After a year, we were able to buy our first home. A “starter home” — modest, three bedrooms, one bath but it had “good bones.” We paid $29,000 for that house, and yes, I put a lot of work into fixing it up while we lived there, and did most all the work myself.
We lived in our starter home for 14 years, until our family was getting too big and we needed something larger. It was a bittersweet time, selling our first house. I’d put so much blood, sweat and tears into fixing it, improving it and maintaining it — and it was our first house. After we sold it, I would drive by it every single day for over a year. I guess I had an emotional attachment. But bottom line, having purchased that house for $29,000 in 1991, fourteen years later, we sold it for $129,000. That was in 2005. Today, that same house is valued at over $200,000.
And by the grace of God, we were able to fin ...
