don't show them any documents at that point because they're not actually like giving you a pre-approval. There's some differences there. So you you do want to be honest, right? Because you don't want to get like a number back that's not actually accurate. Like if they did go and look at your documents and then they're like, Well, you said you only had this much in vehicle debt, but but you also have this credit card debt that you didn't tell me about. So you do want to be honest so you get an accurate number as well. But it's like a super low-key conversation.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, there are two different types of like pre-approval things that you can do when you're buying a home. And the first one is pre-qualification, and I believe that is the one where like you don't give them any information, like they're not running your credit, you're just disclosing verbally some stuff, and then they run some numbers. And then if you actually want a letter that's like, this is how much I'm approved, that would be more of like a formal pre-approval process where they like run your credit and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00

You do need that before you go, like before you start looking at houses, usually, because your realtor wants to make sure that you're a serious buyer because you know they're giving you their time before they're ever gonna get paid, right? So they want to make sure you're a serious buyer. And then also when you're putting an offer down on a house. I mean, we went and looked at houses and we put an offer down on the very same day that we started looking at houses. So you want to have that in hand because you really need that to show the seller that you're a serious buyer as well and that you're gonna be able to get financing if they accept your offer. So that's a very important piece of the puzzle. That's like a kind of what one of the first steps is talking to a lender and getting that pre-approval. Yeah, not just that pre-qualification.

SPEAKER_02

Did the lender or the real estate agent help you figure out what percentage to put down?

SPEAKER_00

Yes. Because we were first-time home buyers, we didn't have a ton of cash, you know, so we kind of already knew too that we were gonna be putting down not 20%, not 10%. I think actually on our first home, we ended up putting down the lowest amount possible because we wanted to keep more in our emergency fund in case there were maintenance issues or things like that. Um, so we wanted that liquidity. It just made sense for us at the time. I actually think we put down 3%. For some reason, 3% is the number that's sticking out to me, although I know I've read other things since then that 3.5% is the minimum.

SPEAKER_01

So I think it varies by loan type, right?

SPEAKER_00

I I think it does. I know that our loan type was just a conventional loan.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I was curious. Okay, so let's talk about timing because specifically with your second house, because I feel like currently there is so much doom and gloom about the housing market, like the prices are still high in a lot of areas, interest rates for loans are still high. Um, so what made you move forward with buying now despite all of the noise?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, there was so much noise, and I'm gonna be totally honest and transparent. I have questioned so much both before buying the home and after buying the home. Like, was this the right move? Like, am I gonna regret this or am I gonna be glad that I did this? And like hindsight is 2020, you know. I and I remember having all of these same feelings when we bought our first home. Like, my husband was reminding me just how anxious I was when we were in the process of buying that home. Like, I was just like pacing around the kitchen, like talking through to him like everything that I was afraid could go wrong. And he, you know, he's much more level-headed than I am. And that ended up being such a great financial decision for us. And I can share some numbers about like why that was such a great financial decision. But ultimately, we did decide to move forward this time around because we just had our second child last fall. The first home that we had bought was a starter home. So it was little, you know, it had three bedrooms, there was no linen closet, which is something that I didn't realize until after I moved in. And I was like, oh, I wouldn't have even thought to put that on my like must-have list in a home. But like now I'm always like, okay, how many closets did the house have? You know, when I'm looking. So there wasn't a lot of space. There was next to zero nothing storage-wise in this house. And as you guys know, being a person who works from home and who does calls and who does a podcast and is recording all the time, I need a place not only where like I have a background that's not total chaos behind me, I need to have a place where I can close the door whenever I have meetings scheduled. And so having both of our rooms turn into kids' rooms, there was no room to put a desk in either of them those rooms anymore. Our room was pretty small. To get me through those first few months, my husband actually built me a custom Murphy desk that we just like attached to the wall in our bedroom, and I would just like unfold it when I was recording and like, you know. Um, so we we did find a way to make it work, but ultimately we were just bursting at the seams in that house. And honestly, if I mean totally honest, Shane and I were both feeling a little bit depressed over it. Like our house, it started to just feel very dark and cluttered and like not a place that we wanted to spend time. And I do think there is a lot that we could have done mindset-wise and mental health-wise, and all of these things to like overcome that and be happy in our space and make the best of it and make it work. But we had also already been thinking for such a long time about like we really want to be in a better neighborhood, we really want to be in a better school district for when our kids get to school age. We were already thinking about all of these things. And in Colorado, housing prices have pretty much always risen. Even during the like 2008 financial crisis, the Colorado housing market was not hit nearly as hard as other real estate markets in the country. I don't have a source to back this up, but I've talked to several different people around it, and they have told me that when that happened, prices didn't regress here. They just kind of stopped growing as much as they usually do. So it kind of felt like a time where, okay, we can, we are at a point where we can get approved for up to this amount. We're making a lot more money than we used to. We know exactly what we want in a home that we feel like we can grow into. We kind of felt like if we didn't do it now, we were just gonna continue to get priced out and priced out and priced out. And so I know there are a lot of different opinions about that, about like, don't worry about like how fast home prices are growing. You should really move on your own timeline and things like that. But to us, it just kind of felt like we can technically do this right now. Shane and I have always, every decision we've made in our marriage, we've always had this like we will figure it out attitude, and so far that has paid off very well for us. And so it just felt like another kind of leap of faith that we're making to reach some goals that we want, and we will figure it out one way or another.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I have some friends who bought a house last fall, and it was kind of similar, like they knew they wanted to buy a home, and we're like, if we don't do this now, is it just going to get harder and harder? And I think about that a lot, like hearing them say that they did end up buying a house, and for like a few weeks, months maybe we're like, uh uh, did we do the right thing? Like, right, this is a lot, but I think I think now they're settled and happy. But I think about that often because David and I know we want to buy a house at some point, we don't really know exactly when, but there's always this little voice in the back of my head that's like, you know, should you do it sooner than later? Like, is are you missing some sort of opportunity? It's just it feels so hard to know those things.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I actually think it's really similar to deciding if you're ready to have kids or not. I I think with both decisions, I really had to tell myself, like, you know what? I actually don't think I'm ever gonna feel like I'm a hundred percent ready for this, or that there's like a perfect time or that everything is working out, but like I know it's a goal of mine, so like why don't we see? Um and and I I also going back to the notion of like it kind of feels like a really bad time in the market to buy right now. I really love that mindset of like the markets are gonna do what they want to do. Does it fit your lifestyle to buy right now? And the answer to that was yes. And especially when it comes to like interest rates and stuff like that, interest rates are always gonna change. I am sure. I don't know when interest rates are gonna go down. It could be next year, it could be 10 years from now. I don't know. It could be 20 years from now. Who knows? But like if interest rates go down again, you just refinance and you get that better rate and you're in a home that you love. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And you're playing the long-term game with a mortgage. Like if you have a 30-year mortgage but it takes 10 years for rates to go down or however, like you're still gonna have 20 years left on your mortgage. You know, to see that savings play out whenever you do get to refinance. So exactly, exactly. Yeah, like there are no guarantees, and the the chances of rates dropping over the next 10, 20 years is probably pretty likely.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it was a it was a bet I was willing to make, you know.

