House before or after wedding??

You already have the answer, your FH just needs to get on board. It's never a good idea to rush into anything. My FH poached this same concept to me prior to us even getting engaged. I even went along with it for a little while, in the end, you know what we did?.....we kept renting, ha!

Sometimes relationships aren't always ready for a house even if you both want it and even if you are married (more so if you are not). We are still renting and our friends all of houses, but we don't care because we have a savings plan and we are sticking to it. They got houses, but when we get houses we won't have as high of payments or debt because of it...that's a really good feeling to have.

On a second note... a friend of ours bought a house before him and his wife got married. Everything worked out for them but they had a hard time changing things over to her new name with the house afterwards.

Do what feels best for you both!

I'd recommend renting though until you feel more comfortable buying a house. Good luck!

Jessica,

Oh my gosh! I'd love to only be paying $400 on rent right now. I'd be saving SO much money. Here in MKE we pay $1095 for an entire house with yard (nothing included)...and that's considered cheap.

It sounds like you have a great deal. I'd stick to renting to save the money so you can get the house you really want down the line.

I can tell you from experience that buying a house while planning a wedding is SUPER stressful. While trying to buy my house all my funding had to go on freeze I couldn't spend anything cause they were watching every penny. I had to go to vendors and explain to them what was going on and why lucky I had some really amazing vendors that completely understood, but it got even more stressful because then I was falling behind on my timeline to have things completed. Then came the minor issues changing the closing date and it just was totally overwhelming. They gave me one date and then had home inspection and it had to change due to issues that had to be handled. That took us back to negotiations. I ended up saying pause on the house for a moment and lets finish the wedding cause I was so over whelmed with everything. I thought it would be fun to buy a house and get married all at the same time, but 2 stressful events that are both very costly and time consuming was not fun at all....

It's a tough call. Doing both at the same time seems REALLY hard. We rent the top 2 floors of a small house in Brooklyn, so it's a 4 bedroom apartment that we share with our cat and 3 male roommates. Basically our space could be called a studio, with a shared kitchen and bathroom, no shared living room, no storage. We've lived here a few years and don't have the ability to move any time soon. Rent is cheap and our roommates are all very nice, but... you know, it would've been nice to have my own fridge before I turned 30. Didn't work that way. So we're getting married first. Honestly FH loves it here, I think he pictures us having an infant in this apartment, so.. yeah, I don't know how that works. Anyway, best of luck to you! This is a tough topic nowadays.

I would meet with a financial advisor, my fiancé and I have been having similar conversations, but we have already signed contracts for the wedding, so unless we have everything we need financially for the wedding ready in an account I told him, we have to wait, I do have savings on the side, specifically for a house, but when buying a house you never know what surprises could come up, and I am not financially prepared for that. So, we agreed we would start looking a few months before the wedding date to narrow down our options. Especially, since we can't agree on where to live. But, since you said you haven't signed any contracts yet, I would talk to someone and based on your incomes and wedding and house budgets work out 2 timelines one for the wedding first and one for the house first, and figure out which plan works best for you both.

What did he do to start the fire? How likely is it really that it will happen again?

We are closing on a house (hopefully--knock on wood--as long as nothing random and totally catastrophic re: the appraisal or funding happens) in FIVE DAYS!!!! Our wedding is in 91 days. It has been totally crazy because looking for a house in a seller's market, a diy wedding, a toddler, and two jobs makes it nuts, but we are soooooo glad to be getting it out of the way! Just think--not having to move all your wedding gifts after getting married because they'll already be in the house!

That's what I was thinking. Here in Grand Rapids we pay even more than that $1095 for a leaky, water-damaged townhome with a crappy, littered backyard that we can hardly use.