Push it

I had my last personal training session last night, at least for now. I will probably hire him again in a month or so for an additional boost.

I was definitely challenged last night, and by the end, I was sweaty and exhausted, but I felt amazing. And proud of myself, seeing where I am improving and getting stronger, knowing I pushed myself to do everything that the trainer asked of me.

I think getting challenged and pushed are really good things, despite how they might feel uncomfortable at the time. It's good to show you your progress, where you have gotten better, and where you can still improve.

How have you been pushed or challenged recently? How has it helped you? What areas could you use a push or need to be challenged in?

I am going to make every effort

to not have any sugar from now till the time we are back east, with the exception of thanksgiving day, because we are going to someone's house for potluck and it would probably be rude to not have any desserts.

We've both been pretty good about not having a lot of sugar lately, but we know it's just inevitable that we will eat like crap back east, there's no way around it. So we want to make sure we are really good before hand to sort of offset it.

On a side note, I cannot believe Thanksgiving is next week, and then we are back east two weeks after that. Our trip came up fast, but we are both so excited to go back and see everyone (Mik, we can't wait to see you guys).

One step closer

To a house.

T and I went to a first-time home buyers class this week, and it was very informative. They walked us through everything you have to do when you are buying a house, what the different stages are, what you have to do to make an offer, how a real estate agent helps, etc.

And they also talked about money and mortgages. They do have no-money down programs, but you have to pay closing costs. Or you can pay down "points" to get a better mortgage price, or if you put down 0-5% of the cost, you get a much better interest rate. We figure we won't be able to hit 5% by the time we're thinking of looking, but we will easily have 3% down, possibly 4% down, which makes our interest rate MUCH better.

They also talked about what determines your interest rate, and while credit score was a big factor, so is debt to income ratio, and my debt to income ratio is fabulous. And they don't look at total debt you owe, they look at your monthly payments. And I only have a small school loan and the car payment, which they pretty much expect everyone to have. One thing they said was make sure you don't buy a new car before trying to get a mortgage, because they don't want to see new debt right before you qualify for a mortgage.

And they didn't talk about job history. They said you need two years of W-2s, two months of pay stubs and proof of your assets. I asked about if you are a contractor or self-employed, how you verify that, and they just said they just look at the tax returns for that.

So I feel like this is a goal we can really work towards, and we will continue to save as much as we can and pay down my school loan and start paying on Tim's.