How I Became a Homeowner at age 20

Hi, my name is Mikaela. I am 20 years old, and I just became a homeowner with my husband less than two months ago. Our first mortgage payment came out this month, and I'm feeling all the feels!

I want to write about how I became a homeowner at such a young age. Most people I know that are 20 are either full time college students, newlyweds, or still living with their parents. Luckily for me, I only fall under one of those categories; newlywed! My husband, Bevan, and I got married on April 22, 2021, so we are still pretty new at the whole marriage thing.

Let's go ahead and get into the real reason you clicked on this post: how I bought a house! I want to be very plain and clear about a few things. One, the main reason we were able to purchase a house was because of God. It was most definitely a miracle that we were able to do this. If you don't believe in miracles, well then keep reading. Maybe you will by the end of this post. Two, even though God had a huge role in making this happen, there were some things that we did that made it possible. Hard work and discipline are definitely some of those things.

In order for this story to make sense, I'll need to give you some background information. That way you can put everything into context. I am only 20, so last year I was still a teenager! Let me take you back to then. That's when it all started.

I moved to Georgia with my family during my junior year of high school. I was 16 at the time, and had never had a real job. The only source of money that I had up until that point was from babysitting. I remember one day I was with one of my friends and she was taking about college and how she needed to save up money for that. She was telling me how much she had in her savings account and I remember my jaw dropping to the floor. I suddenly had the realization that I had NO MONEY. I'll let you in on something: I didn't even have a bank account opened. I know, it's hard to believe, but that was when I realized that I needed to get on that asap. My mom helped me call the bank and set up my checking and saving accounts. After that I needed to get a job.

During my senior year of high school I started job searching. I applied at Target, and they said I didn't meet their qualifications. My dad kept telling me that I should apply at Chick-fil-a, because they would hire anyone, and they were closed on Sunday's. It was very important to me that I didn't work Sunday's. I finally applied to Chick-fil-a, had an interview, and I got the job!

I started work at Chick-fil-a on August 20, 2018 making $7.50/hour. My first real job!! I was super excited for work, and I loved every second of it. I saved half of every paycheck. I worked at Chick-fil-a for a month, and then realized that $7.50/hour is horrible lol. I started to look for a new job, because I wasn't making as much as I wanted to.

I ended up getting another job at Cue Barbeque as a Hostess. I started in September of 2018. I made $8/hour plus tips which made it around $10/hour depending on the night. I fully planned on quitting my Chick-fil-a job since I had found something better, but I ended up not quitting and I worked two jobs during my senior year. So, I was a full time high school student working around 25-30 hours per week, still saving at least half of each paycheck. That's a lot of time working, but to be honest I loved it. It kept me busy, and I knew I had to save for college. By November of 2018 I had a little over $1,000 saved! That was the most money I had ever had at that point in my life. I was pretty excited.

Fast forward to May of 2019. I had been working at my jobs for about 9 months. I had a little over $3,000 saved at that point. I needed around $5,000-$6,000 for my college semester that started in September of 2019. I ended up packing all my belongings and moving out to Utah for that summer to work and live with my best friend.

I got a full time job at South Salt Lake Mosquito Abatement making around $12.50/hour. I started on June 10, 2019 and worked that job until the end of August 2019, still saving at least half of every pay check. By the end of the summer, I had a little less than $6,000 saved up for my semester. During the semester, I pretty much blew through all my money. I did not get a job during the semester, so my income was $0 during those few months. I left school that December with a little over $1,000 in my bank account.

I moved back home on December 18, 2019. I had barely any money left, and I needed a job desperately. I could not afford another semester of school, so I decided that I would work instead. I searched and applied to sooooo many jobs. I had a few interviews, but nothing worked out until I found a job at Progressive Leasing as a Customer Support Representative. I applied, had two interviews with them, and got the job! The only problem was that the start date wasn't until March and it was January 29th!

During that time where I was applying like crazy to different jobs, I had applied for several nannying positions, but I never heard back from anyone. After I got the job offer from Progressive Leasing, I ended up getting a call from a woman who needed a nanny. I told her that I could nanny for February, but not after that because of my new job that started in March. She said that was fine, so for all of February I was a nanny! I nannied from 10:15 am-3:20 pm Monday-Friday. I made about $270/week, saving at least half of every pay check. I made a little over $1,000 during February of 2020, saving around $500 of that.

On March 2, 2020 I started my job at Progressive Leasing making $15/hour working full time. Again, putting at least half of my paycheck into savings. This was the time in my life where I was able to save the most. From March of 2020 to February of 2021 I was able to save more than I had ever before. I had around $13,000 in my savings account.

