Sara @ Moonrize

Gary’s dad is not well.  He is going into renal failure (will most likely be on dialysis in the next 6-12 months). His mom is in her late 60’s and is still working with no real viable plan to stop working.  We have recognized that we will have to supplement their income (and have been prepared to do so for several years) but with our own debt, its not a very good idea to run two houses.  Our house has stairs, and they may not always be a good option for Dad.  So….we have made a decision to buy their house and combine households.

This is not a bad thing for us, as they have a much larger lot (though much smaller house) and there are more options for building extensions and such there.   Plus, our mortgage payment will be much smaller so we will be able to save and do the extensions with cash – which is huge. Until those extensions are done though, we will have 4 people in 1000 square feet of room.  That’s a little scary.

The decision came when we made a list of pro’s and con’s. It went something like this:

Pro – Mom can retire and look after Dad.

Pro – We can stay on top of Dad’s appointments and ADL’s – helping where needed.
Pro – We will owe way less on the 7th ave house than the Albertine house (saving money each month for repairs and add-ons).
Pro – We will be debt free (other than the house payment).
Pro – The parents might be able to relax and enjoy their final years.

Pro – The house has been in Gary’s family for decades and this is the only way to keep it.

Pro – There are a lot of options with the lot (unlike the Albertine street house).

Con – They smoke in the house and think we wont know.
Pro – They’ve promised not to do that once we start painting and cleaning.

Con – They will probably still do it when we are gone.

Con – It is an OLD house and we will have a lot of work to do.

Pro – We like doing that work.

Pro – We will have money to do it (debt free!).

CON – Until we convert the garage into a master suite (probably take a year at least) we will have 4 adults living in 1000 square feet of house!

PRO – We will be family, taking care of family.  That’s the way it should be. I love them so much and I want them to be able to count on us.

Con – When we have family in town (or friends) we wont have a place for them to stay for a while. This is a pretty big one for us.  Luckily we know about pricelining hotels but still….makes us sad. Having family and friends over is a huge thing for us. We love it.

Pro – Mom loves the dog. She calls Tiqi her Granddaughter.

Pro – We will be forced to “de-junk”. No one likes a horder.

After making the list, we saw that this is really the best option for us. We are anticipating moving in April – possibly May.  When we bought this house – the Albertine street one – we thought we were going to have a gaggle of kids and that doesn’t seem to be in the cards.  And really, we didn’t know enough about house shopping.  We were so excited that we qualified that we pretty much just ran with it.  I also think we were doing some “keeping up with the jones” and we don’t do that anymore.  It seemed most of our friends – our closest anyway – all had kids and were buying big beautiful new houses. So we did that too. It didn’t occur to us that we had a different life path.

If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t have bough a new structure on such a small lot. We might not have bought at all. We are different people than we thought we’d be by now – and I’m sure that’s a good thing. I don’t want to be those people….striving for material things that are bigger and better.   I don’t want to be judged on the size of my loft or the manicured back yard. I LIKE who we are now. I like that we are best friends who function as one. I like that our priorities are happiness and family.

I’m scared to let go of freedom.  We are making a commitment to our Parents that will last LOTS of years. And sometimes, people drive each other nuts. This decision has not been entered into lightly…but we both feel that its right.

So, pray for us, okay? a lot! and come to our many pending garage sales. We’ll be selling everything for a quarter!

xo,

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 10:49 am and is filed under family, life, moving, stress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.