[lpjohnso]

Hello t0rk! Yes, svelte has a great memory. 🙂 My husband and I have lived in Discovery Hills for the past 3+ years with our 3 young children. Discovery Elementary rates 9/10, San Elijo Middle rates 10/10, and the brand new San Marcos High School rates 9/10. Our son has attended Discovery since kindergarten (he will be starting 3rd grade this year) and we are very, very happy there. The city-maintained walking/biking trails and Discovery Lake are beautiful. Shopping, restaurants, and the 78 are at your fingertips. The beach is only 9 miles away. Discovery Hills is extremely safe and there are no registered sex offenders living there per the Megan’s Law site. Weather is perfect in my eyes: far enough inland to not get the gloomy marine layer, but not so far inland where you are dying of many +90F days in summer. And did I mention no HOA or mello roos?! At least there aren’t any on my block.

All of that, and you can still find a single family home for less than $550,000. Best bang for your buck in North County, HANDS DOWN. Someone please challenge me on this.

If you and your wife already live in San Marcos and are targeting Discovery Hills, I’m telling you things you already know. 🙂 In regards to young families with children, we understand your concern. We only had empty nesters and families with older children living all around us when we first moved here. Since then, we have come to realize there are about 8 kids under 10 years old living within 1-2 blocks from us. One of which is a girl who will be starting kindergarten at Discovery this year. I think it does depend on which street you are on. You won’t find a ton of kids playing outside in the neighborhood, but the demographic could be changing as the empty nesters are moving out to down size. We have found the playgrounds on Via Vera Cruz and at Discovery Lake to be great resources for finding new neighborhood friends and play date opportunities.

I hope this helps! Please let me know if there is anything else I can help you with. We would love to have a fellow Pigg and family as neighbors!

[lpjohnso]

We would definitely consider moving to Temecula. Paramount hit all of the reasons on the head. The commute to work in San Diego isn’t such a horrible thing for us because we work 12 hour shifts in the medical field, meaning we would only have to do it 3 days per week. Plus we would be on the road before and after the traffic jams (6am and 7:30pm).
I know it has been discussed in length here before, but if we were to move there, we just don’t know exactly where (ie-Wolk Creek, Morgan Hill, Roripaugh Ranch, etc).

The real estate market seems to be on fire right now. Just talked to a realtor yesterday about one of their listings on 1/2acre. 6 offers in the 1st week. All cash offer was excepted over $50,000 asking price. He said it was fortunate it was a cash offer because the place would’ve never appraised for that much.

[lpjohnso]

Very interesting way to look at it. I can definitely see where you are coming from. I remember when there was separation between many North County cities with undeveloped land. And now, they all just blend into one another.

[lpjohnso]

It has been almost 5 years now. Any new insights/opinions about buying in Temecula?

[lpjohnso]

Hi all, I’m popping in to read the new posts. Thank you all so much. 🙂

House was built in 1992. 10,000+ square foot lot. It is in a section of Discovery Hills that DOES NOT have mello roos or an HOA. We were shocked about that when we bought it. There are homes just one block away that look very similar and built around the same time, and they DO have fees. For whatever reason, we don’t, and we aren’t complaining!

[lpjohnso]

We really hope you all know how much your posts have meant to us. The intent of frugality was brewing before we asked for your advice, but now it is full steam ahead.

I just took photos of numerous items to sell on Ebay and Craigslist.

We cut out cable last year, but unfortunately we are under contract on our phones.

I’m agoraphobic, so that makes limiting vacations just fine by me. Who knew an anxiety disorder could come in so handy with financial planning?

We won’t buy anything unless it’s necessary, and even then, we’ll buy it when it’s on sale. No more $16 Sculpin 6-packs (no, I’m not crying, I just have something in my eye), and eating out with the family 3-4 times per week will be something in the past. Once per month sounds much more reasonable.

The kids already have enough toys to last until they are grown. Has any one wrapped up toys that your kids already had, gave it to them as a present and try to pass it off as new?? Oh yeah, we’ll go there. Especially with the baby.

Yes, we have gap insurance, thank goodness. The plan like several suggested will be to pay off the Prius. When the lease is up on the Honda we will definitely buy preowned.

We will stay in the house and be happy to be here and we won’t take it for granted. We will try to embody a real “forget what you want, look at what you have” mentality.

If we stick to this plan, 5 years down the road is already lookin’ pretty damn sweet. Thank you all so much again. Really, truly. Perhaps I’ll return to this forum and let you know how it all went.

joec, it IS hard to convince driving an older model car to a woman! I should know, because I am one.

