Rethinking our Current Housing

Posted on August 6th, 2008 by mmj

Mrs MMJ and I have been think a lot about getting a bigger house. We currently live in a 3 bed, 1 bath, 2 story house that we purchased 7 years ago. We did a refinance 5 years ago that reduced our payments quite a bit, but earlier this year we took out a home equity loan to help straighten our debt situation. We love our house and location, but are starting to fell cramped with the 2 kids. There are several reasons for this.

  1. Our youngest is disabled with an as yet undiagnosed condition. Because of this, she requires a bunch of medical equipment such as a stander, special feeding chair, seat, adaptive stroller, etc. These items are starting to take over the house. You can’t move from one room to another and not run into something.
  2. We only have one bathroom and it is VERY small. We cannot store the little ones bath seat in there, so have not been able to use it properly. Also, we fight for bathroom use, especially when guests are over.
  3. My wifes family is overseas and they visit quite often. Currently, her mother is sharing a small bedroom with our oldest daughter. It would be nice to have an extra bedroom for a guest. Believe me, it would make a world of a difference.

There are other reasons that I have not listed, but these are the major ones. I think that an ideal house would have 4 bedrooms and 2 full bathrooms. Also the living and dining rooms would have to be a bit bigger than we currently have to allow for the extra adaptive equipment. The problem is that in our location, top city in the state, a house with those features run $200,000 more than our current one.

We have committed to finding a way to afford an upgrade but understand that the journey will be tough. Currently, my wife’s hours are scattered, but getting back to a good amount. We hope the trend continues up. We are going to commit as much as possible to our savings. I will document steps as we take them, and also document how much extra a month we would need to add to our budget for a more expensive house.

Filed under: Journal

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