We live in an apartment, a small vintage apartment tucked into a lovely, expensive neighborhood in Chicago. Our rent hasn't gone up in the seven years we've lived here and we have a compassionate landlord and wonderful neighbors. Despite this just-fine set-up, we want to expand our family, we need more space and we really want to buy a home. Sometimes, I curse the days when we were not yet married or parents and made nearly double the income we now earn. Instead of investing in a home back then, we invested in eating out, happy hours, vacations and dry-cleaning. It all seems so frivolous now, but it all seemed perfectly reasonable then. The thing is, if we had bought a home back then, there's a very good chance that all the life changes, wedding costs, medical bills, layoffs, following passions, family traumas, credit card pay-down and a child later, we wouldn't be able to afford it now anyway.
The what-if game is just that, game. But the reality of paying a mortgage while dealing with the stress and changes that your family goes through over the course of your life together is very serious business. Perhaps my husband and I are dreaming and planning at the right time, when foreclosures and mortgage messes are at the top of the news many nights a week. We're thoroughly scared and trying very hard to save enough and find the right place at the right time, all with an understanding that everything can change in an instant.
Some families are facing each month's mortgage payment with desperation and dread, feeling the effects of being in way over their heads in the house they call home (for now). Some people blame the banks, others the lack of reliable credit and home-buying counseling, still others blame the families for being wooed by McMansions or not saving for rainy days and lost jobs. Katherine Meyer at The Juggle's opened up the issue to a stream of both critical and compassionate comments in her post on the subject that highlights families forced to take second -- and even third -- jobs to keep their homes.
I have to think the McMansioning of America and the false sense of wealth perpetuated by credit card addiction are at play here, along with piles of other issues many families choose to keep locked away in the basement (or the fitness room or the three-car garage or the crawl space above the fifth floor). As hard as it is to be realistic and honest about what we make and where we live and what we can really afford, I have to believe it can only help us get our houses (or our mortgages-to-be) in order.
