by Hope
This is the 2nd in what I believe will be a 4 part story today. You can read the first part here.
As I have discussed several times here on the BAD blog, one of my motivating factors for making smart decisions on paying off my debt was to get myself into the position that I could buy my house from my dad. We will have been here 4 years this fall and I am and always will be grateful for his generosity and help in getting somewhere stable for my children. There are a couple of reasons for the urgency in this matter:
1. My dad is now retired and I’m sure he could use the cash he put into helping me get this house, not to mention the additional monies I borrowed when I lost a good portion of my income last fall.
2. With the financing the way it is, it will need to be refinanced next year to maintain a lower interest rate.
Over the last couple of years, I have really struggled with our permanence in this home for a couple of reasons:
Bedrooms
Adopting my twins was not my plan when we got a 3 bedroom home. I struggled with the decision to adopt when it became available and I am at peace with the decision to keep the boys. They are an integral and loved part of our family. Please don’t make that decision the issue, it’s not. It left us without enough appropriate bedrooms for the kids based on their sex and ages.
As a result of the bedroom issue, I explored every possible alternative for adding on to the home. We have plenty of space to build out, but after receiving 1/2 quotes that had such wide and expensive variances I knew it was not something I could consider.
We then decided to close in the front room in the house (formal dining room or what was my office.) It solved the immediate problem, but the walls have really begun to close in on me. I realize how spoiled I sound, and believe me if this was the only issue, it wouldn’t be an issue.
Money
I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it before but as a reminder we live in a relatively expensive tourist city where the cost of living is high. As I start to think about the costs of having older teenagers and my desire to help them out as much as I can, I think about where I can cut back to not only pay my debt back faster but also to put myself in a position to help them out…driving, college, life experiences, etc.
My home takes up a good portion of my income, and if I lived somewhere else not only could I get something substantially bigger but also less expensive. My housing expense would most likely go up significant too were I to purchase this home as I would have to pay closing costs again, inspection fees and more than likely PMI since some money would have to come out of the value of the home to repay my dad.
Conclusion
Our home has been fantastic to and for us. My dad facilitated that. But based on my reasoning above and a couple of other misc reasoning going on in my head, I have decided NOT to purchase this home. I could not have asked for a better location, better neighbors, better floor plan, better yard, you get the picture. I love this house, BUT I have to make the best possible financial decision for mine and the kids futures, and I am confident this is the right decision.
My reasoning was not new to my dad. He had heard much of this last May, but not a final decision. In fact, I know he agrees wholeheartedly on the cost of living where we live since he lived here himself until just a year ago. In the next installment of today’s series, I will let you know how our conversation ended that day when he disagreed with my plan.