🙂

[lpjohnso]

[quote=all]Selling a house in order to keep buying new car every 2-4 years does not sound like a great idea.

You might not like spdrun’s model of driving 20+ year old cars, but is 2013 Prius really that much better than 2007 Corolla? And the lease on Odyssey is close to what monthly payment would be if you just bought new.[/quote]
I’m totally down for the 2007 Corolla.

[lpjohnso]

[quote=AN]Something tells me that if they only qualify for a 10% car loan, they probably won’t be able to do a 0% balance transfer app-o-rama.[/quote]
This could be very true. However, our credit is better now than it was a couple of years ago.

[lpjohnso]

[quote=outtamojo]Are they still offering those 0% 18 month balance transfer
credit cards? When we had a revolving debt/car loan we rolled everything over into 2 or 3 of those and paid things off without paying any interest at all – just be sure to roll it over to another 0% card or pay it off 2 months or so before introductory period is over.[/quote]
This is a great idea. Just must be very disciplined about it, like you said.

[lpjohnso]

I like to think I can possess financial maturity and will power. However, my 5 year prediction with Option #3 is that the equity has been spent and I have twice the debt that I have now.. :/
Where I lack in self constraint and good decision making, I make up for as a super fun person to go to Vegas with.

[lpjohnso]

Very lucky, rockingtime!

[lpjohnso]

You all are so awesome. I can’t begin to tell you how much we have gotten out of your posts and how much we appreciate all of your suggestions and support.

We will definitely check out that website. Thanks for sharing.

-Only have $5,000 credit card debt, but the rate is 20%.

-$50,000 in student loans, all federal so rate is nice and low at 3-4%. Payments are $400/combined per month.

-Car payments…here’s where we’re taking it in the behind.
Payment for 2014 Honda Odyssey is $440/mo on a 4 year lease.
Payment for owned 2013 Toyota Prius is $667/mo. at 10%. (ok, you can all stop laughing now. My pride was already limping around, and then I had to expose that).
So, car payments=$1100/mo.
Originally the loan for the Prius was for $38,000 for the $27,000 car. This is a result of a series of trading in new cars every 1-2 years and rolling the losses into the new car loans. Never do this. Duh, I know, right? Well, now we owe $27,000 and it’s worth $18,000. No one will refinance or let us trade it in because we are so underwater. That is a huge part of the “chipping away at debt” that I was talking about. We need to continue throwing as much extra money at that damn car to get rid of that ungodly payment that is slowly sucking away at my soul.

And yes, we DO have 3 dogs too many.

[lpjohnso]

Ha! We DID love it there when we lived there for 6 years. Really miss the 4 seasons and the $100,000 home prices. Alas, North County is in our blood. Hate the thought that our boys may never be able to afford their own home here though.

[lpjohnso]

Wow. We thank each and every one of you so much for taking your time to share so many excellent thoughts and advice. Many of the issues you guys are going back and forth about are the same details and concerns we were mulling over. I wish I could respond to each post individually.

In regards to renting, we wish that was an option. We have 3 dogs and 3 young boys and someone would probably be out of their mind to rent to us (However, we are borderline OCD and anally retentive so our home sparkles, damn it). Furthermore, we see that we would most likely be paying more rent then we are for the mortgage. We really don’t like the idea of paying someone else’s mortgage again. We did that for long enough!

3 kids, so there you go. Sorry, should’ve stated that from the beginning. We live in Discovery Hills and Discovery Elementary is stellar. Obviously we are thinking what’s best long term and trying to put the kids first. With that said, downsizing and moving to a less desirable school district wouldn’t fly.

To help clarify, the house is a 1400 sqft single family (can’t imagine going much smaller at this point) short sale and we bought for $330,000 with only 3.5% down. We currently owe $310,000. Yes, according to Dave Ramsey we shouldn’t have bought at all. And perhaps we shouldn’t have, because look at us now, posting about hard times. But, we are so happy that we did. We see the timing was pretty incredible, and we would be totally priced out now. So when I mentioned buying something else, I suppose I meant moving somewhere like Colorado (for real, so that’s really funny that Colorado was mentioned). The equity is insane to us. We have never dealt with money like that before, and that should explain some of our fantasies to take the money and run with it.

We love the house, the schools, the neighborhood and town so much that we could happily stay here until the house is paid off. After everyone’s help on this thread and much discussion, we are going to pick up some extra shifts at work, sell a kidney or 2 on the black market, and go with Option #1.

Thank you all so very much 🙂

[lpjohnso]

sdsurfer, you’re so welcome! I’d definitely take you up on that! 🙂

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