Learn to love it. Build equity. Fix/adjust what I can to fit my needs. I’m trying my hardest to learn from my parents mistake of constantly moving and being in debt. With the covid era rate I got - I’ll stay here until it’s paid off at least.
I’m in my 40s. I bought a house that I love 4 years ago. It’s not in my preferred location, but my family and I make it work.
My absolute favorite thing about this house is that the mortgage payment is very low, and even though it’s not everything that I want, I never worry about being able to pay the mortgage.
That feeling is better than anything else I can imagine.
@Verne
agree there! we own a house well within our means. if i run one of those dumb online ‘how much can i afford’ calculators we could buy a house costing like 3X the one we have. i’d love a bigger, newer house, but 99% of the time our 3br, 2ba house fits our needs fine. we do blow a lot of $$ on lifestyle, it bugs me sometimes, nice vacations, kids have everything they could want. i always figure all that lifestyle stuff is variable - if we get in a jam, lose a job, etc, we just scale back. a house can be a huge weight on ones neck that cant be cut back. fixed expenses can be killers works for me
I was 38 (11 years ago) when I bought my current house for me and my family of five.
At the time, I was trying to cap my purchase at $400K (at most). $350-375 was ideal. In my area, that limited me to very small SFH with maybe a detached garage or a fairly big/nice townhome.
I found a good sized colonial SFH with attached garage. It hadn’t been updated much in 20 years, but was generally in decent shape. But- it was $420k.
I decided to stretch my budget and get the more expensive home. And I’m glad I did. I suits my family better. I was cash poor for a few years. Vacations were modest and scarce. But- I got some raises over the years that made the additional expense a non factor. And we’ve slowly remodeled it to our preference.
If you think your income will increase, I think it makes sense to “buy once, cry once” when it comes to a home. Within reason, of course.