Big kid stuff
Kerrie and I may be taking a major life step in the upcoming months that has caused me a little bit of anxiety lately: purchasing our first home. It’s not that we can’t afford it, it’s just that, no matter how well off someone may be, it’s a huge purchase. I thought buying a car was hard – imaging dropping thousands of dollars on a wooden frame with walls.
No one should feel sorry for us, by any means. Kerrie’s mother owns the house, purchased for both business and investment reasons, so we get along with our landlord. We’ve managed to live here with relative ease, paying minimal rent while Don, Kerrie’s stepfather and La-Z-Boy salesman, occupies our basement.
At the same time, it’s hard going from a modest rent payment in a house that we’ve had complete control over for quite a while to paying over double for the same place, except this time without the luxury of sending our sprinkler maintenance bills to the landlord. It’s trading the easy road of renting from relatives for the more expensive, but better rewarding road of actually owning a house and getting some sort of a return on the money put into it.
We’d never think of moving at this point in our lives at all anyway – we’ve put too much into making this specific building our home and we wouldn’t want to have to start all over again with some new building; new landscaping, more painting, new furniture. Thanks, we’ll keep what we have.
Still, I can’t help but feel strong-armed into this by the laws governing the South Dakota First Time Homeowners incentive – we’ve got to move quickly while we’re still eligible, and to me it feels too quick. I’ll have to give up some superfluous things in my life; we won’t be able to save as much, we’ll be harder pressed to have the money to go on vacations, I’ll have to cut back on what in a few months may seem like an excessive 50 dollar a month book budget.
In short, I’ll have to actually stop whining and realize what I have, how fortunate I am to have this opportunity to enjoy the amenities that are presented to me before things get really crazy with kids and career changes and all of those other life-changing happenings. I’ll have to — * gasp * — grow up.
But really, what would I have to write about if I did that?