How a scratch card helped me become a homeowner at age 22
Our downstairs neighbors tried to get us out of the house.
It was September 2021. I was 22 and working as a paraprofessional at an elementary school in Boise, Idaho, making $9 an hour. My pay didn’t go far there, so I found a roommate to split the $1,900 monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment just outside of town. We had met one night when her dog, a Rottweiler mix, ran over to play with my dog, Gaspard, a Labrador husky. We were both college students – I was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in finance while she was in medical school.
It started off well, but it quickly deteriorated in the way that usually happens with over-20s living with incompatible roommates.
Our neighbors initially had mild noise complaints, but things escalated when my roommate started entertaining her friends. They would get drunk, play loud games of ping pong and blast music long into the night. My roommate also left her dog in a kennel for over eight hours at a time, and the dog howled for someone to let her out. Fed up with the situation, our neighbors filed formal complaints with our management company to evict us.
I was also tired of our living situation. In addition, my roommate was often behind on her bills, and I had to take out student loans to pay over $2,000 a month to keep our rent and utility bills up.
In an attempt to plan my escape, I searched for a one-bedroom, pet-friendly apartment for less than $1,700 a month on a rental listing website, but came up empty. On Facebook Marketplace, I found a room in a cute house for just $500 a month — but then I read the description and changed my mind: “Single man with one room available for single woman ages 18-35.”
Envisioning the next chapter of my life helped me deal with the stress of my current living situation. I would spend hours browsing Zillow, looking at trailers, duplexes, and “handyman specials” for sale.
I couldn’t afford to buy a house at the time. I didn’t make enough money to save meaningfully, and I had about $40,000 in student debt. But I scrolled through lists as if money were no object, considering each home’s qualities and trade-offs. I also started using a banking app to check my credit score every week, which hovered around 750 — a score I understood would help me get a good interest rate on a mortgage one day.
Little did I know this day would come sooner than I ever imagined.
Over the Christmas break, I loaded up my car and drove Gaspard for four hours down an icy highway to spend time with my family in Idaho Falls, Idaho. When my two siblings arrived on Christmas Eve, we played a game my mother invented called “the bucket game.”
The goal is to toss a beanbag chair across the room into a five-gallon bucket to win a scratch card. When it was time to play, we gathered in the living room and waited for my mom to bring in the $150 worth of tickets she picked up at a gas station.
After a few rounds, my deck of cards was noticeably smaller than everyone else’s because I kept missing the bucket. When I missed again, my mom allowed me to take another turn, and when the bean bag made it, I grabbed a $5 Silver Bells Christmas scratcher and put it on my stack.
When all the tickets were accounted for, we all sat down and scratched at them. Occasionally one of us would call a $5 or $20 win. My Silver Bells ticket had five winning numbers on top: 47, 44, 21, 41, and 39. If you discovered any of the numbers, you would win a prize to win. It wasn’t until I got to the last row of the ticket that I discovered the number 39. Just below the number was a $50,000 cash prize. I sat there quietly rereading the lines.
“I think I won,” I announced in disbelief to the room.
Everyone rushed to look at the ticket and agreed it looked like a winner, but to be sure we all got into a car and drove to the only gas station in town open on Christmas Eve. I went to the scanner and checked my ticket. In small letters on the blue screen was the word ‘Winner’.
I offered to share the money with my family, but my older brother told me to keep it. He and my family were genuinely happy for me – they didn’t want a penny of my winnings. With their blessing, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the money: buy a house.
I received a check for $37,000 at the Idaho Lottery’s headquarters the following Monday, after being told I could prepay the taxes on the gambling winnings.
Then followed the search for a house that I could afford. All the time I had spent on Zillow over the past few months served me well because I knew the market. I knew I could afford a house between $90,000 and $150,000, but I wanted to stay on the lower end of that range. My goals were to pay the lowest monthly mortgage possible and pay less than what I would normally spend on rent.
After extending my search to all of Idaho, I found three homes I liked in Pocatello, which I had visited a few times as a child. It had a reputation because it is one of the most dangerous cities in the state. A real estate agent on Zillow offered to visit the homes and give me a video tour. After looking at the first house, he called me and said, “I’m not letting you live in this part of town.”
A tour of the second house was disappointing. The third house was small, but had a spacious garden and did not need immediate repair. It was listed for $120,000, and I told the real estate agent I was interested.
The agent gave me contact information for a mortgage banker to get pre-approval for a loan. The only difficult part of the approval process was the income verification. Moving to Pocatello meant giving up my elementary school job, which I loved. Instead, to meet the income requirements, I found work in sales at a call center for $15 an hour. With my credit rating, new source of income, and down payment, I was able to get pre-approved for a $150,000 loan.
When I went to Pocatello one snowy day to see the house in person, I immediately fell in love with it. It was 100 years old and 700 square feet – a perfect size for Gaspard and me. The front yard and backyard were spacious and the bathroom had a lavender bath. The floors were a little slanted, but the quirks made me want the house.
The broker offered $117,000 with $3,000 in serious money (a deposit in good faith). My down payment was $23,000. A home inspector inspected the home to make sure it was in order. The banker I worked with spoke to me regularly on the phone and answered all my questions. He explained that interest rates would rise in the near future, so it was good that I bought now. My mortgage has an interest rate of 3.375 percent and a monthly payment of $591.
I gave my roommate a month’s notice that I would move. She was upset and turned down my offer to help her find a new roommate, but it was for the best.
After the moving costs, I had $7,000 of my winnings left in savings, and five weeks after winning the lottery, I settled into my new home.
I’m 24 now and I’m graduating in the fall with a degree in finance and marketing from Idaho State University. I quit my job at the call center. Instead, I make about $5,000 a month from the videos I make on TikTok, where I’ve gained a following by telling stories about my life.
It feels impossible for the majority of twenty-somethings to become homeowners. The cost of living is way too high and it can be hard for young people to get ahead no matter how hard they work and try to save. If I hadn’t won the money, it would have taken me years to buy a home and it’s hard to tell if I would have gotten a good interest rate on a loan or an affordable monthly payment.
Gaspard now has a younger brother: a 1-year-old Labrador husky named Garbanzo. We like living in Pocatello, where the people are friendly and where there are beautiful hills, mountains and accessible trails. I never thought I could feel so at home.