As I apologise for accidentally elbowing my husband while making my morning coffee and try for the fifth time to stop the gas cooktop from clicking in its old age, I begin another day of silently wishing I had a bigger house. One with a big island kitchen and a pantry big enough that I didn’t have to knock over the turmeric every time I reached for a bowl.
It’s not an uncommon dream, is it? To want a nicer house. But if I’m honest, I hate that I feel this way.
My husband and I bought our house 18 months ago, and it was the most obvious indicator of the mid-thirties-must-have-baby-soon phase you’ve ever seen. Sensible house, sensible mortgage, small back yard, and the hour-long commute to the city that’s basically the real estate market’s booby prize in return for the extra bedroom you can afford for moving further from the action. 5 months after moving in, I was pregnant. How cliché.
Baby in my belly, I was rather chuffed with myself (and my ovaries). Our mortgage was manageable, we had a spare bedroom assigned to our new arrival, and as rates were rising and mortgage stress continued to strangle half the country, I was fortunate enough to not have to worry too much. We quickly fixed our interest rate at 5.79% for two years to give us some certainty around our expenses before our lives changed forever, and all in all, I was certain we’d executed the perfect plan. Our combined household income was at around $220K, and our mortgage repayments were a little under $4K. We could still invest each month, and not pinch every single penny on non-essentials. Having never quite resonated with the frugality levels required to achieve FIRE, it was the perfect balance of saving for the future, but still enjoying the now.
But as the months wore on, I learned, with a naivety reserved for only the child-free, just how much stuff an infant brings into your life. The space that once engulfed our life as a two (plus cat) started to cave in, and much as I hate to admit it, the ugly tiles in the bathroom were starting to piss me off. Every time I went into a nice bathroom, I’d grimace at the chipped cream taps that I look at everyday.
Gradually, conversation on our weekend walks (or waddles, the more pregnant I got) turned to whether we did the right thing.
“Maybe we should’ve bought that bigger place we saw first, the townhouse” my husband would say.
“Yeah, but it went for $950,000,” I’d reply. “The mortgage repayments would’ve been $1000 more a month.”
“Mmm”.
After a brief flirt with what could have been, we agree, reluctantly, that we still prefer the smaller mortgage over the renovated kitchen and freestanding bath tub. Nice as it was. Our unrenovated 90s home was perfectly functional, and actually quite charming. I didn’t want for more.
Until I did.
Months later, here I am. With my baby earthside, a garish pink Fisher Price Kick ‘n’ Play gobbling up the limited floor space we have in our living room, and a new disdain for the house I once loved.
Being at home with a newborn makes you acutely aware of your living space. Suddenly you know exactly how many steps it is from your baby’s cot to the kitchen. How many surfaces you have to house bottles and pump parts and warmers. You know new levels of toe stubbing as your floors get consumed by Baby Bjorn bouncers and tummy time mirrors and all the other bits you picked up on Marketplace on the days you needed to feel like you had any idea what was coming.
I’ve found myself longing for everything I thought I didn’t value. Maybe it’s because The Block has been my evening background telly. Maybe I’m just more materialistic than I thought. But I’ve developed an unfamiliar fondness for bathroom renovations and living areas large enough to have what I call “the rich person layout” where instead of one couch you have a large corner lounge and two arm chairs facing inward towards an expensive-looking coffee table with marble balls for legs. Sigh.
But the chipped 90s tapware in the bathroom and the two kingfishers that sit on the stained glass of my front door don’t change the life I live here. The off-salmon coloured cabinetry in the kitchen doesn’t change the food I cook or the laughter at the dinner table, even if they are starting to show the twenty five years that have passed since they were installed. The fact that the audio feature on my baby’s monitor is ostensibly redundant given that she’s no more than 10 metres from me at any given time doesn’t change the fact that she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. So why do I find myself longing for a wide, expansive kitchen with gold tapware and a tile I chose?
Sure, it would be lovely to not have to risk a slipped disc every time I want to get the air fryer out (limited bench space has meant it gets wedged at the back of the pantry when not in use). But it’s not necessary. And that’s where I’m stuck.
Part of me wants to start vision boarding like my life depends on it and work towards having one of those fancier houses. Why not, right? Maybe I enrol my little miss into daycare full time and hustle my chops off so that we can do bathtime in a freestanding tub and not have to trip over the high chair at dinner time.
When I loosely ran the numbers on what we could realistically get in our area, a renovated, bigger place in the area we live in would cost around $400-$500K more than we paid for our place. It would mean substantially higher mortgage repayments (around $2000 more per month), a lot less fat left in our household budget, and of course, I’d need to be pulling in a full time wage again for it to even be an option. The fact I’ve just spent a full hour begging my baby to sleep for all of 28 minutes reminds me how far off that idea probably is.
As is the natural curse of being in the finance industry, my mind instantly runs the numbers the other way. That $2000 a month invested with an average 7% return could become over $1million in 20 years.
Do I really want a bigger pantry that badly?!
Then I thought, well, if I’m going to “lock in” and strive to be able to afford a nicer house, why don’t I just put the same effort in and pay down the one I have?
My mortgage is sitting at around $660,000. If I paid that $2000 off my mortgage principal, I could save over $350,000 in interest* and be mortgage free 14 years* sooner.
*calculated based on current interest rate of 5.79%, 30 year loan term and extra repayments starting at year 3.
Seriously, do I really want a freestanding bath tub that badly?
Then I thought, well, what if I hustled to stash cash, either in my offset account or in investments, and then look to move further down the line. What if I could get to a point where moving to a bigger, fancier home could cost me a similar amount to what I’m paying now?
Of course, this ignores the elephant in the room, the fact that the real estate market is hanging by the thinnest thread visible to the human eye. Let’s just pretend that isn’t happening, for the sake of a good dilemma, ok?
Would I still want to move somewhere nicer if I’d gotten in touching distance of true financial freedom? Of having little to no mortgage and not having the burden of having to bring in thousands a month just to pay my expenses.
In theory, no. But then again…
I asked my social media community over on Instagram in a ‘would you rather’ style discussion. I asked:
“Would you rather live where you currently live for free, or live somewhere better for what you pay now?”
The responses were, surprisingly, a pretty even split of those who said they’d rather live for free, and those who said they’d move and keep paying. Interesting.
It really is the ultimate question of money values, isn’t it? While it seems like an obvious choice at first, especially to those of us who are pursuing any form of financial freedom or even FIRE, it’s not necessarily as simple as that. I can’t help but wonder whether reaching financial freedom would still lead me to the path of buying a lovely home. I’m a true homebody. I love nothing more than pottering around at home, spending weekends trying a new recipe, having a cheeseboard in the garden, and having chilled evenings on the couch. Do all roads lead to a nicer home?
I guess ultimately it comes down to this. Your money will be spent one way or another. If you’re mortgage free and unchained from the rat race, you’ll probably end up spending your money on travel or experiences, lapping up the freedom you’ve worked so hard to achieve. But what if you don’t value those things? What if you actually do want to spend your money on your home? What if you’d rather spend your years in a home you love now, and maybe achieve that sense of freedom a bit later in return… or not at all? If your home is your sanctuary, your haven, maybe even your project if you like to decorate or create in it, then spending money on it makes sense, doesn’t it?
Or maybe it doesn’t. I still haven’t decided.
Stay tuned.
