Wow. We thank each and every one of you so much for taking your time to share so many excellent thoughts and advice. Many of the issues you guys are going back and forth about are the same details and concerns we were mulling over. I wish I could respond to each post individually.
In regards to renting, we wish that was an option. We have 3 dogs and 3 young boys and someone would probably be out of their mind to rent to us (However, we are borderline OCD and anally retentive so our home sparkles, damn it). Furthermore, we see that we would most likely be paying more rent then we are for the mortgage. We really don’t like the idea of paying someone else’s mortgage again. We did that for long enough!
3 kids, so there you go. Sorry, should’ve stated that from the beginning. We live in Discovery Hills and Discovery Elementary is stellar. Obviously we are thinking what’s best long term and trying to put the kids first. With that said, downsizing and moving to a less desirable school district wouldn’t fly.
To help clarify, the house is a 1400 sqft single family (can’t imagine going much smaller at this point) short sale and we bought for $330,000 with only 3.5% down. We currently owe $310,000. Yes, according to Dave Ramsey we shouldn’t have bought at all. And perhaps we shouldn’t have, because look at us now, posting about hard times. But, we are so happy that we did. We see the timing was pretty incredible, and we would be totally priced out now. So when I mentioned buying something else, I suppose I meant moving somewhere like Colorado (for real, so that’s really funny that Colorado was mentioned). The equity is insane to us. We have never dealt with money like that before, and that should explain some of our fantasies to take the money and run with it.
We love the house, the schools, the neighborhood and town so much that we could happily stay here until the house is paid off. After everyone’s help on this thread and much discussion, we are going to pick up some extra shifts at work, sell a kidney or 2 on the black market, and go with Option #1.
