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Life Update – Our House Finally Sold!

Last Updated: BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 59 Comments

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Life UpdateHello everyone!

Time for another life, goals, and food budget update. It’s been TWO months since I last did a life update.

The last two months have been pretty crazy and many things have changed.

Between buying an RV, moving the rest of our stuff from our house in St. Louis to Fruita, selling our house, traveling “home” to St. Louis several times, working, and more, you can trust me when I say that I am tired!

I won’t lie though – it’s been a fun few months too.

We’ve made many life changes this year and while there have been some stressful moments (mainly with the home sale), everything seems to be going as planned right now (knock on wood).

Continue reading below for my life update and August goals.

 

OUR HOUSE SOLD!

This is definitely the most exciting part of our summer so far.

While buying an RV is amazing as well, the thought that our house would just stay on the market for the rest of my life has been on my mind for quite some time.

I’m extremely happy that a major stressor of mine is now gone. I no longer have to worry about the monthly payments, monthly bills, whether the house would just implode (I know that would never happen but that’s what happens when you’re in my brain), and more.

While I’m sad that the first and only home that we’ve bought now belongs to someone else, I know this was the best decision for us. We feel much more free now that we don’t have a house we don’t live in holding us down.

 

Our food budget.

We haven’t been doing the best with our food budget lately, but we did recently sit down and decide on an action plan to change that.

We know we have a food spending problem and we keep reverting back to our old (and bad!) ways.

Our plan includes:

  • Being better at following a meal plan.
  • Coming up with RV-friendly meal ideas.
  • Taking our favorite meals at restaurants and making them at home instead.


August Goals

  • Be healthy! I have been doing well with working out and eating healthy. Meals have been healthier than ever and we have been working out more than ever. I’m feeling great too! Oh yeah, I should probably mention that I did my first pull-up the other day. Then, I managed to do 10 more in the same day (not in a row though). I’m incredibly proud haha!
  • Get one month ahead on Making Sense of Cents posts. This is still a goal of mine. I would like to be one month ahead, especially since I have a ton of traveling for the rest of the year. I really don’t know what part-time living on the road in the RV will be like, so I want to be as far ahead as I can realistically get. Right now, I am currently around two weeks ahead. I was three weeks ahead earlier in July but I fell behind due to the home sale and buying the RV.
  • Churn another credit card. I just churned another credit card and we just signed Wes up for it as well. I’ve been loving the free credit card rewards and it’s been extremely addicting lately.

What great things are going on in your life? How did you do in July? What is your main goal for August?

 

Below are pictures (all from my Instagram) from our new home and recent trips.

Mount Rainier National Park

Samish Island 2

La Push 2

Samish Island

Washington

La Push

Mount Rainier National Park 2

Canyonlands National Park 3

Canyonlands National Park 2

Canyonlands National Park

Grand Mesa

Black Canyon Of The Gunnison National Park

 

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About Michelle Schroeder-Gardner

Michelle is the founder of Making Sense of Cents, a blog about personal finance and traveling. She discusses how her business has evolved in her side income series. She paid off $40,000 in student loans by the age of 24 mainly due to her freelancing side hustles. Click here to learn more about starting a blog!

Comments

  1. Kemkem says

    Congratulations on the sale of the house! I am sure it must be quite a load off your mind. I know l welcomed it when our house sold as it was the biggest chunk of change mortgage wise. Our renters moved out of the rental house last month and left a lot of costly repairs that exceeds their deposit, and the renters in the condo are leaving in a couple of days. So August will be money down the drain while we hope for new renters :-). Loving the pictures, these are my favorite kind of posts, a little finance mixed with travel. We’re thinking about a road trip to Portugal from here in August! Congratulations again..

    Reply

  3. giulia says

    Well I understand when you say that have 2 houses was font of stress, well congrats, now that house is sold it disappears, your last big expense (RV) will help you during travel and you’ll enjoy if you like camping, for food this month I ate out a little bit too much, so now I am going to return to have healtier meal planning:P However seems that everything is going well, enjoy your summer!!!

    Reply

  4. Saving Sanely says

    Congrats on unloading such a huge burden! Other than that, my goals are similar to yours. I’m trying to get healthy and re-vamp my meal plans as well as get ahead on the blog since life just gets in the way of both of these things.
    It seems like time just gets sucked away in these summer months!

    Reply

  7. Amy @ DebtGal says

    Congratulations on the house sale! That must’ve been a huge release of stress!

    My main goal for August is to minimize spending as much as possible. It’s going to be tight, since I don’t start work again until September, but one car needs new brakes – not an expense I want to mess with! – we’re going on vacation, and back-to-school shopping has to happen. The latter will be pretty minimal, except for a new backpack for my daughter, though.

    Reply

  8. Ali @ Anything You Want says

    Wow – amazing pictures! Thanks for sharing! And congrats on the house – must be a huge relief!

