Post by icedcoffee on Mar 25, 2019 15:57:58 GMT -5
Moving is also so expensive. When we were looking to move I told my H that if we couldn’t stretch it to buy our forever home then I’d rather “tough it out” in his condo (which I hattted) until we could. I had no desire to own a starter home we’d quickly outgrow.
It mostly worked out for us except when we were dealing with fertility issues and our house was a painful reminder of that. Thankfully it worked out for us in the end.
If we won the lottery I’d move to new construction closer to work, but that’s not likely. LOL
One thing that’s nice about knowing it’s our forever home is that as stuff breaks we’re able to replace with nice things. Like we’re doing our deck in TREX now. I’d never do that knowing I’m selling in a couple years. Too expensive.
No such thing for us. We're not even in our forever city. We're planning on being in this house probably another 5 years at least, maybe longer, then upgrading once I get my NP and we pay off some debt. Once the kids graduate high school and get out of our house, we'll likely relocate.
We had a mindset shift when we realized we'd rather pay off our mortgage and retire earlier rather than upgrade to a newer home (or do a new/custom build). I love most things about our house, so it's not a big deal. We'll sell and move somewhere near the beach when we retire.
Post by Velar Fricative on Mar 25, 2019 16:14:20 GMT -5
This could be my forever home, but DH thinks we will want to upgrade in 5ish years. We shall see. I’ve told him I will be open to considering a move but the house pretty much has to check every single box for me because there’s nothing lacking in our current house, IMO.
However, it may all be contingent on my mother. Once she retires, I’d like her to live closer to us (she is about 1 hour away) and I’m not opposed to buying a 2-family home and her living in one part of it. DH is on board and even suggested it, perhaps as a way to convince me that this isn’t our forever home lol. Multi-generational homes seems to be a trend in terms of house-building around here so I hope there are more options when the time comes. She is looking to retire within the next 5-8 years.
We are not leaving this area until at least after retirement, and it may depend on where the kids are living anyway. Our jobs are too tied up to NYC and it would be a bad financial decision to leave.
I tried to get into the “forever home” mindset for the kids, but it’s just not me. I like where we live fine, but can’t give up the idea of living different places, possibly abroad. I do like to move. IIRC, I’ve moved 17 times as an adult. There’s always that last day before the move where I’m panicking and throwing things into trash bags, but it’s worth it to me for the change. I can live in one place 5 years tops, and we’re coming up on that here.
Post by cabbagecabbage on Mar 25, 2019 16:17:58 GMT -5
I looked at the purchase from a financial standpoint and I'm pragmatic. Are we staying long enough to make this investment? What can I live without? We've only bought one house and it was when the market was volatile and we didn't have equity for a few years so we knew we were staying a while.
We plan to leave in the next five years. DH can improve his career prospects within his company by being open to transfers and we are over our area. We don't know where we will go or for how long but we're pretty open to trying something new. That said, moving sucks. I'd never move for fun so I choose my home expecting it to work for us for a long time.
We are watching DH's grandma need to downsize so I'll never believe that a single home will last forever. Even in your eighties, needs change.
I feel like I should clarify that I don't truly mean forever when I say "forever" home. Since I have kids, for me that means through their high school and college years. I have always assumed we would move when we retire. Hopefully somewhere fun and exotic. lol
H and I have talked about this recently- I really don’t think we’ll be in a place forever. We’re hoping to settle down in a house soon (maybe next year or the year after) and stay there until the kids are out of high school, but it will probably drive me nuts. We have a hard time sitting still.
I feel the same way about jobs, too. My coworker and I were talking and she said she’d never leave our school unless it was for a position at a “forever” school and the thought of a forever school had never crossed my mind. My H changes jobs all the time, too.
Post by mccallister84 on Mar 25, 2019 16:27:59 GMT -5
We thought this would be our forever home and then we had kids (the house is plenty big enough for the kids) and realized we would much prefer to be close to family. So we are contemplating a move in about 5 years when the girls start school. Right now I SAH and we would be moving to a HCOL so I would most likely go back to work and we want the girl’s to be in school before that.
If we do stay here, we talk about moving to a neighborhood with more kids.
The only thing I can 'fun' about moving is purging stuff and people able to organize from scratch (though I'm a bit of an organizational freak).
That being said, this will be our forever home. We've spent too much $ updating it ever leave. It's too big for us unless we have house guests but, when we do, it's great. Guests are all on the second floor and have their own loft space with a wet bar, TV, Keuring, etc. so everyone has their space. If we *do* ever move, I'm paying someone to pack up my shit and move it. Packing is THE worst.
Also, some of the retirement communities around here are like living in a small village. They have grocers, theaters, etc.
