I have been thinking a lot lately about our next home. We plan on moving shortly after June of 2012. My wife hates this apartment and is totally sick of living here. If she had her choice, we would leave tomorrow. The problem is, moving is an expensive proposition and we are not in a position to do so at the drop of a hat. Thus the June date because, by then, we should be able to afford to move. I will be done with child support and we will have another $200/month to use.
While we will likely be looking for another apartment, I find myself wishing more and more that we could buy a place of our own. Frankly, I am tired of moving and want to find someplace I can call home and truly mean it. I want someplace where we can have a dog and a garden; someplace we can make changes to and truly make it our own. With my previous employer, that was a real possibility. Now, not so much. On my current salary, we are lucky to have the place we have now because it is within our means, but I still find myself wishing there was some way we could afford a house. We have looked into a couple of programs, but I have no idea where to start and the information we have found online has been confusing at best. I also continue to look for work that would pay me more money, but jobs I qualify for are scarce and I have had no luck in that direction. There is even this nice place for sale at a really reasonable price not too far from where we are at that we both like, but it remains as out of reach for us as if it were a $250,000 home on the hillside.
Adding to our frustration is the fact that we feel very good about the LDS ward we are in, we love our neighbors just south of us, and we feel like we are where we should be for now. I'm not certain what that means, exactly, because even I grow weary of the baleful looks we often receive from our landlord's kids. I probably shouldn't say that here, but it is the truth. Where we are at, we often feel more like a burden than valued tenants. We are good tenants. We pay rent on time, we are not overly loud, and we do not complain to our landlords constantly. We even did virtually all of the clean up when their water heater leaked and started to flood our living room. My wife sopped up and vacuumed up water for hours, and even did what it took to save the carpet in the living room, rather than force our landlords to have someone come do it as many tenants would likely have done. Our lack of complaining may be why we still have the fridge we were told was only temporary back in 2008, as well as the toilet and stove we were told at one time they would replace. Don't get me wrong; they are not terrible landlords, but they have not followed through on many of the things they have told us they would do. That is part of why we are planning on leaving, and while we would love to buy a home, for us the American Dream is more like an American Pipe Dream and it frustrates me to no end. I hope and pray that as the time draws near, we will find the place we are supposed to be and that we will be very happy there. I just do not see how that will be in our own home.
I really don't mean to complain, and if I have been through this before here (I didn't take the time to check if this was reworked material or not) I apologize, but it helps to get it out a bit. I guess in many ways I may just be going through a midlife crisis. I'll be 47 on September 28, and I am nowhere near where I thought I would be by now. I don't even have a career or job I enjoy to help make things easier, though I am very thankful I do have a job. It has really been weighing heavily on me lately, tonight more than others for some reason.
With that, I think I better call it quits.
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