SPEAKER_01

And if they go up, you'll be glad you got what you got when you got it. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly, exactly. I feel like I get some price stability owning a home because I was watching houses in our old neighborhood on Zillow that were listed for rent to see how much they were being listed for. And like they were just going up and up and up. Like houses in our neighborhood were being listed for like $2,500, $2,800 a month. And meanwhile, we still had our like $1,850. At one point, when we refinanced when rates dropped so low, we got a rate at 2.75%, and our rate or our mortgage payment insurance and taxes included was like $1,600. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And then that kept going up because insurance and taxes kept going up, right? But like we had that 2.75% rate. So by the time we ended up selling our house, because interest rates and taxes had gone up, we went from like a $1,600 payment or $1,680 payment in 2021 to by the beginning of 2025, it was like 1920. So yes, your payment will probably still go up over the years, but like I did not see it going up nearly as much as the rent prices were going up in our area.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And also you have no control over how much your landlord is gonna hike up prices unless there is some like price cap in your state. Totally. But yeah, like who's to say your landlord couldn't come back and be like, rent's going up $200 a month because the market, like the demand is there in the market, and if you don't want to pay it, someone else will. Exactly. Right.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Okay. Can you now take us through your latest home buying experience? And like this is when, if you want, we can get into the numbers, what went well, what didn't go well, what were the biggest oh crap moments?

SPEAKER_00

Yes, absolutely. So, should I talk a little bit about the selling process too? Like what it looked like, how much we made on our home or or no?