    Reply

  10. Chris @ Flipping A Dollar says

    “some stressful moments (mainly with the home sale)”

    I’ve only seen the home purchase from the buyer side but that was terrible. I can only imagine it from the other end. What a terrible system!

    I’d love to rent our house out if we ever move out (it’s a town home which has much higher rent than mortgage), but I’m in exactly no rush to get out of this house.

    July was great for us – tons of vacation time off but now I’m still trying to catch up on all the work left on the table. It’s crazy that I need to do a lot of extra work because of a vacation. The 9-5 just never stops calling.

    Reply

  11. Kathy says

    Get him off that cliff! I am seriously afraid of heights and could never get that close to the edge! Congratulations on selling your house. I know it’s a relief. And don’t dwell on the food budget. Unless you think you are eating unhealthily, I wouldn’t sweat it. Food costs are high no matter what you do.

    Reply

  14. Harmony @ creatingmykaleidoscope says

    Great news! And awesome pictures 🙂

    July has been all about the family. This is the last week of my maternity leave. While we would have loved to do some traveling, money is very tight. We were able to find lots of free things to do with the kids – playgrounds, parks, beaches, and even an airshow.

    Reply

  16. Paul says

    Congrats on the sale. I think buying, selling, and moving a house are among the 3 worst things in life. At least you lowered stress a little by renting.

    And as an early warning, just know we’re all planning on major coverage of the Mike the Headless Chicken Festival next May.

    Reply

  17. Ki says

    Congratulations on the home sale!!! I’m happy for you and know exactly how much that eased your mind 🙂

    Reply

  18. Jennyou buy it says

    Awesome! What did you buy it for and what did you sell it for? How much in proceeds did you come away with after all the costs of selling?

    Thanks!

    Reply

  20. Money Beagle says

    Congrats. Selling a home is one of the most stressful things that I think people can go through, and I’m sure it’s a huge burden lifted from your shoulders.

    Reply

  21. Sarah says

    Congrats on the house sale, that must be a big weight off of your shoulders. One of my goals is to get ahead on blog posts as well. I only posted about three times in July because life got in the way. I know that they say writing the blog post is only a small portion of blogging, but for me, it is the most time consuming due to editing photos and making them “pin worthy”.

    Reply

  24. Abigail @ipickuppennies says

    My main focus in the coming weeks is healthier eating and getting some small workouts in. I want to be in better shape for FinCon. But I’m trying to stay sane with it and am only shooting for a pound a week in weight loss. (Or the equivalent thereof, since muscle weighs more than fat.)

    Reply

  25. Gina says

    Those pictures are gorgeous! Some of the mountain ones remind me of places I’ve been near my home in Colorado. I truly find your blog inspiring and it’s helping me stay motivated on my own goals. Good luck with your August goals!!

    Reply

  28. Stephen says

    Congrats on the house sale. I must say I’m extremely jealous of the views from your recent vacations.

    Reply

  29. Andy Jordan says

    Good news on both fronts… the house sale and the new RV! Healthy, “RV-friendly” meal planning can be a challenge, but it’s very important to rein in the urge to “eat out” or “take-out,” especially since you want to spend as much time as possible outdoors, NOT inside the camper cooking or preparing something healthy! Two words all of us full-time or most-of-the-time RVers learn very quickly are “crock” and “pot”!! There are lots of healthy, inexpensive and insanely easy recipes, and all you have to do is toss the ingredients into the crock pot while you’re microwaving your oatmeal in the morning (plain oatmeal and lots of fresh fruit!) then go out to play all day and come back to a delicious home cooked meal and a great smelling RV! Plus, you’re cooking with campground electricity, not using up all your propane, especially when the weather is hot. We have a couple of favorite recipes if you’re interested, let me know!

    Reply

  30. Theodore Nwangene says

    That’s a really good news Michelle and i understand how excited you are about it,
    There is nothing as sad as paying for what you’re not using. Its good you sold it out and don’t forget to send me my own share of the money 🙂 (kidding).

    And, you’ve got some really cool pictures here, its a very beautiful environment indeed and its obvious you’re having fun.

    Thanks for sharing and do have a lovely weekend.

    BTW: Its my first visit here and i love what you’re doing.

    Reply

  31. Portia says

    Congrats on selling your home! Our month of July has been a good one. I have done side hustles this month including writing on e-lance and working in our apartment complex office as a leasing agent (which greatly reduces our rent.) It’s been a good month financially speaking.

    Reply

  33. Meghan says

    Congratulations!
    This month, I settle in the DFW after a year of renting and buy a house! I have lots of financial reasons for doing this and am very excited. My focus is to put as much money as possible towards my student loan debt and have a good financial situation if/when I ever get to move home to Denver. Getting a house in the Dallas area is hard right now but I bought a house that costs half of what they approved me for – yay!

    Reply

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