cep822
Apr 24, 2013, 10:38 AM
I think this is the best forum fit... long, sorry...
So here is the deal:
Now that I have my job, J ( my husband) and I need to move. Where we live now was based on J being the only steadily employed one, and his home was bought by him before he met me due to its proximity to the base he works on. Now, I work over an hour away, and it is taking a big toll on J and I both, him because he is now doing a lot of the R (my son) associated tasks, and me because I spend so much time traveling and so little time at home with the family. We cleaned up my credit and now we qualify for a VA loan, no money down. So we are halfway there.
So we found a halfway point town between our jobs and are looking at houses in that town. We have run into a wall now however because we are having trouble agreeing on a home. The first one we looked at was enormous, 5 bedrooms (more like 6 or 7 due to finished basement) 3 and ½ baths, big finished soundproofed basement and attached garage. It doesn’t have much of a yard. When we looked at it my dad came and said he was really concerned about the siding job and structural problems with the home. Since then I have come to agree and especially I am concerned with increased bills (heat and such), constant repair and all that that goes with this house. It also worries me the owners keep dropping its price by 10k about every 3 weeks. I found two others that were lower priced, still had enough bedrooms, but no finished basement. One of the smaller ones even has a pretty nice backyard, fenced in, for R.
Well now we argue about the house thing all the time. J is stuck on immediately having a finished basement- those who are familiar with us know why- his gaming. He actually tried to explain to me today how "AWFUL" it would be for him if he did not have his 3 monitors, two tvs, surround sound, projector, projector screen and space for his Xbox, laptops, and Playstation. I am honestly left wondering if he is being ridiculous or I am being inconsiderate since I am not a gamer and so would not know what is or isn’t tolerable… it just seems absurd to me that one would NEED 3 monitors to play games on, two TVs to be playing TV on at the same time, and a projector he also sometimes uses simultaneously. Am I going crazy or is that objectively excessive? I should add when we got married it was just 1 TV and 2 monitors. It had grown since to the level it’s at now.
He also seems to think we need to pick a house now and not move again, and that the “white elephant” (as my dad calls the huge white house) is an investment that will improve and it’s worth spending the extra 40k that we would save by buying a smaller house because it will improve. But I don’t agree. The house is huge, I am not even sure I want to undertake keeping that much space orderly, and the fact they have so much trouble selling it and keep dropping the price tells me it’s not a worthwhile investment. The houses I looked at should suit us even with a new member of the family and there will be a guest room left over besides (they both have 4 BR, 2 ½ baths). I don’t know their investment value but they are about 40K less… probably because they are smaller and there is no finished basement. I should mention our combined incomes can support either the larger or smaller home…. But with the smaller one we could put more in savings, R’s college, or our retirement.
So SFVers…. Who is right? Am I being unreasonable? Is he? It’s driving me NUTS! He gets mad I am “dismissing” the white elephant, but I am annoyed his gaming is determining our family’s home!
He keeps following up too with these little comments like "I know you don't give a if I have a nice place to relax" and "How would you feel if your place to relax was a black and white tv and a wooden chair?" and "I know you don't really care if I can game or not but it's very important to me".
Seriously all he would have to do is give up a TV or two until we had the basement finished...
So here is the deal:
Now that I have my job, J ( my husband) and I need to move. Where we live now was based on J being the only steadily employed one, and his home was bought by him before he met me due to its proximity to the base he works on. Now, I work over an hour away, and it is taking a big toll on J and I both, him because he is now doing a lot of the R (my son) associated tasks, and me because I spend so much time traveling and so little time at home with the family. We cleaned up my credit and now we qualify for a VA loan, no money down. So we are halfway there.
So we found a halfway point town between our jobs and are looking at houses in that town. We have run into a wall now however because we are having trouble agreeing on a home. The first one we looked at was enormous, 5 bedrooms (more like 6 or 7 due to finished basement) 3 and ½ baths, big finished soundproofed basement and attached garage. It doesn’t have much of a yard. When we looked at it my dad came and said he was really concerned about the siding job and structural problems with the home. Since then I have come to agree and especially I am concerned with increased bills (heat and such), constant repair and all that that goes with this house. It also worries me the owners keep dropping its price by 10k about every 3 weeks. I found two others that were lower priced, still had enough bedrooms, but no finished basement. One of the smaller ones even has a pretty nice backyard, fenced in, for R.
Well now we argue about the house thing all the time. J is stuck on immediately having a finished basement- those who are familiar with us know why- his gaming. He actually tried to explain to me today how "AWFUL" it would be for him if he did not have his 3 monitors, two tvs, surround sound, projector, projector screen and space for his Xbox, laptops, and Playstation. I am honestly left wondering if he is being ridiculous or I am being inconsiderate since I am not a gamer and so would not know what is or isn’t tolerable… it just seems absurd to me that one would NEED 3 monitors to play games on, two TVs to be playing TV on at the same time, and a projector he also sometimes uses simultaneously. Am I going crazy or is that objectively excessive? I should add when we got married it was just 1 TV and 2 monitors. It had grown since to the level it’s at now.
He also seems to think we need to pick a house now and not move again, and that the “white elephant” (as my dad calls the huge white house) is an investment that will improve and it’s worth spending the extra 40k that we would save by buying a smaller house because it will improve. But I don’t agree. The house is huge, I am not even sure I want to undertake keeping that much space orderly, and the fact they have so much trouble selling it and keep dropping the price tells me it’s not a worthwhile investment. The houses I looked at should suit us even with a new member of the family and there will be a guest room left over besides (they both have 4 BR, 2 ½ baths). I don’t know their investment value but they are about 40K less… probably because they are smaller and there is no finished basement. I should mention our combined incomes can support either the larger or smaller home…. But with the smaller one we could put more in savings, R’s college, or our retirement.
So SFVers…. Who is right? Am I being unreasonable? Is he? It’s driving me NUTS! He gets mad I am “dismissing” the white elephant, but I am annoyed his gaming is determining our family’s home!
He keeps following up too with these little comments like "I know you don't give a if I have a nice place to relax" and "How would you feel if your place to relax was a black and white tv and a wooden chair?" and "I know you don't really care if I can game or not but it's very important to me".
Seriously all he would have to do is give up a TV or two until we had the basement finished...