New home purchases

As my wife and I have purchased our first home we are being presented by many tempting choices to buy "stuff". Luckily my wife and I are mostly on the same page when it comes to purchasing household items. However, our new home is three times larger than the apartment we have moved out of. Our living room, dinning room, and two of the three bedrooms are empty. We have placed an order for a new couch and rug for the living room (about $1,000) but have decided to hold off on any furniture for the bedrooms. The dining room set is probably an inevitable purchase within the next 6 months. This is not something I am looking forward to but I know we should just bite the bullet and get it done. Purchasing these items for me is a very difficult process. I want nice things but don't want to pay for them. Is this a problem?

Throughout the entire home buying process I have learned and seen how easy it is to fall into the many middle class traps along the way. First was the real estate agent who kept sending me links to homes outside of our agreed upon price range. Then there is the loan officer telling me I qualify for a $600,000 dollar mortgage. Yikes...I feel sorry for anyone who just goes along for the ride and decides not to take control over the situation. Now we are faced with the traps of wanting to have nice things for our new home. Luckily I have a wonderful wife who does an outstanding job at finding good deals and sales on items for the house. I thinke we struggle equally with these decisions.

The question is how do you balance enjoying today while wanting to save for tomorrow. If we lived in a small one bedroom apartment we would be able to save a lot more money but our quality of life would be very low. I am hoping we have made a good decision with the purchase of our townhouse. The longer we live in our new house the more I think we will stay for many years to come i.e. we will avoid the temptation to upgrade.

Home Improvements

My wife and I have recently purchased a new townhouse. Our home is an end unit so our living space and yard is much larger than our surrounding neighbors. We bought in May and spent the next several months renovating. In an uncertain real estate market we felt more comfortable with hedging our bets by purchasing a fixer upper. We purchased the home for $370,000 which was $20,000 under the appraised value. We have recently updated the kitchen, flooring and several other minor projects around the house. A home two doors down from ours (not an end unit) has recently sold for $395,000. In theory an end unit should sell for about $15,000 more. However, I only list my house value as $390,000 when calculating my net worth. I'm trying to be conservative about my homes estimated value.

Here is my challenge. How much money should my wife and I spend on fixing the house up. We still have new siding to replace ($2,500), new tile and vanities in the 2.5 bathrooms (Hoping for under $5,000) and landscaping ($1,000).

My current numbers are below for the amount of money I have put into my home. As a new home owner I am finding it harder than anticipated to get my mind around home equity. Right now, my wife and I are automatically putting $500.00 a week into our ING Orange savings account. This feels a lot better to me than putting $500.00 a week into fixing up my home. This is my struggle. I also feel that I need to build up my cash cushion. Prior to buying our home my ING account was just over $50,000. I want that back.

I am leaning more towards holding off on any major fixes for at least 4 months.