Sometimes, marriage is tough. And frequently, it’s not the big things that are the toughest. It’s the small things, the things that should have been easy, that were supposed to be great but weren’t because the you and your spouse are just so different.
After seeing our oldest daughter hit the road back to Dallas, I decided to take the family out to show them the latest housing possibilities.
My thinking is that if we renew the lease on our current apartment, we are going to be paying $100-200 more per month in rent. If we add in the price of the storage facility, we will be approaching $1,500 per month. I think that we could buy a house and have lower payments.
Keep in mind that I have not found gainful employment yet. My wife works part time. That means that we cannot qualify for a loan. We do have some cash from the sale of our house in California.
So, if we are going to buy a house, we are going to have to make a creative deal directly with the owner. Needless to say, my options are limited.
So, I have been looking for houses in the $200-250K range. You might think, like everyone else, “Oh, but housing is so cheap there!” That is true, except…
We need to stay in the Blue Valley high school district since it is the best in the state and I don’t want to disrupt my children’s lives again. The problem with that is that area is the most expensive county in all of Kansas!
Oh, there are bunches of two story, 1,800 square feet houses planted 4 inches away from your neighbor’s house. But that isn’t what we are hoping for.
And there are miles and miles on McMansions selling from $400,000-$1,000,000.
But a nice house with a little land in Overland Park is not so easy to find. So, I took them out to show them my latest “discoveries”.
One house is small, old, desperately needs updating but sits on a gorgeous 2.5 acre piece of land. The land alone is worth the price. The next one is small, sits on 1 acre, but is bordered by two relatively busy streets. Etc, etc.
My wife has told me that she has a need for a “Wow!” house…one that she can say, “This is why we left California and moved to Kansas!” So I know that she is being gracious when she says “I like this one” because I know that these are not “Wow!” houses. They are nice and could be made beautiful.
However, when we drive by the $700-$1,000,000 area and she says, “Now, I LIKE that one!”, it just tears me up inside. I am the one that has to figure out how to pay for these things and I can’t get that for her!
So, I gradually grow quiet…
and she feels bad…
and that is how it went.
