Laura and I recently decided, as we have several times, that we need to find a larger abode, and one that will allow cats. This time, however, we decided to look at houses for rent instead of the apartments that have disappointed us all the previous times, so we went to a duplex that was (half) for rent not far away. It was great! Almost twice the size of our apartment, small enclosed yard where Laura could garden, pet-friendly, residential area, apparently nice next-door-neighbor landlord, still within easy biking distance of work... and $1750 a month. That's actually quite reasonable for the area, sadly, so we considered it. But finally we decided that we just couldn't justify it to ourselves. Yes, it would be nicer—but so would a several-week-vacation to Hawaii every year, and that would probably be cheaper than all the extra money we'd be pouring into rent.
Then, that got me thinking more about the black hole that is rent, and it just made me more and more annoyed. Why should we contribute to someone else buying a house almost for free? We want a house; we should contribute to that instead! So then we started looking at condos, as strange as that seems to me (I've never been able to shake the association that condos are for old people in Florido, for whatever reason). They're still expensive, but unlike actually houses they might be within the realm of possibility—I'm willing to pay more if I don't feel like I'm throwing my money away. So I dug around some and read up on condos, and am now well armed with information, the most important points I gleaned being:
- Buying a condo is vastly superior to renting.
- Renting is vastly superior to buying a condo.
We figure it's at least looking into at least, so the next stop is a realtor who can tell us just how many of our children we'd have to be prepared to sign away for a condo we'd actually want to live in.
It's just so frustrating, because here I am, married, have a master's degree, have a good job at a great, successful company; this is traditionally the part where we buy a house and settle down, but instead we're still trying to figure out if such a thing is even theoretically possible. Where's my American Dream, damn it?
Category: Life
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