Nominating My Husband for Sainthood

Ha.

I should absolutely know better.

No sooner do I announce my intentions to rededicate myself to writing with an eye to the future, but the present comes crashing down. This morning my husband's car died in a most spectacular fashion. His was supposed to be the reliable car (in light of my car's own consistent stalling/electrical problems). And the clutch basically collapsed, luckily before he got out of the parking lot at our apartment.

It looks like it's going to cost almost 2/3 the car's actual value to fix it.

He took my car in to work, and we evaluated our options.

So today, instead of writing, instead of going to the gym, instead of all my grand plans, we dealt with life.

This is probably my fault. I set a plan to be completely selfish with my artistic endeavors, and I, of course, generate a cosmic road block that says: "Not so fast!"

However, now that I sit to think about it, it's infinitely appropriate. No writer that I have ever heard of or known has had the chance to sit back and luxuriate in the privilege of writing. Not until they've sacrificed and waited and toiled for the privilege.

I've had it easy.

My husband has been so wonderful in encouraging me to pursue my dreams. He actually asked me not to get a full time job, but to concentrate on those things that make me happy, to pursue a career as a writer, even if that meant that we gave up the guaranteed second income.

Frankly, we've really made that work. We've excelled even. We may pay a little too much for rent right now, but we enjoyed dinners and drinks out with friends, trips out of town, expensive gym memberships, and very little sacrifice, all on a single income. Sure I brought in a few handfuls at a time. My work in politics helped  a lot with that, actually.

To have the chance to do almost nothing but work on my own vanity projects and creative endeavors with no immediate hope of monetary return was a luxury. One that I really don't deserve and haven't earned yet.

But I will.

We have to figure out how to fix this car with very little in savings and still find a way to move into a new place in about two months. That means we have to come up with a few thousand dollars out of the blue to pay for the necessity of this car and a deposit on a new place while we wait for our current place to cough up our security deposit in the three month time limit they have under the law. It's not going to be easy, but I'm going to take on extra writing for pay, maybe look at a part time job, and cut back on a few extravagances we've enjoyed in the past few months.

That's right. Because of my husband, the saint, I barely have to give up a thing.

I don't know if you know how incredibly amazingly lucky I am to be married to such a person.

I do.

Renting Versus Buying

Sadly it's been too long since I've posted anything. I could easily use the excuse that I was out of town for my one year wedding anniversary (woot!), but that is a disingenuous excuse. I didn't go out of town until this last weekend, and I've had plenty of time both before and after that to post anything. I swore I would do better with this attempt at blogging (and husband scolded me for not updating), so mea culpa. Renewed efforts and all that.

So I've been pondering a major debate for all newlyweds and young professionals, and thought I would do so transparently and systematically here. I've been debating the age old question of whether tis better to suffer the slings and arrows ... no wait, wrong venue. Whether to rent or buy. Yeah, that's it.

You see, my husband and I are have been living together for about four years now. (Quick math majors, how many years of living in sin? Riiight.) We've moved from the top two floors of a house to a two story townhouse to a large two bedroom apartment. To some this may seem like we're moving backwards; you're supposed to move from tract housing to condo to townhouse to house, right? But we've maintained roughly the same rent--if anything it's gone up-- and square footage--from 950 square feet in the house to 1,400 square feet in the townhouse. We've lived quite comfortably with progressively nicer amenities and locales. I think we've done quite nicely.

Lately, though, I've been feeling pressure from my family and others to start looking into buying a house. After all, it's the buyer's market! We should be stocking money away so we can buy a cute little home to have our babies in.

I feel the allure. I do love living in a house with land. I want a fireplace and a front porch and a driveway and a backyard. I want the space to live without worrying if my high heels on the floor are bothering my neighbors. I want to be able to blast the music without having to worry about waking up the toddler next door.

My hesitation is whether we need to buy a house to get what we need. I think renting a house provides all of the benefits without the drawbacks of home ownership. Consider this article: Economics 21 Renting v. Buying. The article discusses that while the perception is that, beyond being the "American Dream"-- I thought that was starring in your own reality show or getting a gold medal or becoming president--home ownership actually holds fewer actual benefits than purported. We might get mortgage tax benefits and the like, but in the end, the overall economic benefits of home ownership fail to trump the benefits of renting.

While the common wisdom is that renting is just throwing money away, when you could be "investing" that money in home ownership, the truth is, both schemes involve handing money over. Consider that even if you buy a house, unless you are buying it directly with cash, you are always renting in some capacity: "The choice is between renting the property directly or instead renting the capital necessary to buy the property." The majority of the money you pay off on your mortgage, toward "home equity", is just an "added expense that renters don't have."

And that home equity is not the only added expense that home owners have. They have to pay for all repairs out of pocket, and all services such as gas, water, and trash pickup are added expenses each month. Most rental companies will include these services and repairs in the price of the rental. Home owners also must usually buy all of the appliances in their home, whereas most rentals include these with the house. Further, few homes provide the amenities that apartments or even townhome rentals provide, such as pool and gym access.

So why buy? If you want to live in a house, why not just rent? The costs-benefit analysis on a purely economic scale favors renting, unless you can pay outright or are likely to stay in the home far beyond the length of the mortgage. So why do so many still buy their homes?

For me, I guess it would be the sense of being settled, of finally fully belonging somewhere and having it belong to you. Any changes you make to the property are fully your choice and responsibility. You are less likely to pull up roots and move. You have more of a sense of security (assuming you can make the payments continuously and don't have the threat of foreclosure over your head as so many do these days).

What else? Why do so many of us want our own homes?