Like many families these days, ours is lowering expectations and attempting to simplify our life. We’ve had our house on the market for a few months now… and other than proving that people with 3 children under 7 can clean their entire house in under 3 minutes, not much has come of it.
We bought the house when we were both working full-time and had enough to put down on the house our mortgage ended up being pretty reasonable.
Fast forward a couple of years, and things have changed. I’ve embraced freelance work full-time and have a greater desire and commitment to spend more time with the girls. We agreed it was a higher priority to live in a smaller house or rent for awhile than for me to go back to work full-time.
But like so many other families, healthcare costs, student loans, and a few poor money-decisions leaves us turning a little pale at each month end.
I can’t help thinking… “I’m almost 40, shouldn’t I be financially secure by now?”
More about the reasons our generation is falling behind our parents, today at Babble…
5 Reasons We’re Falling Behind Our Parents
I guess we all need to move to the middle of the country.
Let’s just pick a random small town in IA and meet up. We won’t have to work, we can meet up over the clothes line and chat. Whaddya think?
OMG if I had a dollar for every time I uttered that (”I’m almost 40, shouldn’t I be more financially secure by now?” I’d BE financially secure.
We’ve downsized twice—including moving across the country to a cheaper cost of living area—and find ourselves pinched, again.
I’ve finally accepted that we outlived our parents model, and maybe they did too.
My father met Mr. Layoff for the first time in his 50s. Since then, he’s never, ever uttered another scathing diatribe to me about those jobs I lost in the early 90s.
The bottom line is, as always, the bottom line. It’s tough and costly times. Tighten the buckle.
On the upside, reducing consumption is great for your carbon footprint.
Will go read your article at Babble although…I never can recall my login so this will have to count as my comment.
Advantage of having crazy parents: I am actually way ahead of them and more financially secure than they were at my age.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Baltimore is the cheapest city in America. You can easily live on one salary of say $50,000 although my husband earns more. you should really relocate somewhere
xx
I’m in favor of smaller houses, and I think that owning a larger home will only get more expensive as the price of energy increases. But, if anyone needs a large house, it is a mother with three young kids who works from home. Good luck selling, but make sure you have enough space for yourself in your new place.
We’re glad we bought our home when we did (12 years ago) and kept our mortgage smaller than the bank suggested. They told us we could spend $XXX on a home; we said, uh-uh. We’d like to be able to feed the family after we pay the mortgage.
In this economy, our biggest concern is gas. I work locally; my husband works in a neighboring town, a 40 mile commute. He doesn’t have the option of moving his job closer to home; we just have to cut from elsewhere in the budget.
Yeah, that totally sucks. I got a nice 3% raise this year, which barely covers the increase for gas, food, clothes, heating bills…not to mention the psychotherapy and added whiskey that I need to deal with the sticker shock…
This could be my personal diary entry, we have cut back more that I ever thought we could and yet we are still struggling. We refer to our money days as “BC” - before children, we had money then … but certainly not now.