Balling on a Budget: The challenges of buying your first home

House Yesterday, I ran into two very cool twenty-somethings, legal employees who are looking to buy their first homes in my neighborhood. We spent over an hour talking about the home-buying process, the rewards of home ownership, and the unique challenges of home ownership that most renters may not be prepared for.

I spent a blog post explaining why twenty-somethings should buy homes now, but there are a few challenges that you must take care of during the process:

You need to understand the home buying process. Purchasing your first home can be a confusing, intimidating process. Before getting started, make sure you understand the real estate process, lest you fall prey to rogue real estate agents, predatory lenders, and botched deals.

Although there are many helpful vendors out there, don’t depend completely on the people who are selling you a product to give you objective information. I know several people who lost thousands because they didn’t fully understand the process.

There’s plenty of information out there to give you a good overview of the process and some tips. Check out HUD, About.com, Kiplinger, and Smart Money to get started.

You need good credit. Each twenty-something should check his or her credit report three times each year using the free credit reporting systems online. You get one free report per year from the three reporting bureaus, and your credit score — aka FICO score — is the key to getting a good interest rate. Not only will you have a better picture of your financial health, but you will also catch identity theft.

If you have credit problems — such as late payments, credit limits to the max, or even lack of credit — you can talk to credit counselors and loan officers to get input on strategies that will improve your credit score and make you more attractive to lenders. Having a few problems on your credit doesn’t automatically disqualify you, though. I was a little irresponsible with a department store credit card I got when I was a freshman in college, but using strategies from credit counselors made everything even out.

You need savings. I encourage everyone to look for those home ownership programs that will help you with a down payment and closing costs. I got over $40,000 from state and federal sources that are often overlooked.

However, there is a significant investment required. I put a little over $1000 down to qualify for the home ownership programs, and as part of your initial offer to purchase a home, you need to put some money down as “earnest money.” Also, I had to purchase a refrigerator, washer, dryer, kitchen items, and furniture, which are important but should not be the source of more credit card debt. I saved and saved beforehand until I could pay cash for most of these items.

You need to continue saving. If there’s a problem at your house, it’s your responsibility to fix it. Pipes burst? You call the plumber. AC or heat not working? You call the technician. I think you get the idea: there’s no more landlord to call in order to take care of household repairs.

If you purchase a home, you need to save at least 1% of the home’s value each year and devote it solely to a home maintenance fund for emergencies. Purchase a home warranty that will cover repairs during your first year or more — my contractor has fixed small things for me at no charge because of my warranty.

And if you have a homeowners association (HOA), figure out what repairs they cover. My HOA costs a pretty penny (over $100 each month), but they take complete care of my lawn and garden area, exterior water and sewage problems, and exterior painting.

You need to stay on top of things. The home buying process takes a lot of paperwork and people management. Make multiple copies of your tax returns, pay stubs, and loan applications, and keep them in a safe place. Turn in applications and forms in person, if possible. Follow up with all of the people you meet in the process and make sure your real estate agent, loan officer, and attorney keep their promises.

Finally, you need patience. Finding the right home, real estate agent, and loan package can be an arduous journey. Doing it right means conducting careful research, talking with many people, taking time from work, filling out countless forms, and waiting on things to be approved. In fact, it took me a few weeks shy of a year from thinking “Hey, I want to buy a house!” to my closing date. Many people give up because of the time involved, but patience will definitely pay off.

Again, I recommend that twenty-somethings purchase homes if they’re planning on staying put for the next 3-5 years. The time is now to take advantage of the nation’s housing situation. Home ownership is deeply rewarding, but be ready for the challenges that lie ahead.

May 15, 2008 | Filed Under Blog

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Why I left my political career

Earlier in the week, I talked about the surge in twenty-somethings’ political interest and discussed the things I gained from my career in politics. To recap, I spent two years doing grassroots organizing and fundraising and compliance consulting all over North Carolina through local organizations, 10 political committees, and 85 candidates.

