Thirtysomething

Buy-buy, Bye-bye

I'm not sure whether to buy a house. I'm not even talking about the house, the house I love. I'm talking about whether we should buy any house at all. In theory, we can afford to buy. But it'll mean sacrificing. Not as many happy hours, not as many clothes, more budgeting, less spending. If we don't buy, it'll mean we can pay off the wedding much sooner, rebuild an arsenol of savings. If we don't buy now it means we won't buy for another 3-4 years when Ron is done with his fellowship (more on that in a minute). It's questionable whether it's smart for us to buy now, knowing we'll only be in the house 3-4 years; it really wouldn't make sense for 2-3 years. With the housing market what it is right now, we don't want to risk losing money on a house. And many financial advisors say it's only worth buying if you'll be in a house for 5 years or more.

So what to do? Like most people my age, I want to own something. I've rented for 10 years and am over it. But is my desire to own something worth a significant financial risk? Is it worth taking longer to pay off that (damn) wedding? Is it worth wiping out the rest of my savings? They say the only "good" debt is a mortage, but is this worth it?

It's not so much that I don't want to rent for another year. It's that I just don't feel like signing myself up to rent for another 4 years. But we definitely save money that way--even if we move to a larger apartment in a year or so.

In other news, Ron started his fellowship this week. Yeah. This is definitely going to be a change. He's got an hour commute each way, plus he'll be working longer hours overall. And since he's a first year fellow (isn't that term "fellow" odd?), he's low man on the totem pole. Which means a crap schedule. To boot he's got to take boards in August in Chicago. August is also the month he has the crappiest of crappy schedules--for the service that he'll be on that month, they advise fellows to rent an apartment at the hospital for because it's just not safe to drive after working that many hours. Perfect. I'll be single for the month. As an aside, it's also the last month of our current lease and therefore the month we'd have to move if we were to buy the house I love. Not. Gonna. Happen.

So this new job is a great opportunity for him...but it's definitely going to be a lifestyle change for us.

posted by DJ Heavy D @ 8:13 AM