Pipe Dream...

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We live in the northeast which for us means that houses are expensive. $200,000 around our parts does not get you much compared to other parts of the country- it is actually quite comical when you start to compare prices.

My husband and I lived in Marietta, Georgia for a year before we got married and it was a very nice area. The town in general was nice and the weather sure beat all of the snow we get up here. Plus, people down south are just so friendly compared to us northerners- I got taken aback by how nice people were when we were down there.

Because we are looking to buy a house next year we have been looking in our area at what we can afford. We can get some pretty decent sized houses but when we looked at what we could afford down south we were amazed. I'm talking four bedroom houses in really nice neighborhoods whereas here we could get a three bedroom barely breaking the 1500 square foot threshold.

My husband would love to move far away from here and in all honestly I would too. I don't particularly love where we live and I hate the snow. My in-laws are people that I would be oh-so-happy to never associate with again for the rest of my life so being away from them would be awesome. I do like my family but moving away from them would be no big deal for me because I am not one of those people who are super duper close to my parents and little brothers. The only thing I would suppose that is holding me back from a big move are the kids not being able to see their grandparents as often.

I mean, I know tons of other people don't live near their families and their kids are fine so it's not like my kids will need therapy when they're older because we moved them away from their grandparents but I don't know- I would feel bad. But then I think it's my life and they are my kids so if we want to move then we will. There are magical things called airplanes and trains (my mom will not fly) that take people all over the country so people could visit whenever they wanted (in-laws would preferable stay in the next county to minimize my contact with them).

Plus come on- when you look at a mortgage of $1300 for a small house that will barely fit my family (here) and $600 for a larger house that will be the perfect size for my family (there) how can you turn that down? We would have extra money to put towards our debt and be able to build up our savings! I wouldn't be super stressed out all of the time about being one or two paychecks from financial meltdown.

Buying a house is so far away that this is all just very up in the air and just a pipe dream but who knows- it could happen!