My Family’s Money

This weekend my wife and I made our way over to my father’s house to help him out with some yard work. On our way there we saw a sign for an open house on a foreclosure. Drunk with HGTV madness we decided that we would stop by and check out the property – you never know how low the price could be. So after doing some work around his house we made a short walk up the street and around the corner to this 3 bedroom, 2 bath home. Parked outside was a beat-up, white Astro van with no rear windows. There was a heavy layer of cigarette ash which dusting the pavement just below the drivers window. The inside of the van contained the littered fragments of a life spent drinking beverages from a 7-11 and eating food fit for a Rat King.

Now my dad lives in a fairly nice part of town so seeing an Astro van in that condition sent my mind athinking. I haven’t seen an Astro van in the neighborhood since my next door neighbor got one when minivans were becoming all the rage with suburban families. They hadn’t come up with the Soccer-Mom moniker yet, but my mom and her friends were the proto Soccer-Moms. They even had this neighborhood watch which had them prowling the streets to stop all that crime that went down on our street. But they didn’t catch me put stickers on every houses doorbell and peephole on the last night of summer before 5th grade started. Take that Prairie Dog Prowlers!

Back on point, the Astro van tipped me off that the house was probably the domicile version of the jalopy that so gracefully sat parked out front. Upon entering the house initially surprise by the wide entry hallway, the nice hardwood-like flooring, and the spacious family room. It kind of looked nice. But then my eyes began to focus and the warm greeting from the agent who greeted us at the door began to wear off. The house was a mess. Every wall had a major hole in it about the size of a human head. The only thing that made all the holes (there were like seven million) inside the house look small was the massive whole in the back yard that was filled with a pleasantly drinkable brown sludge. The carpets in the bedrooms were in disrepair, light fixtures were missing, so was the water heater, so was the closet in the master bedroom, and so was the entire master bathroom. It looked like someone went ballistic on the house once they realized that the bank was coming to take it all away. Poor chap.

Before we got the house I told my wife that we’d buy the house if it was around $100,000. It wasn’t even in the ball park. The bank was asking a modest $440,000 for this 1,200 square foot gem. ‘Rageous, simply ‘rageous.

While this little venture didn’t net us a house, it did get us talking about houses and our future. Living in San Diego right now given my massive salary and our deep desire to have children just doesn’t seem possible in the long term. So we have set the ball rolling in our minds for getting out of Dodge. It probably won’t happen in the next year, but it could in the next two to three. I think I’d want to get some real job skills before we go and some more money in the savings, but overall I think we have a good shot at making a big move work well. We may have a tyke sucklin’ by then, but it still seems doable to me. Maybe we could even move somewhere where our rent/mortgage wouldn’t be 43% of our income. I do believe in fairies, I do, I do …