Please advise me! We are completely confused about what to do.
My husband works from home in tech and makes a good income. I also work from home part time in tech support. We have 3 kids and our oldest is starting Kindergarten this Fall. We live in a working-class suburb of Houston. My parents live here too and I grew up here. My parents watch the kids every Monday so I can work and they take them to sports twice a week. It's a big help and the kids love them!! We pay for preschool 3 days of the week so I can work too.
We have a big beautiful house, but the area is so shitty! If I didn't grow up here, I would have never moved here. There are low income apartments and crime. Our little neighborhood of big older homes is wonderful, but right outside is homelessness and vacant shopping centers. The elementary school that we are zoned to is very poorly rated. We already decided that we aren't sending our daughter there.
Now we have a problem, because we got used to the big home and with 3 kids and 2 adults working from home, it feels like we need the space. We are always at home and use every room in our 5 bedroom house. This home is only worth $300K because of the bad area. We found a private school to send our daughter for Kindergarten at $11K a year. It's very nice, but with 3 kids, we will eventually need to move for better public schools. Should we move now? If we moved we would have to pay more for the same size of house in a better area.
We have been able to save a lot of money living here. The preschool is wonderful and only $600 for 2 kids. My parents watch the kids for free on Mondays and we have never had to hire a babysitter. We have over $1M saved. We both enjoy our tech jobs working from home and don't want to retire until the youngest kid goes off to college 2036. Sometimes I don't know the purpose of saving this money. Especially when I see my friends living in nice suburbs, I wonder why I'm still in my crappy hometown.
Should we spend $500K on a similar size house somewhere that is not Houston (haven't decided where) or pay $11K for private school? When I calculated it was cheaper to do the private school for 1 kid, but once 2 kids where in private school, then it was cheaper to move. I am also worried about our home here going down even further in price. We bought it at $325K in 2014. Hurricane Harvey destroyed many homes in this area in 2017 and now there are a lot for sale, vacant homes and more crime. Homes are selling for under $300K and are on the market for 6+ months. Also we could flood again, since homes here flood frequently... there have been 3 big floods in 20 years. Could prices go lower? I will be sad to leave my parents, but I don't want to be the last one jumping ship here.