How do you value happiness in regards to a house or location move? (Or other large purchases)
Here is a quick intro to know where I’m coming from. I’m not trying to get into a case study but want to give enough info to explain the question.
My wife and I have 2 kids (3 yr old daughter and 4-month-old son) and we purchased our first house ~2 years ago in North Austin (owe $239k and valued ~$315k now). We moved to location mainly to be close to work for both of us. We like the area OK and love our house. I decided to leave the crazy world of video game development and I hit the jackpot in jobs working from home for a software company. They pay me well, I get to work from home, unlimited vacation, great benefits, I love what I do, etc… Before the birth of our son, my wife quit her job to be a SAHM. Now we are both at home and loving our new life.
Now, we are completely flexible in where we live and I just need an internet connection. We do love Austin and want to stay in the area since we have a lot of family and friends here. The problem is they mostly live in West Austin which is about a 30-minute drive without traffic and a whole lot more during traffic hours.
We threw out the idea of moving where we could be within walking/biking distance of friends, family, walking and hiking trails, the lake, a grocery store, (better) schools, etc… The problem is that we would most likely have to spend $375-$400k to get what we want in the area. Since we are both at home almost all the time, being close to family/friends, outdoor activities, and other conveniences is very attractive to us. We don’t really have that where we are now.
We can still afford a house at that price range and still save a good amount but it will affect how fast we pay off the house and invest. It boils down to for us, is the price difference worth all the benefits? We have been going back and forth on the topic as it’s a significant number that we could use towards FI. My wife doesn’t really want to move once the kids are in school (fall 2019) so we have time to think this through fully.
So this comes back down to my question to you. How do you value happiness in regards to a house or location move? I think it’s way easier for me to judge smaller purchases, but when it comes to things like closeness to family/friends and house location against a large sum of money, it becomes much more difficult to quantify. Anyone else gone through a similar decision?