I wish my husband and I could have a straightforward conversation about why I feel uncomfortable with buying a house with gift money from his mother, and then with her living there as well (in an in-law unit.) Financially it is not a horrible idea (as long as we never get divorced) but emotionally it’s really weighing on me. It isn’t even the living with her that is making me uncomfortable, I just don’t want to merge our finances.
His mother also is being put in a bad situation, even though in her nativity she may not know it. What if she gives us $1M and a few years down the road my husband is hit by a bus, and I want to sell the house and move closer to my family across the country? Even if I wanted to give her back the $1M at that point after selling the property, I couldn’t do this without having to pay taxes on this. There’s no clean way to give her the money back. So then I’d be stuck.
Now hopefully my husband won’t die… and all of the other 10,000 equally awful scenarios won’t actually come to fruition (i.e. I get a brain tumor and go batshit, or get in a car accident that is my fault and creditors come after our house and take it away, etc etc.) There are just SO many things that could go wrong and my husband is all like THIS IS FINE it’s NOT A BIG DEAL. It is a big deal. It’s a very big deal and a very big amount of money and maybe I’d be more comfortable with it if he treated the situation as such. I’m reaching out to lawyers to make sure that if we’re going to move forward we have everything clearly in writing regarding the what ifs. He gets upset at me for being concerned. It’s frustrating.
He also is really having 2000 sq ft house envy, which is partially my fault as we’ve been house shopping for over a year now and I’ve shown him some bigger homes in the area so that the ones we can (barely) afford(?) that are 1200 square feet seem too tiny to consider. I get it. I want a house with big rooms and space to grow and just space overall. But without his mother’s money, we should be spending no more than $1.5M on a house and really less than that (if you want to go for the 2x income, we should be spending $500k-$600k on a house, but that will not get us a studio apartment out here.)
I’m starting to lean towards buying something in a “lower cost” area — San Bruno, Pacifica, South San Francisco, Daly City — maybe even Hayward. I’ve also finally accepted that what we buy today may very well not be our forever home, and if it is then we’ll learn to love it (yes, it’s hard to be willing to compromise so much when still spending $1.3M-$1.5M, but that’s the reality of life in the Bay Area.)
I knew going into my marriage that my husband and I don’t see eye-to-eye financially. He’s perfectly happy making $90k 1099 per year, never asking for raises, working in the same non profit for the last 10+ years. I was also making $90k at some point, but that was a long time ago as I’ve moved jobs and received raises and bonuses and such. I do believe that marrying him was the right thing to do–we love each other and that’s what matters. We also both entered the marriage with no debt, which helped. We pay for our used cars in cash. We still save more than we spend. We’re not from totally different planets when it comes to money management.
But looking forward over the next 10 years, I want to have 1 to 2 more kids, and I just don’t see how it all works…
As some of my readers have suggested, we could and probably should continue renting, get a bigger place as a rental and we’ll still be better off than buying. But my husband now is opposed to renting a bigger place! He really wants to buy. With his mom. He doesn’t want to deal with moving and having to move again (and again and again.) I get it. But right now, maybe it’s not the right time to buy. Or maybe it is — mortgage rates are low, we have $1M in net worth, we’re both employed, we have one 1 year old and may have another or two in the next 2-3 years…
I am sad that I don’t have a husband who I can talk to about my concerns and be heard. I wish we could be in this together but it doesn’t feel like we are. He will pay up to $2500 a month in mortgage so my only option is to find a house I can personally afford where the rest of the mortgage is on me. I haven’t figured out how to make that work, especially given my job stability is always non existent and my mental health continues to be a train wreck.
In better news, I finally applied for term life insurance and submitted all my tests/paperwork… (guess what, my husband is putting off submitting his!) — anyway, that’s the subject for another post. I’ll find out if I’m accepted at all and what my rates will be next week. Until then…
– If you aren’t onboard with living with mom don’t do it. Unless is she infirm and needs care it will stress your marriage. Your marriage is worth more than One million.