Life is expensive.  Period.

It doesn’t matter where you live or what you do for a living, everything is just expensive.  Houses, cars, clothes, eating out, vacations, yadda, yadda, yadda…  It doesn’t help me that we live in a very high cost of living area.  We’ve tossed around the idea of moving to a more “affordable” part of the country but that would likely mean a pay cut for Scott. If that happens then really what is the point in living in a less expensive area?

I was watching House Hunters the other night and there was a young couple, maybe early 20s, looking to buy their first house.  They lived in Utah and their budget was $250,000 (roughly).  I imagined what you could get here for that price and was laughing on the inside.  Maybe you could get a 900 sq ft, 2 bedroom, 1 bath bungalow on a postage stamp sized lot.  Then the realtor pulls into the driveway of a home that she is going to show the couple.  It’s listed at $210,000.  It looked something like this:

Four bedrooms, three bathrooms and over 3,000 sq ft.  We paid more than that for our 2 bedroom 1.5 bath townhouse six years ago.  I had a little teeny tiny bit of house envy.  But I digress..

What I am really trying to get at here is when people say that they’re not going to do something (buy a house, get married, have a child) until they can afford it.  If I (we) waited until I (we) could afford any of those things, then I’d still be single and probably living at home with my parents or maybe renting a 1 bedroom apartment somewhere.  Like I said, life is expensive.  We don’t use credit cards (now) and we don’t live beyond our means, but when we got engaged in 2003 we couldn’t really afford to pay for an engagement ring let alone a wedding.  Yet somehow we made it happen.  We saved and saved and made payments and eventually it was behind us.  The same holds true for buying a home and having kids.  You’ll never be able to afford either of those things, in my opinion, unless you are Mr or Mrs Moneybags.  If you keep waiting until you can afford it, it will never happen.

I do not regret any of the expensive decisions that I (we) have made in life.  I am 100% happy and content with everything that we’ve bought and done.  But I know that if I waited until I thought we could afford any of it, I’d be nowhere near where I am today.

Related Posts with Thumbnails