I didn’t realize this was something people believed in or not, lol. I mean, we’re not leaving Nola ever, H’s job is extremely secure so barring a hurricane that wiped us out this is the house we will be in. I guess until we ever needed nursing home:(
So, forever until forced out by hurricane or old age/illness. We have no intention of moving somewhere exotic in retirement, although we do want to travel more, maybe spend more time in Puerto Rico.
I feel like sometimes people use it as a way of explaining choices to upgrade, especially in a kitchen or bath. Like, I'll spend $50K on this but it's my "forever home" so I'll splurge. Or, I'll take out this HELOC because it's my forever home and I'll pay it back before I have to go into assisted living, or whatever. I wouldn't be shocked if the kitchen and bath industry coined the phrase, LOL. Whenever we do upgrades, the vendors always act like if this is our "forever home" we should spend more.
Never say never! We bought our 'forever home' with the intention of using it on weekends and vacation, then eventually retiring here. We live here now, lol. Turns out we had a kid when we didn't think that was possible and floating two mortgages and all the travel was annoying, and we loved raising our kid here. It also turns out, I actually don't want to live here 'forever'. What seemed like an idyllic, private paradise now feels like a cage made of mountains and boredom. Our new plan is to keep this place and re-buy in the city and do everything in reverse.
I would happily sell our house if we could afford something better where we are.
Yep. And that's never going to happen for us either.
If we were buying today, we couldn't. I just searched our town and the price we paid. There is only one listing we could have afforded when we bought our 4 bed/2 bath sfh. It's a one bedroom, one bath condo.
This is our forever home unless something forces us out (job loss, natural disaster, etc.). In that case, we'll be moving somewhere far, far away.
Post by litebright on Mar 25, 2019 17:24:21 GMT -5
We are in our "forever-until-the-kids-are-at-least-in-college" home, i.e., the next 10-12 years. I think that's a reasonable timeframe to expect the house to be right for us. So I guess I don't believe in a forever home.
Things were starting to getting tight in our first home and we were considering moving locally within the next 3 years, but then DH got a job offer that required us to move cross-country, so the timing worked for us to up-size and relocate at the same time. We were in our first house for about 11 years.
DH moved at least once a year during the seven years that he was in grad school, so he *hates* moving. And that was before having kids or very much stuff, like furniture. After doing one cross-country move with two kids, two dogs and the stuff that comes with being an established household, I have zero desire to ever do that again and it's super hard to imagine going through that just to move locally to a house I like better.
We currently have a very nice house in a very nice location, but I admittedly don't love it the way I loved our first house, which we took our time finding and liked the best of anything we saw. That just wasn't an option when we had to do a quick move to get DH started in the new job and the kids settled before school started -- we had to pick what we liked the best of what was on the market during a certain weekend that we visited. But we're working on this one to get it more to our liking, and I imagine we'll stay here until it's time to downsize; at which point I hope we can take the time to find something we both really love and are able to stay in until we can't any more due to health issues.
We bought a house with the idea that we could live here for 20 years or more. Largely because we saw a lot of friends buy houses with a plan to move in 5 years and then be stuck when the market crashed.
If something comes up and we have to move, so be it. But I’ve moved like 20 times as an adult, and I am DONE. So we are slowly going to work at making this house exactly what we want.
I would happily sell our house if we could afford something better where we are.
Yep. And that's never going to happen for us either.
If we were buying today, we couldn't. I just searched our town and the price we paid. There is only one listing we could have afforded when we bought our 4 bed/2 bath sfh. It's a one bedroom, one bath condo.
This is our forever home unless something forces us out (job loss, natural disaster, etc.). In that case, we'll be moving somewhere far, far away.
The market moves so fast here I feel like we’ll never be able to keep up. Like even with all the equity we’ve gained and our higher salaries since we moved in, if we sold our house, we could basically afford ... our own neighborhood again. Whomp, whomp.
My biggest regret is not spending more money at the outset to get more of what we wanted; I don’t think I truly grasped how impossible it would be to move.
We are in our “we are here until the kids move out” home. I love love love our house, but it is way too big for only 2 people. Theoretically I like the idea of having the big house that all the kids and grandkids come back to at holidays, that’s also not realisti. It’s big, it’s 115 years old, it has a LOT of stairs, some very narrow and steep. It’s not meant for old people lol. We have been here 5 years so far and I anticipate we will be here 15 more then head to warmer and less upkeep pastures.
I’m not big on labels like these - “starter home,” “forever home,” etc.
We have a long term plan for our current house but if one of us gets an offer to move to London, well bye house! We had a long term plan on our first house, too, but here we are in another. Haha.
Post by CheeringCharm on Mar 25, 2019 18:01:45 GMT -5
I get the concept. I don’t think it’s good or bad necessarily, it just is. Some people skip the starter house and go straight to something they can envision themselves growing into I guess.
