Hey guys,
Long time lurker, first time poster (on mobile, please forgive errors or formatting issues). My husband and I are coming to the end of term on our mortgage and have been debating selling and moving closer to his work or a new house in our current area.
Let me explain:
We live in a small town 30 minutes from his work and I stay home with our two kids. He works a lot, like, a lot a lot and we spend about $300 on fuel for his commuting in a pretty fuel conservative hatch back. He's been commuting for five years and our original dream was to open a restaurant in the town we currently live in but shortly after moving here, he got an amazing opportunity in the city that has continued to grow and has resulted in him being the executive chef at three individual spaces. He loves his job, hates his commute.
So it seems like a no brainer to move right?
Wrong.
To move into a neighbourhood that would decrease his commute, we'd need to double our current house budget, purchase something that's boarding on a tear down or purchase a condo. We'd have to move to an area that's still 15+ minutes away without traffic. The town we live in is a straight shot with minimal traffic so even though it's 30 minutes, it's never more. Some of the areas we've looked at are kind of rats nests. If there's traffic, there's TRAFFIC.
Now onto our current town:
We really love it for the kids, but that's about it. The schools, parks, recreation centres and special events are incredible but the day to day is pretty boring. We have no really sense of identity and loads of corruptions and drama within the town council and planning committees. This is important because we've debated staying here and opening a restaurant but the town has been impossible to work with.
We could easily sell our house, pay off debt, keep our mortgage payments the same but we'd be stuck in our new home for probably five years.
A huge motivation for selling is so that we can pay off our line of credit, credit cards and a vehicle payment and free up about $1200 a month. I've offered to return to work but the cost of childcare would overshadow the profit. We make too much to qualify for any type of child care assistance and my husbands schedule is too spotty to be relied on. I'd have to pay out for care for two kiddos and in our town (and city), that's as much as our mortgage.
We are just kind of tired of being broke and being so far apart from each other.
Should we just stay in our current house? Sell but buy in our current town? Or massively downsize to move closer to work?
Thanks everyone!
Submitted March 11, 2017 at 11:15AM by kellabean http://ift.tt/2mxlred