The term house poor exists for a reason, it's just a different kind of being bad with money. Like if you have a big spacious fancy house but can only maintain it by being extremely strict and scraping by in other areas of life that's not necessarily any more financially wise. That's still over allocating the budget to one area at the detriment of others, and technically still a version of living beyond your means. Financial smart would be buying a slightly smaller or less fancy house so that you don't have to stress over other areas of life to meet the needs of keeping the house
Like if you have a nice house but a car repair or a new pair of shoes for the kids or a trip out to a restaurant one night is gonna be stretching the budget because all your money is going to the house you have not made a financially wise decision.
Yes very good. That does nothing to change how much money you have in day to day life though (actually would reduce it even further via property taxes), which brings me back to the first thing I said: the term house poor exists for a reason
Well sure, but it's delayed gratification. Building networth by profiting on other peoples money you've leveraged is a great way to get ahead...eventually. It can be pretty painful for those first 5 years though, but the payoff can be life changing.
Plus the whole time you get to live in a really nice house, so there are two huge upsides to counterbalance all the downsides.
Plus the whole time you get to live in a really nice house, so there are two huge upsides to counterbalance all the downsides.
If "plus you get something cool out of it!" justified living beyond your means then living beyond your means would never be a bad thing because getting something cool out of it is exactly why people make those poor financial choices. Not any different for a house
Regardless of how you want to justify it, living in a house that you can only afford by sacrificing every other area of your life is living beyond your means.
Yeah I bought my first home right before the bubble burst in 07, lost big time. But all my current properties have appreciated a ton. I expect them to come down a little from here
So you can easily see that someone buying a house right now could very well see prices depreciate significantly over time. And that is just one consideration.
It’s possible they’re house poor, or it’s possible they’re just not spoiling their children. My parents made me wait a couple years to get the things I wanted and never acquired debt to go on vacation. Now they are both multimillionaires. I am grateful my parents were able to comfortably retire and that I don’t have to stress about that like a lot of adults will have to do for their parents. They can actually enjoy it.
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u/PlanetMeatball0 Mar 01 '25
The term house poor exists for a reason, it's just a different kind of being bad with money. Like if you have a big spacious fancy house but can only maintain it by being extremely strict and scraping by in other areas of life that's not necessarily any more financially wise. That's still over allocating the budget to one area at the detriment of others, and technically still a version of living beyond your means. Financial smart would be buying a slightly smaller or less fancy house so that you don't have to stress over other areas of life to meet the needs of keeping the house
Like if you have a nice house but a car repair or a new pair of shoes for the kids or a trip out to a restaurant one night is gonna be stretching the budget because all your money is going to the house you have not made a financially wise decision.