This is a guest post from Crystal of Budgeting in the Fun Stuff: A Personal Financial Blog about the Next Financial Step. It’s an open fiscal diary and a personal finance blog rolled into one.
My husband does not want to stay in our current home forever. He wants more room…specifically more rooms. After board gaming at a few different homes, he is lusting after more space. Luckily, he has a cheap streak too, so we will wait until our house is paid off before even approaching the idea of moving. But our conversation did lead me to think, how much house is enough house for us?
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I’m happy with our 3 bedroom home. I love our Master bedroom with our attached bathroom. I’m cool with the fact we use one of the spare bedrooms as my husband’s office. I’m also fine with turning the other bedroom into a guest bedroom/hobby room if he’d like.
I don’t think we need a separate library, office, hobby room, guest bedroom, and gaming area.
Our friends have some pretty awesome houses. I know exactly where he got these ideas. But I also know that those same friends make way more than we do. I don’t want to suffer from lifestyle inflation.
I also hate the idea of moving at all. Buying our home was not a fun process at all. It was stressful. Even the moving part was awful since the first movers never showed up and we had to wait all day to get fit in on a different company’s schedule. I also don’t enjoy the whole unpacking process. I just hate moving.
That hatred could easily convince me to stay exactly where we are until I’m too old to go up the stairs.
I know that my husband would never put his wants ahead of our finances, but I’m already trying to come up with ways to make our house seem bigger to him. I just think that as long and the TV works and we have a table to play games on, we’re doing just fine…
What do you think? How much house is enough house for you?
6 Comments
We recently downsized from 2800 sf to 1400 sf and I couldn’t be happier. We no longer have all of the maintenance that came with the bigger house which means less stress and more time for ourselves. We’re just renting so someday we’ll have to decide how much more house we need, but at this point, less is more.
.-= Mrs. Frugal´s last blog ..Net Worth and Goals: March 2010 – Up 5.8% and making great progress! =-.
@Mrs. Frugal – that’s a big difference! Good for you. I can see where cleaning a very large house would grow tiresome. My husband is the neat freak around our house, so if it were much bigger, that would mean I’d have to chip in 😉
@Mrs. Frugal
Less maintenance sounds good to me. 🙂 Good luck!
I think if you’re not using all of your bedrooms, they can always be altered to become the rooms your husband wants. We have 3 BRs (no master bedroom): one on the first floor, which is our office, and two on the second floor (our bedroom and a spare bedroom). I almost think we have TOO much house, at 1,700 sq. ft.
.-= RainyDaySaver´s last blog ..Fix-It Friday: Our Home Improvement Wish List =-.
I wanted to move to a bigger house, but both my wife and kids don’t want to leave. Our house is 2,100 sq. ft. so it an average sized house.
More importantly than the house though, I want a bigger yard! Ours is only 1/4 of an acre… I grew on on a house that had 1 acre, so it’s a big difference.
In these days, it might not be a bad idea to look, especially since house prices are cheaper… Tough decision!
We’re in a 920 sq. ft. house built in the 1940s, and its two bedrooms work well for us now. We’re talking about rearranging the layout a bit to squeeze in another 100 feet for a third bedroom and second bathroom, since we have kids of opposite sexes and they’ll eventually need their own space. A little extra room would be nice to spread out, but I’m content with our cozy little home, its nice neighborhood, short walk to a big park, and the lower gas and electric costs associated with less space to heat and cool.
No guest room, no office, no game room, but we have guests (they stay in the living room), do office work (my desk is in the dining room), and play games (the dining table is versatile!)