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That would be amazing.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so when we bought our home in 2019, we bought it for 330k. Oh, and I will say too, this was such an interesting, stark difference between the the housing markets as well. We were the fourth people to put in an offer on that home like in a day. So she was gonna have we knew she had she was gonna have four offers to look at when um she had to make her decision by. And so she had listed the house, I think, for like $315, and we ended up putting in all these concessions in our offer to make it like the most attractive offer because we really, really wanted that house. Um, it was by far the best house we had seen of all the others we had seen. So we ended up buying our house for $330k. Felt like we, you know, kind of overpaid at the time. So that was like an oh sh oh shit moment. Like after the fact, I was like, oh my gosh, is the housing market gonna crash? Like, there's no way it could keep going up and up and up, right? Like, we I can't believe we paid $3.30 for this home. So, anyways, going on from there, we ended up selling the home five and a half years later for $455, I think. So over a hundred thousand more. We sold our home within two days of it being on the market, which was amazing. Oh my gosh, and the people who bought it offered an over-asking price for us too. Because this market is different, we ended up giving them some seller concessions. So, and we got seller concessions when we bought our house too. So I can explain a little bit about what that looks like in a little bit. But um, we ended up netting like 120k, but um, what we ended up doing with that was we paid off all of our car debt. Our car broke down last summer, so we ended up buying a new car last summer kind of unexpectedly. So we had um like $20,000 on one car and then a little bit left on a loan of Shane's car. So we ended up paying off all of our vehicle debt with the proceeds of the house. So now we have no vehicle debt. That was like $700 a month combined in our budget. So, like now all of a sudden we we we felt good about kind of like increasing our mortgage payment because we could kind of just roll it into the mortgage payment, if that makes sense. Um so we did that and then we put 10% down on this house. We bought this house for $615. So we put like $61,000 down on this house, which also felt like a step up. You know, our last house we put 3% down, this house we put 10% down. It felt like, you know, we kind of like we're almost able to financially justify like moving into a bigger house. Because there's there's also been a lot of like fear and shame wrapped up in this, too. Like, do I really deserve to live in a bigger house? Is this really the best financial move for me? All of that kind of stuff. And the big difference here was that this house had been on the market for like months and months and months and months, I think because interest rates were so high and they ended up dropping the price a bunch and a bunch, and so we got into this house, and then when we did the appraisal for it, it appraised above asking price. So we also had like instant equity there. So just to see kind of the stark difference in the markets is also really eye-opening, and it's taught me that like even if interest rates are really, really low and that feels like a better time to buy, you're gonna pay that cost somewhere else because you're gonna pay more for the home, right?

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Right now, the interest rates are really high, and that kind of sucks. But like we ended up getting into this home that was listed originally for like $700,000 and we got it for $615. And yeah, the interest rate sucks, but like we could change that if rates go down. Like that could potentially change. So I don't know, it just kind of taught me that like the housing market is gonna housing market, and you kind of just gotta get in when you want to.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I know there's the whole concept of date the rate, marry the mortgage, like care more about the price that you're getting. Right. If you can, because you can always change the rate down the road.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, well, should I share how much this mortgage payment is? Yeah. Okay. Um, because that's been pretty, it's been an adjustment for us for sure. So our last mortgage payment we left, it was around 1920, including taxes and insurance. This mortgage payment right now is $3,800. So, like, pretty significant increase. That's $1,900 more. Yes, we like no longer have the $700 worth of vehicle debt, but that's still like $1,200 that we needed to like free up in our budget or increase our income to cover. And Shane and I did a lot of like budget planning to see like, is it even possible for us to free up $1,200 more dollars in our budget? And like, we actually identified like $1,800 in our budget that we could possibly free up. So we felt confident that, like, yes, we can do this. Is it gonna feel like a little bit of sticker shock those first few months? Yes, but I think that we can like rise to it. So far, it actually like when I see those mortgage payments go out, it actually hasn't felt like it's hurt the bank account as much as I thought that it would. And then going back to those seller concessions, so rates are 7% right now. Our sellers asked for $10,000 back from like what this is kind of confusing, but from like what they paid for our house. So we basically gave them $10,000 out of the proceeds that we earned. And because they submitted an offer over asking price, we were like so happy to do that. And they applied that $10,000 to a two-year rate buy down. So like they were able to buy down their rate to 5% for the first year. In the second year, it'll go up to 6%, and then in the third year, it'll be at its regular like 7%. And that's exactly what we did with our house. So, like right now, the rate that we're paying is 5%, and I'm using air quotes, um, is is 5%. So our payment is 3,800. Next year it will go up to 6%. And so if taxes and insurance were to not change next year, our payment next year would be 4,200. Now we know it'll probably be a little bit higher because insurance and taxes will probably go up as they always do in Colorado. And then by year seven or year three, when the rate goes back up to 7%, I think we're looking at like 4,500. So we like factored into the budget. We can figure this out. Shane always gets a very predictable raise every year. I'm like confident about growing my income. Like we can cover it. Is it gonna hurt? Yes. So would it be so great if rates dropped even down to like six percent within a year or two? I would be so happy. But that's kind of like if they don't drop, we we know the ballpark of what our maximum payment will be.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So when you were like thinking, okay, it's time to move, we need to buy a bigger house. Was your thought process kind of similar to the first time around in terms of like were you thinking about like, okay, how much space do we need and what's it gonna cost, or were you thinking more like with your budget first, like how much are we willing to spend? How did you kind of figure that out?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I think what we learned about in our starter home was that we didn't plan ahead very well. Um, at the time, three bedrooms sounded like a dream. We were coming from like a two-bedroom place, but we always knew we wanted two kids, you know. I guess also at the time, I didn't know that I would be working from home. So, like that changed things. But when we went into this house, it was very much like it would be really great if we could stay in this house for like 10 to 15 to 20 years or more. So we really want to try to anticipate what we might need. And so I think we did go into it first of like, if we are gonna make a move, this is what would have to make the move worth it for us. This is what we need and what we need to be able to grow into, given all these other possible goals that we might have, which for us is do we want to have the flexibility to think about having a third child? That was pretty important for me. If we do that, my poor dear husband does so much childcare and he's like so overwhelmed. Um, he's like, I don't want to have a third child unless we're like making more money and we can bring in like an au pair or like a nanny or something. So, like, could that be an option for us in this house? Like, would we need an extra bedroom to like host an au pair or something like that? So we were really thinking about what are the needs to make this move worth it, and then working backwards from there. Okay, these are the houses that fulfill those needs. Can we afford this?

