This is a post of a more personal nature than I've been releasing lately, but I figured that here is just as good a vehicle as any to talk about it and hopefully organize some of my thoughts on the matter.
A few months shy of one year ago, I moved into a room rented by Julie. At the beginning of that period, I didn't have my own vehicle (and I now have a minivan) and I had just moved out of another "rent a room from the owner of a house" situation at the crazyhouse, where I lived with several friends. Today, I've had various good times, and other times that were also pretty good, but which were somewhat riddled with miscommunication. However, I suspect that Julie and I had some different expectations for the situation going on.
Let's just say that although I like to think of myself as the idiosyncratic but friendly renter, the expectation that I'm looking for some kind of other accommodations has been established. Fortunately for me, nothing needs to happen immediately, but I have experienced progress checks. Whether or not they're just requests for an update on the status of a project, or actual progress checks on a mandate, I can't tell. Because of the way I interpret everything, I've taken it as an actual progress check.
I could probably rent a place, I even have a potential roommate, but I don't want to get myself into another situation like my previous apartment where I'll need to move sooner than I expected because I can't afford the place on my own. Because of this, and because I have reasonably long term plans here in town, I've started looking into what it will take to purchase a home here. The market for homes is pretty interesting. Apartments, especially those that are close to the campus, cost a lot, although this is where the best services from The Telco tend to be. Houses and condos, have pricing that actually makes it work out to being a little bit less, just on lease costs, but there are HOA fees and other things of that ilk to look out for.
In addition, there's the decision as to what type of home I should be looking for and what the priorities should be therein. For example, I could prioritize distance to campus, at the cost of, well, the cost, or I could prioritize cost at the expense of network connectivity and location. I could also prioritize network connectivity above all else, but most of the places with the most promising network connectivity (i.e. the Telco's best offering on a single DSL pair) are some of the more expensive places to live.
There are several condominium developments that seem to have a good mix of price, location, and connectivity, but I haven't decided yet whether or not a condo is the correct type of box in which I can be close to but away from everybody else.
I've also considered finding land and attempting to build the cat6-wired home of my dreams. However, I don't know how far away my expectations and the potential reality are from one another. There are also different types of detached homes in my area, including old manufactured homes, newish manufactured homes, duplexes, old single family homes on varying amounts of land, and so on.
Unfortunately, even if I find the least expensive, most gloriously fibered up and conveniently located home, a home is still a whole lot of money. That's another set of priorities I need to arrange. Even though I'd like to put money away for a down payment on a home, I also need to buy food, plus other commitments such as student loans, my existing rent payment, and my consumer debt, which is steadily improving.
I think the main question is how I want to prioritize anything that comes after paying down debts. I have wanted to build a new desktop for a while, but I know that that could impact my ability to accumulate a down payment significantly. I suppose it's this particular type of resource management that defines life for most people.