Angela Zeigerbacher – Don't Look at Buying a Home as an Investment

Angela Zeigerbacher has always been interested in the personal finance realm, from hoarding cash in her sock drawer as a kid to paying off her student loan debt in one year after college. After countless conversations with friends, she realized not everyone had the same level of personal finance education, which prompted her to launch the Money in the Bank podcast, a personal finance podcast for the average Joe or Jane. On top of this, Angela has taught personal finance to teenagers in high school as well as hosted “lunch and learn” at several companies. She recently started a food channel on YouTube, Foogality, where she cooks and bakes frugal type of meals.   “Things can always break when you buy a house. So going in without a maintenance fund is a really bad idea.” Angela Zeigerbacher   Worst investment ever Young, debt-free and proud Angela finished paying off her student loan in just a year after college. She was on top of the world. At 22 and having paid off her student loan debt that fast, she felt she was doing a lot of things right. So what's next? Interestingly, nobody talks about what you should do once you pay off your debt, especially to young people. So after working so hard to pay off her debt, she didn’t know what to do now that she was debt-free. All her friends advised her to treat herself, go on nice vacations, and buy things she wanted. Angela had never really been a spendthrift. So she didn't take the advice completely to heart, but she started thinking about it. Desire to live the American dream Everyone kept telling her to buy a house, so she figured the American dream sounded good. It would be nice to have a house and have a boyfriend, two cars in the garage, and a white picket fence. Her American dream started with a new car. She didn’t put much thought behind it. She just went to the dealership and picked a car that she thought was good for her; a brand new Ford Escape for $35,000. Let’s buy a home Next on her American dream list was a house. After buying the car, her lease came up for renewal. At the time, she was living with her boyfriend and they decided that renting was just throwing away money, especially now that the lease was going to increase by $250 a month. So they decided that buying a house was the right thing to do. Again no thought was given to this decision as she was just too excited to get something she wanted and could afford. Oh, damn the closing costs! Even though they went for a house, they could easily pay for, one huge factor, prompted by the hasty decision making, was ignored. They never factored in the closing costs which was about 3% of the buying price. Now they were draining...