Hi. Thank you for your replies!
Why do you want a large house?
We have 3 kids and we both work from home. We need space so that it is quiet for work phone calls.
It doesn't sound like you two are aligned in terms of finances.
I would work on that as a top priority before making a massive house purchase.
YES!! This is true. My husband is frugal, but he has never gotten on board with FIRE. I love FIRE and worldschooling and all of these alternative ways to live that prioritize experiences. I follow groups on facebook and really love this dream, but the truth is that we are not this family. Both my husband and I work, we get stressed when we travel with the kids and we are pretty normal other than we are upper-middle class, but live in a cheaper area. Buying a nice house in good area of town seems like a loss of my dreams, although FIRE and worldschooling aren't realistic for us right now.
There's a lot of reality between worldschooling and buying an expensive home that has both of you stressed out of your minds.
Also, FIRE isn't necessarily all about dropping "normal" life and trotting around the globe as perpetual adventurers.
It's not one extreme or another, which seems to be where your head is at, which isn't healthy.
It's not an all or nothing thing, it's a process of understanding your own needs, understanding your own spending, and building your best life within whatever parameters you decide are most important.
Above all though, it's about questioning those parameters.
You already know that you and your spouse are not aligned.
Okay.
Well before jumping to conclusions that the answer is to spend an extra few hundred thousand on a house, why don't you two actually do the work to hammer out a financial alignment?
Just because globe trotting and worldschooling isn't a realistic option doesn't mean that you can't/shouldn't work towards establishing common values and goals.
You are living this life *together*, that can either mean a perpetual state of compromise or synergy, and by that, I mean that it can either be a process of failing to achieve either partner's dreams and landing somewhere in the middle where you are both kind of okay with it, or you can come together, be creative, and develop a collective vision for your whole family where everyone is on board.
There are realities we all have to deal with, but it sounds like your family has the health, wealth, and intelligence to have all of the options available necessary to be truly happy.
...so do that.