SPEAKER_02

Just a little side story. I had the privilege of going to Hillary's house last weekend. And so I love that we are recording this episode after I stayed the weekend with you because now I have this visual, like I've been in your house, I've seen your neighborhood, and your home feels like a forever home, first of all. Like it and honestly, like I'm coming from the Seattle area, which is also has a very expensive housing market, and I feel like your house is such a steal. Like the price that you got for the house and for the location, I'm like, you won out. Like that is such a big score. I also remember you telling me the story about how the neighborhood where your house is now, like you used to go to this lake and walk around the lake when you had your first child, and you would be like, maybe one day I'll get the get the chance to live here, and now you do, and so it feels like such a full circle moment, and I really do love that for you so much. The second thing, I would like to speak to some of the shame that you're experiencing because although I am not a homeowner, I experienced similar shame when renting. And so, for anyone listening, when I lived in Georgia, the most I ever paid for rent was $750 for a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment, right? Smack dab downtown, like walking distance to the farmer's market, walking distance to restaurants and coffee shops, like that was my baseline. And so whenever I moved from Georgia to Seattle, I ended up renting a townhome for $2,985. Let's just say right at $3,000. And that was such a big jump. That's like what $2,250 extra dollars a month. Yeah. I experienced so much shame, and I was like, how on earth can I verbally tell people that this is how much I pay for rent? Especially because all of my family was still back in Georgia with their like maybe $800 like mortgage payments and stuff. And I was like, they are gonna think that I am insane for being willing to pay this much money for something. But I loved where I lived, and over the course of five and a half years, I really got used to that price. And then whenever I moved into a new place last summer, it was an actual standalone home versus a town home, and my rent jumped to $3,700 a month. And that did not feel like that that big of a jump. I was like, you were already pretty much paying $3,000 and now it's $3,700. So it didn't feel like that big of a jump. But because that's my experience, when when we were talking about this episode before we started recording, you were talking about how your rent or your your mortgage payment was so much, and in my head, I was like, Hillary must have like a $5,000 plus mortgage payment. Like it's gotta be huge. And then when I found out it was as much as my rent, I was like, Oh, I don't think that's that bad. And you're and now that I've been to your house too, I'm like, it's yeah, it it's so much nicer than where I'm paying for rent. But also, just for context, they just built a brand new house like right down the road from me, and it is up for rent. And I found it on Zillow the other day, and it is renting, it's still empty. No one's no one's rented it out yet. But the rent is $7,000 a month for this house.

unknown

What?

SPEAKER_02

But someone's eventually gonna rent it. I know they will. Someone will come along and they'll be willing to pay the price, but it's just so funny how like your anchor points and maybe like your your family and like how like you know their money situations are, like all of these things can feed into this mindset you have about your housing and if if it's justified for you to pay that much and all of these things, but you also made a very interesting point that whenever you're working from home too, like you're not only just paying for a house that you live in, you are paying for a place that you work in and like make your living. And so I know earlier you were mentioning with your old place, you were like, maybe if we would have like shifted our mindset around it, but when you have two kids at home and you and your husband are like trading off being home and that is your work environment too, like it makes sense that you got to the point where you were just like, I physically can't do this anymore. We need a different space, and all of those things are so valid. Right, right. Uh go ahead, Emily.

SPEAKER_01

I was just gonna say it's probably cheaper than like also renting an office space, which is something that a lot of people do.

SPEAKER_00

I have thought about that a lot. Um, and I I I wish that I would have done some digging into like how much office space is in this area. I have looked into like joining a co-working space, and that's pretty cheap. Like when I looked into it a few years ago, it's probably gone up now, but for like their lowest level package, it was like $150 a month, you know? Um, like super cheap. But I, and this is like maybe TMI, I'm sorry, but this is the Finance Girlies podcast. I am a person that with both of my kids, one of my absolute favorite things about being a mom has been being able to breastfeed. And I just feel like so lucky that I do get to work from home and like I do get to have that experience with them. And so, like going to a co-working space when my children are like babies and under a year old, that I wouldn't be able to do that anyways. So I'm like, I would rather pay more to have a workspace in my home so that like every two to three hours when the baby needs to nurse, I can just like go out and nurse her and then like come back, and then I don't have to worry about like pumping, which is the worst, and all of this other stuff. So I have thought about that, but I'm like, no, I actually like even if it's a little bit more expensive, which I don't know if it is, I want to be able to work from home too comfortably because I want to be home.

