House, housed, housing
Argh moving bloody sucks.
(I think/ I remember/ I worry)
Here's the deal: my housemates are breaking up and therefore both moving out and to their separate ways* and we are all waiting until one of them gets work before we move, so no-one is left penniless and on the streets (/back with their parents).
And meanwhile we live here, acting like a major upheaval is not just about to take place.
And meanwhile I wig out about when I will have to move, and to where, and with whom, and when on earth I will get around to packing boxes. And whether it will cost an arm and a leg and I'll somehow get stuck between the cracks of housemates out housemates in and have to pay double rent for an eternity. I worry that my moving crunch time will happen in a deadline fortnight and I'll be weepy and tired and running client workshops with odd socks and rumpled clothes because I've somehow packed the other sock in a box with cds and the iron accidentally got put in with my button collection and I haven't found it yet. Not that I worry too much or anything.
And being relatively new in a relationship of course a teensy teensy part of me goes 'hmm, well, we could live together' - not that I want to (yet. yet?) but it raises it sooner as an idea than it would otherwise. (It's not on the cards, too soon, I'm just saying, it crosses your mind).
And being in my early (well technically early to mid) thirties a largish part of me thinks 'well why are you still renting? Who looks for a share house at 34?'. So moving reminds me that I''m not buying a house and for a bunch of reasons related to budget, income, low confidence in my ability to continue having a steady income, perhaps my general financial flakiness and inability to see myself as an actual grown up, am not actually in a position to do anything other than rent.
Maybe this is a wake up call to get a plan, start saving like crazy and get my financial shit together. Anything to avoid packing boxes for a few years. And actually I'd quite like to tile a bathroom in sea greens and paint an orange and red animal mural on a spare bedroom - is that enough reason to buy property?
* Note - not widely public knowledge yet, please don't mention to other folks if you happen to know them (I've kept mum for over 6 months, but figure I can mention it now that it's affecting my living arrangements)
4 Comments:
Aw chick, I know, moving is horrible, and the anticipation is worse than the fact - once you're on a roll and have a deadline to work to it gets easier.
Make the first box you pack one with the essentials - knife,fork, spoon, bowl, cup, teabags, snacks, kettle, stereo and music, clean undies, towel, easy reading book, stanley knife, soap, piece of paper. And then put a big red X on the box so you can always find it.
When I last moved (late last year) I was thinking that I was probably getting too old for the whole share house thing and that everyone else was buying etc... not that I was going to buy, but I was thinking that I'd end up renting alone or maybe with one other (which is a bit more affordable here than in Sydney) ... and then having given up my ideas of living in a share house I ended up moving into a four person share house almost right away.
Hey I rent! And will be for a while yet. And in Europe, plenty of people rent their whole lives. If you sell a place in Amsterdam with tenants in it, you can not legally chuck the tenants out! I know a girl who did a deal for about $15,000 euros payment from the landlord to move. The feeling of inadequency from renting is only tied to this country, this age, and this political climate. Try not to let the dominant pardigm get you down!
I'm with B on the paradigms from other cultures. Renting also v common in Germany and Japan - landlords keep tennants a long time there and people can have security when they rent. I think it's the low capital gains tax incentive here (you only get taxed on half of your investment property's capital gain) that makes it profitable for people to sell so often here rather than treat the rent as an income stream. And mortgages have significant costs of course - we've paid far more in interest than we have gained in equity in our house. The upside of buying is that you are putting your money into something regularly that contributes to your overall wealth, but there are other ways to do that.
Post a Comment
<< Home