New Home, Part 1

Greetings faithful readers!  Your faithfulness in reading this past month has certainly not been met by an equal faithfulness by us in our posting, and for that we apologize.  However, I believe our absence is understandable in the changes of the last few months, changes that neither of us anticipated as recently as the first of this year.  I write this in a new town, in a new house, beside a new Chinese evergreen, with a new source of contentment, but shared with the same wonderful wife and the same thanksgiving to the same Giver of all good things for the love and help given by our collective families.

Our story goes back to mid-January, when my car was in need of a new fuel valve that put is out of commission for a couple days.  This issue was complicated by the fact that we both were commuting opposite directions and we had no alternative source of transportation.  Our crisis was averted due to the accommodation of my brother-in-law’s family, but it highlighted the tenuousness of our living situation, especially looking at future plans and goals.  Alex had been reading a great blog called MrMoneyMustache, which I highly recommend, and an article in it really convicted us about the cost our large commuting would have in the long term.  We both really loved our jobs, but two of the coworkers that Alex had worked with since she started moved on to other jobs, leaving her the most senior member of the team.  With their departure, Alex no longer felt the same strong ties to her job she felt before, and the opportunity was ripe for us to consider relocating.

Alex quickly found a job opening that was in a same “bedroom” community next to the city where I work, and she quickly fell in love with the position and location.  She accepted and we began house hunting.  The day of her interview, she had driven past a lovely house with a “For Sale” sign in the front yard, and the place quickly stood out to her.  We were able to schedule a viewing the following weekend with the owner, which we did after viewing four other homes with a real estate agent.  Alex’s dad actually texted after the last house with the real estate agent to see how things were going, and Alex responded with “Nothing has knocked of socks off yet.”  After viewing the house, Alex texted again, this time saying “Socks knocked off.”  

Problem solved, right?   Well, not really.  The house knocked our socks off, but the price stuck our socks right back on.  It took several conversations between ourselves, our parents, and our bank before we decided to place an offer on the house, an offer which was quickly turned down.  The owner gave us a counter proposal, but we had already discussed how much we were willing to pay, and while the gap between what we were willing to pay and what they were willing to sell for was in the end not all that big, I felt good walking away from the deal, happy knowing that we had a plan, we stuck to, and we hadn’t let temporary emotion overextend our resources. 

So we kept looking.  Nothing was looking like somewhere we saw ourselves.  I had started trying to come to grips with the idea that we were going to just have to accept that we weren’t going to get everything we wanted in a house, which felt really mature and wise.  I was comfortable enough with the idea that when the owner of the house we really wanted actually called us wanting to know if we still had any interest, I told him no.  The next day we went back to look at houses, this time with Alex’s parents to see what they thought.  We saw a new build that I originally had high hopes for, but quickly realized that there was a ton of hidden cost hidden in the package.  By the time we saw the next house, which was a perfectly nice house that the owners and done a wonderful job caring for, I was ready to shake hands right then and there.  Talking in the car later, I expressed this sentiment and my father-in-law quickly spoke up and said he thought we ought to really consider the house we really wanted again.

Now you have to understand something about my father-in-law: he doesn’t parse out advice in a freewheeling fashion.  He’ll let you come to your own conclusions and will really only intervene when he thinks you’re about to do something foolish.  So when he spoke up as quickly as he did, that made me rethink my position quite quickly.  Long and short of it is, we did call the owner of the house we really wanted back, negotiated a price we could both live with, and now I am sitting in our living room, listening to solo guitar as light streams through the window beside me, invigorating me and the Chinese evergreen.  We’ll have to tell you about the move and house upkeep next time, now I have to go get ready for a wedding.

For now, Omnia Vincit Amour!