It was a truly rewarding experience, but late last year, I decided to make a career shift and return to non-profit fundraising. Here are the challenges I faced that ultimately led to me leaving my political career:

Ageism. During my first week on the job, a workplace bully began attacking me and a few older activists yelled at my bosses for “hiring a kid.” I smoothed these issues over by standing up to the bully and by winning over the vocal critics through relationship building, but I still had to regularly confront subtle criticism about my age from older activists.

My bosses would sometimes throw me menial tasks — making copies, assembling notebooks, proofreading memos, entering data, moving furniture, and taking out the trash (yes, the trash) — because I was young. Luckily, it was only a small percentage of my work — most my cohorts were in completely clerical jobs — but it was still tough.

But the most annoying aspect of political ageism is when clients and candidates didn’t listen to me. I tried to consult a political organization through a much-needed reorganization of their governance and financial structures, but the organization’s leader dismissed my carefully researched advice because “that kid can’t possibly know what he’s talking about.” Two years after my recommendations were ignored, the organization is now facing a leadership crisis in which two people claim to be president, membership has plummeted, and their finances have been depleted due to frivolous spending. If only they had listened!

Rankism. I had to endure rude treatment from people who looked down on me because I wasn’t a senior staffer. Some political candidates who paid for and benefited from my consulting would not return my phone calls and would only speak to senior staffers, and a state-wide civil rights leader abruptly ended a phone conversation with me because he “doesn’t have time for peons.”

Lack of work/life balance. When I moved to fundraising and compliance consulting, my boss put 18-20 things on my project list to juggle at any given time, and I regularly pulled 12-15 hour days. My commute was 35 minutes each way, and I had to travel across the state many evenings to meet with clients. Add weekend events at least twice each month, and you have the perfect recipe for burnout. This is probably one of the most common complaints about political work.

Low pay. Most young political staffers don’t get paid much at all. I knew several twenty-somethings who worked full-time for less than $30,000 without any benefits. I fared significantly better in pay and benefits, but I still had trouble paying all of my bills while creating emergency savings. And it was laughable to even think of saving for retirement or investing.

“Loss of voice.” Taking a political job usually means the end of expressing one’s own opinion publicly. Blogs must be taken down, social networking pages have to be cleaned up significantly, and no staff can talk with the press unless authorized to give a statement. And anything you say publicly must go along with your bosses and clients’ stances.

I had to bite my tongue regularly and not say a word when things happened that I didn’t agree with from policy decisions to statements, from workplace issues to my bosses’ actions. Heck, I even had to work for candidates whose ideals and voting records made me cringe, but I couldn’t say a word about it.

And finally, I left politics because race matters. Black and latino political staffers are often confined to grassroots organizing and GOTV jobs throughout their careers, and the senior level jobs are almost always out of reach. There are only a handful of minority political executives, lobbyists, and fundraisers across the nation and only one national black pollster. There are even fewer black candidates who run competitive, party-supported campaigns in districts that aren’t majority minority as dictated by the Voting Rights Act.

The few minority political staffers have to walk a thin tight-rope similar to Barack Obama’s struggle with race. I felt racial discrimination from a handful of the more closed-minded people I encountered, and my bosses expected me to connect heavily with the black community and “be black” at work. At the same time, some black activists vocally questioned if I was authentically black because I didn’t graduate from a historically black college, I date a white woman, and I practice progressive politics.

Although I have been fighting it all of my life, I detest “black enough” racial politics and refuse to play those petulant games. I had to find a job in which my race is deemed completely unimportant to the quality of my work.

So yes, political work is challenging. I still stand behind the things I gained from this work. It has helped me tremendously and has given me the best gift I could have received — thick skin.

But when people ask me about my career in politics, there’s only one quote that can accurately describe how I feel: “I’m glad I did it, partly because I enjoyed it, but mostly because I’ll never have to do it again” (Mark Twain).

