The only constant in life is change, right? I think that’s how the saying goes. Well, Jason & I recently realized that as much as we (I) would like to sell our house and upgrade to something newer, nicer, bigger and in a better part of town, financially it’s just not in the cards right now. For some reason, no one in our neighborhood has been paying their mortgages for the past few years and suddenly we’ve been overrun with houses that are short-sales, foreclosures, estate sales, etc. (side note: this is an exaggeration, there are people who do pay their mortgages in our neighborhood). What this means for us is that in order to sell our house we would have to take a hit on it in addition to throwing more money into it in order to get people interested in it in the first place. You see where this is going… we’re trapped.
So, time for a new game plan. The name of this plan is Let’s Make the Best of It. To start, we (at least I) am thinking financially it makes sense to stay where we are until such time as we have a kid entering into the public school system. The public schools in our area aren’t horrific — we are lucky there — but it’s still not my ideal school district for our future mini mes. Depending on when we have a kid, that gives us 5-7 years here. We can make a serious dent in our mortgage in that time period, which should mean even if prices don’t improve we should be able to make our escape without owing money in order to sell our house.
Upon deciding that we are sticking around for the foreseeable future, I immediately went into planning mode (as I do) and decided we need to make some changes. First up? Painting. Always with the painting! the god awful orangey brown walls that I hate so much have to go. I’ve mentioned before that they too closely resemble our oak floor color and that irritates me to no end. When we were thinking about selling I decided against painting because due to the open layout in our house changing this paint color involves painting the dining room, living room and small hallway. AKA 60% of our downstairs. But now that we’re staying I simply can’t live with it another day and am going to buy paint in a lovely griege color tonight. Updates and pictures will follow!
This is step #1 in our Making the Best of It plan, but there’s definitely more coming!
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You, my dear, area mini-me.
So very, very true!