SPEAKER_01

And also, like, I don't even know, I don't really know how they work, but would you be able to record your podcast at a like you'd need some sort of private space?

SPEAKER_02

I don't know if a co-working space would Which would probably be more expensive if they do have private options.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it would definitely be like the most expensive option, I think, to like rent your own little room in the co-working space and have exclusive access to it. I I I would have to go look at the prices, but right.

SPEAKER_02

What is something that totally caught you off guard that you wish someone had warned you about, either with like buying your first home or buying your second?

SPEAKER_00

Something immediately came to mind, but I want to see if anything else comes to mind. So with our first home, I'm realizing now that we got really lucky with that home. The owner before that home was built in 2005. We moved in in 2019, so it was, you know, a good almost 15 years old when we moved in. And the owner before us had taken such good care of it. We had no problems whatsoever with anything in the home. And we also take good care of homes. Um, my my husband does at least. So um, we never had to replace the water heater, we never had to replace the AC unit, we never had to replace the furnace, like all of this stuff, even when we sold it, it was working great. And my husband like maintained it all every year and like made sure everything was clean and working, and we never had to replace the roof. All of these things. It just felt like it was built really well, and the owner before us had taken really good care of it. She had taken a lot of pride in her home. So the only things that I think we replaced while we were there were like the oven and the dishwasher and the stovetop, obviously with the oven. When we moved into this house, stuff like immediately started going wrong. Like we've been in here for three months, we've already had to replace the furnace, and this house was built in 2019. So this house is only six years old. And the owner before us, it's like he never did anything to like take care of this home. Like it's uh it he seemed like a college student, and like I've heard some stories about him from our neighbors, and it like it all tracks. Like he just did not take care of this home at all, whatsoever. And so I'm so glad that we have the emergency fund that we have and we have like the cash to just easily cover expenses that come up because like we had to replace the furnace. We noticed that our brand new dryer that we bought for this house like wasn't drying clothes, like they were still coming out soaked. And when the guy had had to have the roof replaced like a year or two ago, the roofers just like roofed over the dryer vent that like goes outside. So we had to call the roofing company and they had to come and like take shingles off and like an install in your dryer vent. I was like, How did you live in this house? And like just your clothes just weren't getting dry, like you know weird.

SPEAKER_02

And also, like, how did you find out that the problem was on the roof if your dryer wasn't working?

SPEAKER_00

Because of my husband, he was like getting up in attics and like getting on and off the roof and like trying to find it because we had um hired somebody to come clean the ducks out because they were also pretty like horrifyingly disgusting, and he was like, Yeah, I can't find it. Like, I don't I don't know. He had like gotten up on the roof, so then after he left, um Shane just did like some sleuthing to figure it out.

SPEAKER_01

But also, isn't it is it I mean, I'm not a homeowner, so I don't know that much about home maintenance, but it seems crazy that he had to replace the roof so quickly, right?

SPEAKER_00

We get a lot of hail in Colorado, so it's not totally surprising. It is a little bit surprising because the roof on our last home lasted 20 years and never had to be replaced. So I do wonder if it's in like a quality of builder kind of thing, too. Um I don't know.

SPEAKER_02

Also, it seems like there were some things whenever you first moved in that you knew you would have to replace that weren't a surprise. Like I do remember you saying that you had to replace all the carpet, for example.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, we had to replace all the carpet. Um, it was gross. And as I'm like learning more about who owned this house, our neighbors shared that he didn't have the best taste in girlfriends, and so his last Girlfriend, when they broke up, she had taken Sharpie and drawn all over the carpet, like up and down the stairs, and then like all around the walls.

SPEAKER_02

So, like, did a three-year-old live here? Like, what has happened?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So uh we knew that there were gonna be some some things to replace, but we also did feel like we were getting such a good deal in this home that it wasn't really a problem for us. Um, I I really did think it was kids before neighbors shared that story with us. Um then the other woman a grown woman, and then the other thing about this house, um, it was not a foreclosure, but it was a short sale. So he had ended up getting a divorce, couldn't make the house payment anymore, um, and then was working with the bank so that the bank technically like owned it and sold it to us when we bought it. Um, so that's another reason why I feel like the price was the price that it was. Um but yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Well, there was some there was some work to be done on this house. Yeah. But you also like that also factored into maybe how much you put down and stuff, so you could also have cash on hand to do those extra things like replacing the carpet.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, we did see keep some cash, uh we set some cash aside from the proceeds of the last house instead of putting more down on the house so that we weren't dipping into like our savings or anything like that to replace the carpet and to replace the flooring because and we had to put blinds on the windows and we had to buy the new washer dryer, like there were other things um that we did. I think we ended up setting aside like $15,000 for us to do those things, and we spent all of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. So many people in our audience, and maybe Cassie, we can speak for ourselves a little bit here, might feel like ownership home ownership is slightly out of reach or like you're constantly chasing a moving target with prices rising. So, what would you say to someone who feels like they'll never get there?