May 9, 2008 | Filed Under Blog, Career

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Things I learned from a career in politics

Twenty-somethings are engaged in politics like never before. Online communications, social networking tools and the general buzz around the this year’s elections have made us more socially conscious and politically active than ever. The zeitgeist has no doubt made countless twenty-somethings consider making political work their career, but twenty-somethings should apply some serious thought before deciding to work in politics.

The excitement around 2006 led me to take a political job. I spent two years working in North Carolina’s political realm, doing grassroots organizing (canvassing, phone banks, training, and voter outreach) and fundraising and campaign finance consulting. I worked with state-wide organizations, groups in all 100 North Carolina counties, 10 political committees, and over 85 candidates.

But late last year, I decided to shift careers and go back to non-profit fundraising, and I want to present the logic I used to make that decision. In two posts, I want to look at the plusses and the minuses of a career in politics.

Let’s start with the positives — things I gained from being a political staffer:

A “tenacity in pursuit” work ethic. Campaigns are time-driven machines that require careful planning, prioritization of tasks and quick execution. Good political staffers have to be fast, focused, flexible and ready to respond to anything while under all kinds of stress, and those skills have tremendously helped me in the “real world” workplace.

Management skills. A campaign’s success is driven by the staff’s ability to get volunteers, surrogates, consultants and candidates to perform key tasks — even when it’s pure grunt work or something the person does NOT want to do. These skills give former political workers an edge on managing employees, clients, donors, and volunteers.

Cool travel and even and phenomenal networking. I put well over 35,000 miles on my car in two years and it was worth every dollar I spent in gas. I got to drive all around North Carolina, meeting great people from all walks of life — voters, local leaders, candidates at all levels, elected officials, activists, political consultants and state-wide leaders. I was able to build relationships that I still keep today, find several mentors, and learn more about the state I now call home.

Workplace research and strategy skills. No matter the specific role, political staffers have to conduct careful, intense research on your candidate, opposition, and electorate before launching the campaign. The research makes sure you’re looking at all angles to find strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats before charting a course. It’s very valuable for me in my current job as we create new fundraising programs.

Technological skills. At every level of modern campaigns, staffers have to daily use technology for data and volunteer management, voter contact, fundraising, and polling, to name a few things. I’d taken some great computer classes in college, but political work refined my web, database, and Microsoft Office skills.

Being inside of the news. Once you work in politics, you can never read the news in the same way. It’s pretty cool to pick up a newspaper and read things that you knew days prior to the press finding out. It’s cooler to read a politician’s statement and know the staffer who actually wrote it. It’s coolest when you wrote a statement yourself or were directly involved in something that made the news.

Impressing people after you move on. People, especially donors, seem to be impressed by my political past — far more than when I actually worked in politics, to be honest. It is the launching point for many conversations in social and work situations, and the skills I gained from working in politics undoubtedly helped me land the job I currently have and will continue to help in future job searches.

And finally, stargazing. When I was in politics, I regularly ran into political celebrities — congressmen, state-wide elected officials, journalists, and pundits. Less often, but still exciting, I’d run into national people like Howard Dean and governors of other states. Just by volunteering last week, I saw both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama speak and was about 20 feet from BO. Exciting stuff.

The key, though, is to not simply stargaze; meeting these political celebrities provide great networking opportunities. I’d dare say that few of them know me from Adam — they meet thousands upon thousands of people — but I’ve taken the opportunity to network with their staffers, who’ve helped me get access to the celebrities when I’ve needed them and given me great advice.

And I’d be remiss not to mention how fun it was to run into political celebrities I’m not particularly fond of like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Kwame Kilpatrick, Mike Nifong, and even Star Jones. These are not my favorite people, but my encounters with them provide great content for random conversations, especially at parties.

These are the positive things that came out of my stint in politics. Stay tuned for a post looking at the negatives before deciding a career in politics is for you.

May 5, 2008 | Filed Under Blog

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