We’ve lived in our current home since I was 24 and we brought all our children home here as newborns. We actually did originally consider it our starter home but then we ended up renovating it to make it bigger and more of what we wanted in a long term home. DH did a ton of the work himself so now we are pretty attached to it
Unless we move to a new city (unlikely but you never know) we plan to live here until we retire and/or downsize.
I realize it’s really uncommon to live in one house basically your entire adult life.
Post by blondemoment123 on Mar 25, 2019 18:05:12 GMT -5
My house is very much a starter home, but we knew that when we bought it. Eventually we plan to buy a larger home, but not anytime soon. I feel too unsettled to buy a forever home now.
Our house went on the market this morning with the intention that we will move to our forever home before next school year starts. Our DD is an only child and is in kindergarten. I want to be somewhere and stay somewhere that she can build friendships. My husband is a tenured professor so the likelihood of us moving for a job is low. Plus the areas we are looking in would increase job possibilities for me should I ever decide to look for a new position.
Post by gibbinator on Mar 25, 2019 18:16:43 GMT -5
We bought a forever home 9 years ago and don't plan to move until we're old, in theory. We both really like the location and property, though the house itself has some annoyances we'd like to be rid of forever (like its propensity to leak from pretty much any place in the house with pipes and a yard overrun with biting ants in the summer). It'll be paid off in just another 8 years though so that'll be nice.
We are in our “we are here until the kids move out” home. I love love love our house, but it is way too big for only 2 people. Theoretically I like the idea of having the big house that all the kids and grandkids come back to at holidays, that’s also not realisti. It’s big, it’s 115 years old, it has a LOT of stairs, some very narrow and steep. It’s not meant for old people lol. We have been here 5 years so far and I anticipate we will be here 15 more then head to warmer and less upkeep pastures.
I struggle with this too. I know we will downsize, but I also struggle with loving the idea of a big house the kids and grandkids can come to. Hopefully we will find a good compromise like a townhouse with large dining room but less maintenance otherwise.
I still consider my house my forever house though. Like others a forever home to me is through the end of high school. Afterwards I want less maintenance.
Although...what I think a lot of people my parents age has run into is that because housing prices go up it almost gets too expensive to downsize versus stay put so we will see.
Post by notsopicky on Mar 25, 2019 18:55:15 GMT -5
We live in our "forever" home. I can't envision a scenario in which we would ever move while E is in school and/or local, except in the case of if H were to die suddenly (I can't afford it on my own)--so that's really my definition of forever. We picked it because of the house itself, the location, the schools, the convenience to things we enjoy doing. I've lived in 16 different residences in 45 years. Moving? I'm OVER it. Where we live is certainly not perfect, but I've come to accept that we couldn't get every.single.little.thing that was on our list, and we're ok with prioritizing.
We just went to a restaurant night at a local place and ran into a friend of E's that he knew from pre-K. We figured out that he has been friends with this kid for almost 4 years, and I was so happy for him that he has a friend of that longevity--I never did as a kid (we moved every 1-4 years).
When I bought this house almost 19 years ago, I definitely didn't think I'd still be living here. I love my neighbors and I love the location, but the house itself? Not so much. It's relatively cheap so it's got that going for it.
We bought our first house with the intention that it could be a forever house, but not necessarily that it would be. I knew I didn't want something that I knew I would want to move out of in a few years. 9 years later and I think we chose well. The locations is ideal for our jobs, on a quiet street, backs up to forest, and is spacious enough for our family. It's not perfect. In hindsight I wish we had stretched the budget and gotten the 4th bedroom or bonus room. We finished the basement and created the room down there, so not too big of a deal. I wish the house had a mud room (no way of making that happen), and if I was buying now I would really like a first floor bedroom that my parents could stay in when they visited. My mom has a knee problem that makes stairs difficult.
I keep an eye on listings, but it would truly need to be a perfect house for us to move locally. Right now our house is in between our jobs, and if one of us were to get a job closer to the other we would absolutely move to reduce commute timed. And we would consider jobs in other areas and move out of state if the right opportunity came alomg. So it's not a house that we would limit ourselves from other opportunities to keep, but it is sufficient enough for our needs that we are unlikely to move locally.
I don't believe in "forever" homes. I did a long time ago and then my H switched jobs and we move constantly. I like the excitement of a new place, exploring, and experiencing the area or new culture. When our moves are not paid for by Hs work is when we may settle down. We're still not sure where that will be yet.
One of the reasons we bought this house was because it would work well with kids and once we retired. But between losing a house to a hurricane and an unplanned pregnancy, we know that even if it would be ideal to retire in one place it may not work for us forever. I think it will work with 3 boys and 2 adults but I don’t know for sure .... So right now we are playing it by ear and hope to stay here at least 10 years.