Justifying a McMansion

The following is a guest post from Crystal at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff.  Feel free to check it out – she covers pretty much any personal finance or lifestyle topic that comes to mind.

Hi!  LH asked me to pop on over for the day because my husband and I are buying a new home.  That’s not too special except this will be the second home we have bought in 6 years and we are choosing to have it built rather than using our cash on hand to pay off our current mortgage.  In the personal finance world, that is a little nuts.

A Bit of Background

I am 29 years old, happily married, have no kids, and own two dogs (Miss Doxie and Mr. Pug).  Mr. BFS and I work from home.  We also almost completely own our current home that we bought in 2007 that has about $26,000 left on its mortgage.

We were going to pay it off completely a couple of months ago, but we came across a builder in mid-April that could build us the closest thing to our dream home that we’ve encountered so far.  So we kept the cash on hand and are saving up even more for the moving expenses and the 20% down payment that we will need by this coming September.

We do currently have two roommates, a couple of our friends that are in college right now, that rent out our spare third bedroom.  They plan to move with us in September and we will be renting out our current home.

Why Do This?

You may be wondering why my husband and I are splurging on a new house when we already have one and are living pretty cheap since we have roommates…

Long story short, we host a ton of get-togethers for our friends, wanted more space for our hobbies like board gaming, and decided that buying our dream home now was very doable.  We rather cut back on some excess spending now in order to enjoy our most-likely forever home than put off its purchase until we had the cash on hand in the coming years.

The Home

Hubby and I went out to look at a few homes for sale and saw an open house on the way out of one neighborhood.  That house was gorgeous but didn’t have the media room I really wanted.  So we spoke to the builder and found another model that was just perfect for us but would need to be built:

– 3700 square feet (yeah, it’s bigger than we were looking for, but all the space is well used).
– 5 bedrooms (the master and one other downstairs)
– 4 full bathrooms (2 down and 2 up)
– 2 car garage
– Games Room
– Media Room
– Library
– Dining Room
– Fantastic Kitchen
– Large closets
– Large lot for us
– Completely customizable

It’s definitely a lot of house, but it fits all of our needs and wants.  We’ll have our own master downstairs, so even when our knees give out, we can at least live on the first floor.  Our current roommates can be in the second bedroom downstairs.  We work from home right now, so we can use one or two bedrooms upstairs for offices or for one joint office and a hobby room.  The last bedroom can truly be for guests.  The Games Room will be for our board gaming potlucks and the Media Room will be for our movie nights.

These are all things we already do in our 1700 square foot house…we just can’t spread out as much now since the main area is the 700 square feet downstairs.  This is why we consider this a dream home.

The Neighborhood

The best part is that the neighborhood that we are moving to is just 5 miles down the road from our current house.  It’s perfect for us:

– Same great school district (awesome for resale).
– Nice new neighborhood that was established in 2004.
– Two great duck ponds and tons of walking trails that are just fantastic.
– Easy access to all of our favorite places and the main highway.
– Great neighbors…we already met two awesome couples that have been so helpful with suggestions on our building process based on their own experiences.

Honestly, this is one of the best suburban neighborhoods that I have seen.  And we will still be close enough to our current home that I can make sure our tenants aren’t killing our house.

I’ve worked out the numbers on my own site, and this just seems like a good idea.  It may not be the best financial decision ever, but it is the best decision for us.  Well, it will be I think…I still have to see how the house turns out.

Have you ever gone against the financial norm for something you deemed worth it?  What did you splurge on?