Just on the point of the expensive house - my ultimate goal involves buying a nice, big roughly $700,000k house as our 'forever' home, probably in the next 5 years. Seems like this is almost universally frowned upon here, but one of our priorities is to have our dream house. We know we will be paying more in property taxes and bills, but obviously factor that into our plan.
Same here man, $700k would buy something pretty sufficient in my area for sure. Especially if I'm not choosy about the particular city we'd be living in. Right now I'm in a smallish condo, with a little one on the way (due August). I'm starting to get a little bit antsy about how things will look especially with my wife and I talking about her being at home and not working (at least for a while). Lots of things up in the air for us. So when I see posts like what I described, it has some kind of effect on me (and probably not a very good one).
Where do you live?!
Seriously, in Mid-Wisconsin, 700,000 will buy you a mansion with a giant home theater, bouncy castles in the basement, or all high end items with 15-20ft cathedral ceilings. I think the highest listing price I've seen in town is $450K, and that's an overbid with 7 bedrooms, 2 "family areas" and 5 bathrooms.
(I still don't get why you would need more than 2 bathrooms, unless you have house parties every week, but then I could probably "retire" with 450K socked away.)
Unfortunately, for real-estate and traffic, Southern California (Orange County to be exact). Prices are outrageous here. But if you think these prices are bad, it's *at least* 10-20% *more* in the SF Bay Area. It's unbelievable...
Anyway, I think we'd eventually want a single-family home especially if we have more than 2 kids (all yet TBD lol). But as it is, I think we're fine just as we are. In fact, we're about to have work done on our all-dirt yard and get it paved. Otherwise, my wife will not go out there. It would be nice to be able to spend some time outside in the back, even if it's a small space (450sq feet at most, roughly). And even getting the paver installation done is expensive so we're feeling tightfisted with the wallet. But when I think about everything we have now, I really can't and shouldn't complain. We are in a very good situation, financially speaking. True, not as great as a lot of other people in our general area most likely (e.g. those who can afford million dollar homes with little to no debt) but I have to keep reminding myself that this isn't a race... and to think about how foolish and petty I would be to, at the end of my life, be so proud as to say "look at my multi-million dollar McMansion!" (or just a single family home in the case of my area LOL) I'm already SMH
