ETA: I am stupid.
I have been "looking for a house" for six years now. Somerville is the longest relationship of my life by almost six years, and I knew by the two-year mark that I wanted to get married. Unfortunately, the ring is too damn expensive and the wedding is too damn expensive and I'm going to be the mistress with no legal claim forever.
MA has this subsidized program for first-time homebuyers called the Soft Second. I've been using their
calculator to determine how much house I can afford. The answer was always "nothing." But last Christmas my grandma gave me a lot of money, and prices have come down, and... great, I say, the calculator tells me I can afford a $262k home! That's someplace I might actually want to live!
So I hire a buyer's broker, paying her money up front because that's how she works and she comes so highly recommended.* I spend a month of Wednesdays taking the required first-time homebuyer's class. We look at some condos in my price range, some of which are actually possibilities.
...And then I get my preapproval back. With the exact same numbers I plugged into the calculator, supposedly using the exact same formula (but obviously not), they tell me they'll give me $227k. That's the difference between "a nice home that I'd want to live in for the foreseeable future" and "something tiny in a crappy part of town that I can't wait to get out of."
I really thought I could do it this time. But I can't, and I never will -- not without getting married (which I may or may not ever do, and the whole point anyway was that this would be
mine) or someone I love very much dying (which I don't want to think about).
Honest talk about money, because I never understood why it has to be secret: I make $47k a year. My boss has been doing this for 30 years and she makes maybe $20k more. Even if I moved on campus to pay cheapo rent and save on transportation, I'd save at most $5000 a year. That's pocket change compared to what I need. I live a relatively frugal but comfortable life, and never worry about money for the day-to-day stuff.
But I will never, ever, no matter how much I save or how long I work, have any
real money. I will depend on landlords and a roomate, or a husband, for my home for the rest of my fucking life. I can't begin to tell you how depressing that is.
I'm tired of being asked (by family members, mostly) if I'm "still looking," with this implication that once you start looking, you should just be able to find something and buy it, so what the hell is taking me so long?
I'm tired of people (brokers and bankers, mostly) suggesting that I "put down a bigger down payment," like I have an extra $40 grand in my couch cushions and I'm just being stingy.
And I'm so, so tired of being the world's most responsible adult, with a good career and savings and God's own credit score, but not being able to manage this major indicator of American adulthood. (Or the other one: marriage, or at least keeping a relationship long enough to get to that point. And I don't want the third one: children.) I know it isn't rational, but I feel like a total fucking failure.
*She's refunding it, because she is awesome.
Rona Fischman, for those of you with real money.