I remember when I bought my first car. I was getting ready to move to Alabama from Fredericksburg, Va. My car, a used Toyota Camry with something like 200,000 miles on it, had bad tires and not a single car place in town could get them unthreaded. So, while visiting my little sister at the University of Virginia one weekend, I decided I'd go look at cars just to get an idea. We had movie tickets and everything for later in the day.
We missed the movie and I bought a car. I had thought about it, knew what I wanted and got what I wanted, so I was happy. But I can't even tell you how many bouts of buyers remorse I had over the next few days. I've grown to love that car and it's my trusty little Corolla, but I still remember some restless sleep and "What the heck did I just do?" moments.
So imagine that same girl buying a house. Guys, I couldn't sleep nights before bank appointments, my stomach actually hurts thinking about the finances and magnitude of buying a house. Now that the limbo phase is over, I can move into an action-oriented mental frame of mine, which tends to work well for me. Every so often, I can that weird feeling in my stomach like I get on rollercoasters (I hate rollercoasters, but more on that another day), when it all feels so overwhelming.
But, on the flip side, I'm super excited about not paying rent (that's not that much less than what our mortgage is) and making improvements on a rental house I really don't care for anyway and we get no benefit from as renters. At least when boyfriend feels like being handy in a house we own, it's an investment in our own house, our own life, our own well-being.
We missed the movie and I bought a car. I had thought about it, knew what I wanted and got what I wanted, so I was happy. But I can't even tell you how many bouts of buyers remorse I had over the next few days. I've grown to love that car and it's my trusty little Corolla, but I still remember some restless sleep and "What the heck did I just do?" moments.
So imagine that same girl buying a house. Guys, I couldn't sleep nights before bank appointments, my stomach actually hurts thinking about the finances and magnitude of buying a house. Now that the limbo phase is over, I can move into an action-oriented mental frame of mine, which tends to work well for me. Every so often, I can that weird feeling in my stomach like I get on rollercoasters (I hate rollercoasters, but more on that another day), when it all feels so overwhelming.
But, on the flip side, I'm super excited about not paying rent (that's not that much less than what our mortgage is) and making improvements on a rental house I really don't care for anyway and we get no benefit from as renters. At least when boyfriend feels like being handy in a house we own, it's an investment in our own house, our own life, our own well-being.
RSS Feed