SPEAKER_02

AKA, what would you say to Emily and I?

SPEAKER_00

I would say see if you can find like a first-time homebuyers workshop like I went to. As finance writers, I think you guys probably do have more of a handle on what you really like what all the options are and how flexible the home buying process can really be than I did at the time when I went through that workshop. But I also think that having like a really focused time, I think that workshop that we went to, it was like an all-day thing and they like served lunch and stuff like that. It just felt really focused. It felt like a place to get our questions answered. I don't think I ever would have felt confident enough to buy a home if we had not had that. And I know that banks put these on all the time because they're trying to get people in to like go through their mortgage office, right? Now, that is not to say that you have to go with a bank's mortgage. In fact, I recommend never going with a bank's mortgage branch, you know, unless you have like hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars with that bank and they're gonna like get you the best rate possible. But like see if you can go to one of those free workshops because I think it will give you a lot more confidence and like demystify some of the numbers than you've maybe built up in your head.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's a really good idea. That's good advice, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And then the the other thing that I just want to say really quick too, is go get that pre-qualification too. Like, just go talk to a mortgage loan officer, they will be happy to spend a few minutes, a few minutes with you, just so you know in your head too, like, okay, this is what I could be approved for. How about I look at some homes that are like maybe lower than that number and see if I even like what I'm seeing in that price range in my area too. And and that might also help it feel like this could actually be something that I could do.

SPEAKER_01

I just thought of another question that I wish I had asked earlier, but better late than never. Because I've had this thought, like I would love to go chat with someone just to see what the options are and just like to have that knowledge for you know to help with future planning and stuff. One, just because I want to know these things, and two, because as someone who's self-employed, I like wonder how that will affect getting a loan. So I'm wondering the second time around, you were self-employed. How did that play out?

SPEAKER_00

Yes. So um, it is a little bit different when you're self-employed. They want to see a little bit more proof, I guess, of your self-employment income. So if your business is five years old, it gets easier. But if your business is under five years old, you have to provide a little bit more proof. So, like my business is actually turning five years old on like July 5th this year or something. So I did have to provide the extra proof. The extra proof itself is like still not that bad. You just have to show two tax returns worth of self-employment income and they will combine them together and divide to get an average. And so it actually was challenging for me because so we bought in February of 2025, right? Yes. And so when we were going through the approval process, I had not filed taxes yet for 2024. So I had to use my tax returns from 2022 and 2023. And in 2022, that's when I had my first child. I took three months off from my business. Um, guys, I ended up netting like $18,000 that year. Like it was so little. Um and then in 2023, things went back to normal and I netted like $73,000 or something that year. Um, like that's the income that showed up on my tax return. So they did the average and it ended up coming out to like $45,000 a year or like somewhere in that range, you know? So if you've had like big fluctuating years, one, it's like it's okay because they're gonna do the average. But two, it can also be like, well, I know I'm gonna make a lot more money this year, and I made a lot of money last year. So let me just wait until I file this year's taxes, and then we'll go through the process. That's a way to kind of like set yourself up to get the approval limit that you want if you're like confident that your income is gonna stay at the level that it's at now, right? And like a a previous tax return might not reflect that. So that's how it works. And then if you have been in business for five years or more, I think you just have to submit one tax return.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Excellent insight. The question. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

What's something about owning a home that feels 100% worth it? And is there anything you miss about renting?

SPEAKER_00

There's absolutely not nothing that I miss about renting. I will be totally honest with you. There's nothing that I miss about it. And I I wonder if that's because my last renting experience was so poor. But what I absolutely love about owning a home is one, having some sense of price stability, you know. I think the cost of housing, no matter whether you rent or you own a home, they're always gonna go up. And it feels like I have just slightly more control as a homeowner about that actual like monthly payment. And potentially, if I were to like make a million dollars next year, I would probably just pay off my house and like that would be it, you know. So like I I kind of like that security in a way. And then the other thing that I love is really like being able to do anything with it and not worry that when I move out, I'm either gonna have to change it or I'm gonna have to like lose my deposit or whatever. Like, I can paint a room whenever I want to, I can make upgrades to the home and feel like that's gonna come back to me in some way. Like at our last house, we ended up making quite a few upgrades just to like make our life easier. Like, it's so simple, but you know how sometimes when you move into a new place and in the closets or in the pantry or whatever, it's just like those flimsy wire shelves. Yes, you know? Shane ended up taking all of those out and doing all of these built-in shelves in our closet and in our pantry and in our kids' closets and things like that, and it just felt so much more like stable and it looked nice. Oh, he did it in our laundry room or a laundry area too. Um, and like that actually ended up being a reason that we could list our price or list our home for as much as we did, in addition to a few other upgrades that we made. So I feel like too, I have the freedom to make upgrades, and Shane is so handy, he loves working on the house that that's gonna improve our lives and also probably come back to us at some point someday. Anyway, so that's like my favorite thing about owning a home.

