embourgeoisification
Apr. 19th, 2004 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanpaku_backupWithin the last week, Mrs. Sanpaku has started looking at houses around here. Really closely. We are used to wondering aloud how much houses cost when we go on our walks, but this time she's been writing down numbers and calling realtors and whatnot.
"It doesn't take a psychologist to see that I'm losing a home so I need to find a new one," she says.
It was an easier thing when it just seemed like all the houses around us would be a Kajillion Dollars and so there was no point in looking. But then, you look hard enough, you find some things that are tantalizingly within our price range, and look pretty nice to boot. (Not that it's what I really feel like paying, just that the handy-dandy calculator says we could theoretically get a mortgage for it.)
And it's spring here and you go with the Toodler (TM) to the park and the zoo and the flowers are coming out everywhere and you feel an irrational connection to the place. Not to mention news reports about inflation going up, which means interest rates will go up, and the houses aren't getting any cheaper, and so on.
So maybe we'll have a look. But then this brings up many other unpleasant things one would rather not think about. Like the fact that the (grand-)parental units make noises about never seeing the Toodler, and let's face it, houses are much cheaper in Pittsburgh. And with no connection to Maine, the Mrs. has no real interest in New England as a general proposition. And they're going to move the synagogue a 25 minute drive away in a year or two, and wanting to walk was half the reason you moved in the first place. And you never know what could happen with your job. And so you don't want to be pinned down by having to sell a house, but you don't want to wait too long, but you also don't know where you think you might be in five years.
And that leads in turn to reflections on the fact that you're looking at houses based on the extreme flexibility of your job now, and you got that job through a total fluke, and if you lost it you'd be completely unemployable, and so buying a house would tie you into a specific mode of life forever, and it's not necessarily what you had imagined doing with your life, and you're not getting any younger. And so on.
Anyway. I think we're going to see a house tomorrow. I need something like The Complete and Total Imbecile's Guide to Massive Personal Debt through Home Ownership. Anyone have any good recommendations on that? A good shrink might be in order, too.
"It doesn't take a psychologist to see that I'm losing a home so I need to find a new one," she says.
It was an easier thing when it just seemed like all the houses around us would be a Kajillion Dollars and so there was no point in looking. But then, you look hard enough, you find some things that are tantalizingly within our price range, and look pretty nice to boot. (Not that it's what I really feel like paying, just that the handy-dandy calculator says we could theoretically get a mortgage for it.)
And it's spring here and you go with the Toodler (TM) to the park and the zoo and the flowers are coming out everywhere and you feel an irrational connection to the place. Not to mention news reports about inflation going up, which means interest rates will go up, and the houses aren't getting any cheaper, and so on.
So maybe we'll have a look. But then this brings up many other unpleasant things one would rather not think about. Like the fact that the (grand-)parental units make noises about never seeing the Toodler, and let's face it, houses are much cheaper in Pittsburgh. And with no connection to Maine, the Mrs. has no real interest in New England as a general proposition. And they're going to move the synagogue a 25 minute drive away in a year or two, and wanting to walk was half the reason you moved in the first place. And you never know what could happen with your job. And so you don't want to be pinned down by having to sell a house, but you don't want to wait too long, but you also don't know where you think you might be in five years.
And that leads in turn to reflections on the fact that you're looking at houses based on the extreme flexibility of your job now, and you got that job through a total fluke, and if you lost it you'd be completely unemployable, and so buying a house would tie you into a specific mode of life forever, and it's not necessarily what you had imagined doing with your life, and you're not getting any younger. And so on.
Anyway. I think we're going to see a house tomorrow. I need something like The Complete and Total Imbecile's Guide to Massive Personal Debt through Home Ownership. Anyone have any good recommendations on that? A good shrink might be in order, too.
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