We had been married for 19 years, our kids were ages 7, 9 and 12. My husband had changed jobs and was making a very good wage. We lived in a double wide trailer on the corner of a trailer park. But, even though it was a trailer park it was different, everyone there owned their lot. No lot rent. This was very unusual, but so nice, a step up!

We had lived in “trailers” most of our married life. We had a nice corner lot, almost a half acre in size and we had a 2 car garage. But the trailer was small and older, so we decided to trade it in for a brand new, much larger double wide. The payment, along with what we already owed on the lot was very high, even with the new wage he was making. But as we were told, we could probably refinance it at a lower payment in 2 years, so we took the plunge!

Well, in 2 years we quickly found out that most banks don’t like to refinance “mobile homes”. We were pretty much stuck! A year after buying it there were cutbacks at my husbands job. He had to take a $1600.00 a month pay cut!! I got a job and we were both working as much as we could. After a few years, I had grown to hate the new house. It took everything we had and the payment was always first, and we got behind on everything else. Late payments, and our credit was bad! We knew what we were paying for this place was the same amount as a very nice house would be! But it was still just a mobile home!

So we finally decided to let the bank have it back. We ended up moving down the road into a very small, old trailer. I am sure it gave the neighbors a lot to talk about. We had to drive by the new house to go to our little house. The little place had bedrooms smaller than a large closet and we had 3 kids!! Wow! Not only were we embarrassed, but so were our kids!! How could we end up this way?

That is when I found The Secret.

I read the book, watched the DVD! I got so excited! But here we were with damaged credit and no bank would give us a loan to buy a house!! But I became obsessed with looking at homes on Craig’s list, for homes for sale by owner. We found our dream house, a real house, with everything I had ever said I would like to have. Plenty of bedrooms, bathrooms, a wrap around porch, everything!! The owners wanted way more of a down payment than we could afford, but I made the appointment to see it anyway!

After seeing it, I wanted this house more than anything!! It was perfect!! My husband loved it, but as we left the house, he said “We can’t afford this house.” While we were looking at this house, we took pictures, of everything, every room! The owners were willing to finance it themselves, but we didn’t have the $20,000 down payment! I put these pictures on my computer as a screen saver and since our little place was so small, I could see these pictures scrolling across the screen all the time! I imagined where I would place the furniture in each room! Over and over I would imagine us in this house! We made them an offer, and they considered it, but then they told us they had a cash offer!! Our hopes were shattered, but I still concentrated on this house.

Next thing I know, it’s up for sale again. I contacted the owners and they started making a deal with us and our hopes were through the roof!! But next thing we know it’s been sold again!! We were so close, but no! Not going to happen.

We had just about given up on it when the owners contacted us! Whoa! We made a deal with them and even with our bad credit, we got it!! We didn’t have the $20,000 down payment, but they gave us 6 months to come up with just $10,000.

We did it a few months early, and we are now going on our 6th year living in our dream house! And, we have always made our payment at least 2 weeks early!! How sweet is that?