The Hubs and I (ages 31 and 32) are a 1 income family with 2 kids, around 90k take-home (after taxes and health insurance). We currently save about 30% and give away about 10% of our take-home. No debt other than mortgage.
We are trying to decide if we should change houses. We live in Texas, where property taxes are high, but there is no state income tax. Current house is a remodeled late-70's with a pool and septic, on 0.8 acres in a nice established neighborhood. The pool and septic are money pits - we hate them; we don't love the amount of maintenance required by the yard, either. The house is terribly inefficient to heat and cool, despite an ass-load of blown-in insulation added this past spring. Otherwise we really enjoy our house and it lives well for us. We remodeled it with a modern aesthetic, which is near impossible to find in our area. As a Designer and a design-lover, aesthetics are important to our quality of life. Living in an ugly dump would quickly make us depressed.
We don't want to do it, but we are thinking we should get a different house. We could get a slightly smaller house on a significantly smaller lot, newer, with no money-pit septic or pool for roughly $100-130k less of a mortgage. We estimate that the switch would save us around $500-600 per month in mortgage, energy, and ongoing-repair costs (mainly re pool and septic, but other issues that pop up as well). But we'd have to go live in one of the awful (to us) "Texas-Tuscan" style houses with stupid ass archways and carpet everywhere. Plus there's the awfulness of moving again (it would make our 11th move in 11 years).
Do Mustachians ever care about aesthetics? Is style something you all threw to the wind long ago? Do you have advice for someone struggling with the anti-mustachianism of aesthetics? I'm new to this shiz, so you who are farther along in the game - I'm asking you.