Locked in....

I was able to lock in my mortgage rate with my lender today. 3.25%! Pretty fantastic!
Unfortunately, we had to push back the closing date because it's taken so long to get the inspection and we still have to schedule the appraisal. They now say October 31st but I feel I'll be lucky to be in the house by Christmas. It's still a long ways from a done deal. There are at least $6000 worth of repairs to make but I don't know if that's before or after I have possession of the house. The sellers don't want to make any repairs and they feel that they've priced the house low enough to cover anything that would come up. Maybe they have, I don't know. I can cover the repairs but it doesn't leave me much to do the things I want/need to do to move in. There are also a ton of other little repairs...like anything over 40 it's showing some wear. I'm a little worried about the continuous bleed of money but I guess that's part of home ownership.

This whole thing worries me because of how much I don't know. What I do know says I can do it but I'll maybe not have much wiggle room. If I stick to the budget, there should still be money going into savings to cover emergencies but nothing is budgeted to play. That kind of sucks but I guess that's the trade off. Most people pay more in rent than I will pay on my house (before the insurance coverage for homeowners and flood). My $525 rent currently pays water, sewer, and garbage. I'll have to cover those plus the $275 more a month for the house payment and insurance. I can sit and obsess about it or take a risk and go forward. There are some days I just want to say "no, NO, NOOOOOOO!" and run away screaming to some dark safe place. But I'm going to take the risk...and really hope I get another raise in January.