SPEAKER_02

Give it up for Shane and how handy he is. Yeah, I was side note. He was so he was so handy he had a handyman business at one point. He did.

SPEAKER_01

I like the one thing I'm afraid to give up like when we stop renting is just being able to call the maintenance people and they just like they're amazing. Um but it sounds like you are married to one.

SPEAKER_00

I'm married to a maintenance guy. Um no, actually, I have a question about that. Like, what are the things that you call for?

SPEAKER_01

Like, we've had a microwave that needs to be replaced. We've replaced two dryers in the five years we've lived here. Um, I mean, granted, they're probably like they're not spending a lot on these types of things because they replace them so often. I feel like we've called them a lot though.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I know for me in both of our places we've had to call someone because our roof was leaking, like in each place. We had a leak. And those ended up being, yeah. One in the place we live now, like it was really easy. They just needed to like patch up something on the roof, but the other one ended up being like a month-long ordeal where they had to like take down drywall and replace components and like the strain that was in the roof and do all of this stuff. And I just the entire time with both of those, I was like, I don't want to know how much this costs, and I'm so glad I'm not having to pay for it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I know we're like kind of getting towards the end of our time, but I can share just how we've dealt with some of those things if you guys want.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, go for it.

SPEAKER_00

So, like, number one, for the appliances um that you mentioned, Emily. Appliances aren't actually, I don't think they're as expensive as you would think. Like, we bought a really nice washer-dryer set. Like, we've bought them multiple times, but the ones that we just bought, we got them at Costco for $1,500 for both, you know. So it's like $700, you know, to replace a dryer. Um, so it's really not that much. Like, I know and you, Emily, I'm sure you have that and then some in like an emergency fund. And then it's like pretty easy to just like build that back up over the course of a few months if you need to. So, like the appliances themselves, like dishwashers, not that expensive. Oven stoves, I I want to say oh, I wish I knew the exact numbers Shane would know, like down to the cents. Um, I want to say like 1500 to maybe maybe 2,000, but that feels high. Um, so the appliances themselves, yeah, it sucks to have to replace them, but like, eh, they're not that expensive. For the bigger repairs, um, like the roof, that would is something that would be we covered by insurance. So we always just made sure, like when we were first in our home, we probably only had like a $10,000 emergency fund. And we've since built that up to something that's closer to $40,000, and we're still building that up. And so with stuff like that, our goal was to add together, okay, if we had to replace the AC, if we had to replace the furnace, if we had to replace the water heater, how much would all of that cost? And that gave us kind of like a goal for our emergency fund. Um, and we like just saved towards that goal. Now, luckily in our first home, we didn't have to use that at all. That just grew in perpetuity. In this home, cost us like $6,000 to replace the furnace, which, yeah, that sucks so bad. But here's what we did we took out uh a new credit card with a promo period. Actually, on your recommendation, Cassidy, from your credit cards episode, we took out the discovery card or the discover card. Nice. And we like put the balance of it on to our new card because it's like 15 months of 0% interest, so that we could like keep that $6,000 in our high yield savings account and like keep earning interest on it as we cash flow that payment to have it paid off by the time that it's due. So I know it feels like kind of stupid, but also just like a little hack to like, you know, because we knew we could cash flow it, but like we wanted to do it with no interest as well. So there's that. And then for the roof, yeah, you're looking at like a $15,000 to $20,000 repair, maybe less if your home is smaller, but that's gonna be covered by insurance in a lot of cases, maybe not all of them. So at least having your deductible covered for that is like a good way to start an emergency fund for like those big purchases or those big expenses.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Um those are really good ways to look at all of those. Um I also am out of touch with how much appliances cost because I used your washer and dryer while I was at your house. And my first thought was this is the nicest washer and dryer I've ever seen. And my second thought was this probably cost ten thousand dollars. Fifteen hundred dollars from Costco, baby.

SPEAKER_01

Costco, Cassidy. Have you begun? I'm a member yet.

SPEAKER_02

Not yet, but Hillary was also encouraging me. They're a big Costco household. I was like, it's only a matter of time. It is only a matter of time. You'll be there soon enough. Okay, last question before we wrap up. If you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice on day one of your homeownership journey, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00

On day one of my homeownership journey, I think I would tell myself to just relax more. Like, think about what the worst thing that could happen is. The worst thing that could happen is that all of your money stops coming in and you get foreclosed on, right? Like, to me, that's the worst thing that could happen. And yeah, that would be really freaking bad. Like, that would suck so bad. But like, are you gonna die? Probably not. Like, you're gonna be fine. And also, like, that's not gonna happen. So I wish I wish I could have told myself, like, just relax. Like, you have always figured out everything in your life up to this point. I promise you that if something bad happens here and you can pretty much pinpoint what all of those scenarios are, like you will figure it out. You will be fine, you're not gonna lose your home.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, okay. Last quick question Do you have any HOA fees or anything? Yes, we do. How do you feel about HOAs?

