Hi everyone,
First things first we have been following along MM for a few few years and while making small changes in the past, we are now getting ready to make a bigger jump towards financial freedom. Our story- we are a family of five, living in a small mountain town in B.C Canada we bought a house here 2 years ago with a small down payment. We are looking at listing our house (the market is hot right now) and for the next 3-4 yrs alternating living life between a small rental house in the winter and living in a airstream the rest of the year. Below is the math we've factored into this being a good decision for us, but wanting to check that we haven't forgotten something. So please let us know if we have!
The Math::
Currently we owe 300K on our mortgage, if we sell for what we think we can, we'll walk away with 100K after mortgage penalty and real estate agent fees. Currently we pay $7,000/yr to interest with only 13,000 going to principal.
Yearly:: In our house
Mortgage + Taxes - 24,960
City utilities - 1,280
Gas - 360
Hydro - 1,836
Internet - 960
= 29,396 (these are all the factors we wont have renting and living in our airstream)
** we also figure there's about 800 in wood for heating, and 7,000 in maintenance that's needed in the near future to our home
Yearly:: In Airstream/rental
Summer seasonal pad rental - 4,100 (includes water, electricity, internet)
Winter rent - 9,000
= 13,100
** both rentals will keep us as close to work as staying in our house
Difference of $16,296/yr
3 yrs- 48,888. 4 yrs 65,184
From selling our house we plan to be able to save 100k add the savings from either 3 or 4 yrs of living seasonally and enter the housing market with a min of 150k. We'd be looking at a smaller house, closer to work and school. Which even if we had to pay 300K for the right home we'd be in a lot better position to pay off our house faster then we are now. Currently we're house poor on one income, with 18yrs left in our mortgage.
We figured all other bills would stay the same which is why they haven't been listed. Our main concerns is that in a hot market we either lose out on holding onto our house, or when the time comes to buy again we have to look at paying significantly more even for a smaller house. While these are what if's, still something we are considering.
There are other factors aside from money that are also big driving factors such as simplifying the way we live and having more freedom to travel with our kids.
Thanks for taking to time to read this, we'd love to hear any thoughts you might have!