A little background. My wife and I were both working full time 2 years ago, we owned 2 homes and rented one out to my inlaws in trade for child care for our child (it was cheaper than childcare). We made decent $ and saved about $500 a month + putting an additional 150 a month into a 401k acct. At that point we had a 2nd child, when the 2nd child was 3 months old we noticed he was having some issues of not developing. At his 3 mo appt our dr advised to keep an eye on him and we could keep watch on him. By 6 mos he was not able to do more than he was at birth. At this point we started him in therapy and saw multiple specialists. The frequent dr appts and therapy left me to go part time and take a 12k a year pay cut, we also had a large amount of medical bills coming in. We decided to sell one of our vehicles that we had a loan on and buy a car with cash to lower bills. We found a nice 70k mile car for $5k. Things were OK but not great on the financial end. We could not continue to save much but we would throw in whatever we could. We spent a full year visiting dr's and not getting answers, we drained most of our savings on therapy and medical bills. I lost my job after being part time for a year. At this point we started to worry as we had used a large part of our savings. We listed our home and had no bites. The in laws started paying rent in january of this year and cover the mortgage on our second home, I have been doing odd jobs wherever and whenever to make excess cash. I also have been searching for jobs non stop. We ended up selling our home for a decent loss, completely draining our savings and having to put a large amount of the sale on a cc via a promo check with 0% interest. We moved into my parents home, which was supposed to be a temp situation. We have managed to put 7K into savings since living here and I am starting to get some call backs one jobs.
Now I am looking at working full time that will produce pay equivalent to what I was making part time. We have made progress with our son, who is still very behind, but is getting county funded therapy and is not having expensive test done on a regular basis. Our issue is this we have $15k in cc debt from selling our home and paying medical bills, and my parents are wanting us out soon (before the end of the year). We have been looking at places to live, but we need 3 br's since our dd child has some sever sensitivity issues and cannot share a room. With that being said any 3 br apartments in our area are 1100-1400 a month. We can get a mortgage for considerably less than that ($800-850 PITI). If we get the mortage out savings acct will be back to 1k and we will still have terrible amounts of cc debt, however we will be able to pay ~double the minimum payment. If we rent we will be able to keep the savings, or pay off some of the cc debt, but not be able to save or pay more than the minimum payment on the cc.
Please help. Here are our current bills. $140mo parking $367mo car payment $240mo car payment 2 (transmission went out in the cash car) (we already tried getting rid of the car payments but we are upside down since we put over 2k miles per mo on the cars living at my parents) $110 cell phone (moving to republic wireless when the contracts are up in jan) $170 student loan $52 min payment on cc 1 (0% for another 10mos) 5k bal $310 min payment on cc2 (0% fo another 13mos) 10,200 bal $65-400mo for medical bills $450mo gas (again, my parents live out in the boonies which is an issue) My wife brings home $2800 a month. Right now we pay extra on the credit cards, my DD child also has a bit of a special diet needs and is still in diapers. He also has medications he is on which I would say run an average of $40 a month.
I have been bringing in a little over 1k a month doing side work. the jobs I have been applying for are going to pay me ~30k if I get one of them.
So that being said, what should we do? Buy a home or rent? I am a very handy (I have been doing contracting on the side) and plan on buying a home we can put some sweat equity into. I am also fine with a very small home since I realize paying off that debt is most important. I wont be doing anything until I land some employment full time.
One last option is buying a cheaper home that needs work (I have an abundance of experience with this). We have found some homes that need ~30-40k worth of work and will cost us ~70-80k. Once fixed up the home will be worth 130-140k. We would get the mortgage and my parents would lend us the money to rehab it. It would keep our mortgage payment around 600mo PITI and my parents wouldnt want repayment for 12mos, at which point we could refinance. I feel this is the best option, but again I am looking for suggestions