The Weight of Money

I’m racking my brain to solve our current housing dilemma — not enough income/savings to buy a house and the rental market is too high to be able to save for a house. Another idea I’m tossing around may work or may destroy us — stay in the partner’s one-bedroom apartment for a year.

The daughter and I currently live in the house upstairs and would have to give up our two rooms and compact into a 1000 square foot basement apartment with the partner. It would be a big adjustment to the space that we share now, but not something that hasn’t happened for the daughter and I before. The daughter and I shared one bedroom apartment in Wisconsin and, prior to this place, shared a single bedroom in a single family house where we had to share the rest of the house with 8 other people — we didn’t use the public areas of the house.

This is a big basement apartment but it is currently seriously cramped with the partners things. If we clear everything out, which would be the plan if we were to move somewhere else, then maybe we could configure the space so that it would work for the three of us.

The benefits:
– the daughter would not have to move again — we have moved 9 times in her 10 years and would be moving into temporary housing if we move now just to move again in a year. We’ve been here for 20 months — the longest she has ever lived in one place.
- rent is affordable — $600 a month is the current rent and keeps us well within the partner’s ability to provide for everything while my income can go straight to saving for a house.
- workshop space — the partner will retain the use of the workshop space until we can move to a house where he can move his thousands of pounds of metal.
- good commute – the partner is 7 miles from work.
- good community – we don’t have to worry about the neighborhood, get to remain in a beautiful area for another year where the daughter has many, many friends just down the road.
- good schools – our cheap rental options will put the daughter in lower quality school for a year.
- month to month rental – there is no formal lease agreement or anything and we wouldn’t have to lock in for a year or anything

The drawbacks:
- very cramped living spaces for three people — with two it was alright cause I didn’t need privacy, but with three of us on top of each other, when will we have time for the intimate things (shock, newlyweds who’d like to ensure they’ll still have a sex life).
- continued living near housemates that are driving me nuts — but I won’t be living with them anymore
- big change in living conditions when the daughter won’t have free reign of the house anymore.
- not many places to go to get out of the house — I worry I’ll get really cramped and need to “get out” for a while, but there is not a lot of places to get out to
- serious reduction of hobbies and living space activities if we are really cramped — how to still give us downtime when we are all on top of each other?
- not sure the housemates would go for it.

This is a lot to think about and I’m feeling a bit pressed on alternative options. What do yall think? I’ve really enjoyed and appreciated the advice and comments I’ve been getting on here.

UPDATE: The housemates want us to move out and also move everything out of the workshop as well. So much for this plan.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 5th, 2006 at 6:53 pm and is filed under housing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.