SPEAKER_00

Um, well, we've had HOAs at both places, they're kind of annoying, but both of our HOAs have also had amenities as well that come with them. So, like at our last house, our HOA was $70 a month, and that covered trash pickup and lawn irrigation. So, like it kind of felt like, okay, we are getting something, you know, for this. And then they would do snow removal of like common areas in the sidewalks and things like that. And they would do it, we had like nice landscaping. I mean, sort of nice landscaping in that neighborhood. I at least saw them out there mowing. Um, and we had like mosquito trucks come and spray through during the summer and and stuff like that. So I felt like we were getting something in return. Our HOA here is amazing, so it's $90 a month, so a little bit more expensive. But we have like this huge lake just down the street from us that like the community maintains. Um, there's like trails and there's parks and stuff like that. We have a community center with a pool and pickleball courts and a gym and like a little workspace and basketball courts. So it kind of feels like for 90 bucks a month it's like full gym membership and pool.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah. I thought an HOA would be way more than 90 bucks a month.

SPEAKER_00

And I know it varies, but yeah, I think for like condos and townhouse HOAs, I think it's a lot more. Right.

SPEAKER_01

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00

But yeah, HOA is definitely something that we always look at when we're looking at houses because if it is like something like 150 or 200 bucks a month, that's pretty substantial. But something like 90 bucks a month for all these amenities, that feels like a steal. Yeah. I will say too that the taxes in this neighborhood are higher. And here's how I justified that as well, because we were like, oh, we should probably look for a house where like the taxes are lower. Like the taxes in this neighborhood are like double the taxes of some other homes that we were looking at. So I was talking with my lender about it because she's kind of become like a friend. She's the same lender that we've used um through every single like mortgage or refinance that we've ever done. And the schools in that this neighborhood feeds into were like by far the best-rated schools of all the houses that we looked at. And we have all the amenities and this great community, and the neighborhood is new and it's clean and it's like just really well taken care of. And so I was talking to her about it, and she was like, she has four kids, and she was like, you know, I would pay a lot of money for like really good schools, and like some of the other schools that we were looking at in other neighborhoods, like they were just so poorly rated. I was even looking up, like if we were to move into this house, I was like, what are other options like charter schools and private schools and stuff like that? Because they were just like, they got like two out of ten scores, you know, on certain things. And so when we looked at this neighborhood and all the schools had like eight out of ten ratings, and I was like, I could feel really good about kid sending my kids to these public schools, um, and then save myself how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in private tuition, which like I would probably never pay anyway, but this is like how I justified it to myself. I was like, I can pay this higher tax bill to be in this area. So I that's just kind of like how I justified it again.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, totally. I want to keep talking, but I know. I'm sorry too. Yeah, it's good. This has been so good. Yeah, there's so much more we could ask you. Truly.

SPEAKER_00

I know if you guys like wanted to ask your audience too, like what questions do you have? And then we come on for a part two, like we could do a QA. I'm like, I'm an open book. Maybe for a QA. I need to sign up for your guys's. Um, I've been meaning to, and I just like keeps getting pushed off my to-do list, but I'm so excited to subscribe and support you guys.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00

I love what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01

Well, Hillary, can you share before you go where people can find you if they want to learn more about you, your business? I know you have a podcast as well. So if you want to share that, feel free.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely. So my business is called Moneta Copy. So you can go to monetacopy.com. That's my website. I am always on LinkedIn. That's probably like the best place to get in touch with me quickly. You can connect with me on LinkedIn, send me a DM. Um, I am so happy to answer any questions if anyone has like questions about the home buying process. I'm more than happy to answer those. You can send me an email, Hillary at monetacopy.com. And then my podcast is the Finance Marketing Podcast, which just turned a year old a couple months ago. So I've been having so much fun doing that podcast. I love podcasting. And that's available on Spotify or Apple Podcasts are also on my website. So those are some different places you can find me. Amazing.

SPEAKER_02

Um, thank you again for being here and just for being an open book. I know so many people listening are going to feel seen and encouraged by what you shared. I know I have too. And we're just so grateful to know you professionally, but also personally. I love you so much, and I know I speak for Emily too, and I say that. So thanks for coming on here and just sharing with us.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you guys so much for having me. I feel exactly the same way about you too. This is fun.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Super fun. That's a wrap on another episode of the Finance Girlies podcast. Nothing in this episode is meant to be taken as financial advice.

SPEAKER_02

Please do your own research and talk to a professional if you need advice. As always, if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. Love ya. Bye.