Now we are at the point in the story where you are probably wondering why I have just told you all of that. The reason I want to share my past work experience is because I want you to understand one thing. I saved my butt off. Every time I got a paycheck I was putting at LEAST half into savings. This is something that I cannot emphasize enough. At that point in my life, I didn't have any bills. I didn't have a car payment, phone payment, rent, utilities, HOA fee, car insurance, house insurance, ANY OF THAT! I didn't have any of those things, and that is why I could save as much as I did.

During February of 2021, Bevan and I got an apartment together. We were getting married in April and we needed a place to stay once we were married. We found a two bedroom one bath apartment in Pleasant Grove, UT for $950/month excluding utilities and wifi. This was such a good deal for us, so we wanted to sign the lease as soon as we could. After getting an apartment, I now had to pay my part of rent each month, so I wasn't able to save as much as I was saving before. I still tried my best to save as much as I could, and by the time Bevan and I got married, I had around $16,000 in my savings.

Bevan and I weren't planning on buying a house so soon. We wanted to rent for a year or two then maybe buy something later down the line. Our rent was extremely affordable and we really liked our apartment. During that summer, our little apartment did not have central air and our swamp cooler didn't do much, and eventually ended up breaking. Kind of a funny story, but we sweated our guts out for a few days and our landlord didn't do much to help. We were so fed up with our landlord that we decided that we were not going to renew our lease again when the time came. We didn't want to move somewhere else to just rent again, because we knew we couldn't find anything nearly as affordable. Sooooo, why not buy?!

We knew we would have enough saved for a down payment come next February when our lease ended, so we fasted and prayed and decided that would be our next step. We reached out to a realtor and told him our plans for buying a new house. He said that we should start looking for houses in late November/beginning of December. By October 2021, I had saved $20,000.

This is the part in the story where we got our little miracle. Our realtor reached out to us late October and said we could start looking for homes. We scheduled our first house tour on October 19th. We toured a few more homes that week, and we even made an offer on a townhouse that we loved. The offer didn't go through, and we were a little bummed, but we kept looking.

Our relator would send us a batch of homes each morning that we could look through and decide if we wanted to tour any of them. We also were proactively searching for homes ourselves. One night, Bevan pulled open his laptop and opened it up to a website that had a really beautiful home on it. I asked him if he was looking at it earlier, and he said he didn't quite remember seeing this one before. We looked through the pictures, and were extremely impressed with what we saw. We sent the house over to our relator, and asked if we could get a tour scheduled.

We scheduled the tour for October 26th, and we were super excited to go! Our realtor expressed to us how confused he was that the house wasn't already under contract with a buyer, since it had been on the market for ten days. If you have tried purchasing a house during the pandemic, then you KNOW how crazy it is to have a really nice home on the market for longer than a few days. The price of the home had actually been lowered by $10,000 since then as well. We were super shocked, and wondered if there were some hidden problems that was keeping it on the market for so long.

Come October 26th, and we met with our relator at the house. We walked inside and were immediately ecstatic at what we saw. There were new floors, and the living room and kitchen were just what we wanted. The homeowners had left some papers on the counter for people to take when they toured the house. Our relator read through the information, and then started laughing and said "I know why this house hasn't sold yet!" He then explained that the relator commission for the home wasn't nearly has high as other homes, and as a result of that, most relators wouldn't take their clients there for a tour.

After we toured the home, we met outside to talk with the relator about making an offer. He said that the homeowners had only one other tour scheduled, and it was for the next day. He said that we could make an offer tonight, and put a deadline on it by 11 AM tomorrow, so they would either have to accept or decline the offer before the tour. We agreed, and went home that night. Our realtor emailed over the offer papers, and Bevan and I signed them and got them sent to the homeowners.

The next morning we were super nervous and excited. We both got up, went to work, and anxiously awaited for an answer. I got a call from Bevan around 10 AM, and he happily told me that our offer was accepted!!! We were so EXCITED!!!

The next few days were spent filling out documents. Our realtor and loan officer worked really hard to get our closing date as soon as possible. We finally had everything in order, and on November 15, 2021, we closed on our first home! HOMEOWNERS!! We were finally homeowners!

We sold our contract at our apartment, and we were able to officially move in on November 24, 2021.

So, there it is. That is our story of how we were able to purchase a home. I truly believe that God placed that house on Bevans' laptop so that we could see it. I believe that God has helped us save money and helped us get good jobs in order to do that. I believe that God saved the house for us. I believe that God wanted us to be here, so He made a way for it to happen. Yes, we put in hard work, and yes we made scarifies, but I know without His help, it would not have been possible.

Moral of the story, start working young. Save as much as you can when you don't have bills, and most importantly, put God first. If it is meant to happen, it will.