Knowing When to Change Your Financial Plan

Image by Kelly Sims

Every so often you have to take a step back and realize when something is not working. 

My husband and I moved into our dream apartment back in March. It's a gorgeous 1800sqft loft with tons of space, huge ceilings, big windows and a wonderful garden tub. 

The down side is that this loft is really really expensive. I thought that I would be able to handle it, but then I had my accident. Because our finances are separate, this put way too much financial strain on me. 

We love this apartment, and we planned to live here until March and then buy a house. The Atlanta housing market is great for buyers right now, and we wanted to buy our first home in the Spring. 

However, things change and now we are looking at breaking our lease and putting off buying a house until the Fall. 

So today we are going to go and look at apartments in a suburb of Atlanta in a complex that a friend of mine lives in. They would cost us about $400 a month less in rent and probably save us $100-200 a month on utilities. That will allow us to pay off our joint credit card and to start saving a down payment for a house.

Making this decision is very hard because we really do love our loft. We've both always wanted to live in a great artistic space, but we know that a lot of our financial stress comes from living here. 

Normally, I hate change. I would happily have things stay the same and not rock the boat... but I recognize when the plan is not working and when it's time to make a change. 

So be careful of your financial plan. Every so often try to take a step back and really look and it to make sure that it is still working for you.