Well, renovating the current place is a decent compromise, though with a tight cash-flow situation and some credit card debt, it’s still not a good idea.
I assume you mean her 401(k), not her IRA - you can’t borrow from IRAs. I seem to recall you can’t even use them as collateral for a loan, or it is considered as a distribution, with all the taxes and penalties attached to such.
BTW, sorry for the snark about the credit card debt - that was uncalled for. Mea maxima culpa.
Why buy another house if you are planning to retire and travel a lot in the next fee years. What now counts as a contemporary house will look dated in five or ten years. I’m not a huge fan of recently built housing. If the older house has been properly maintained, the problems have shaken out, and the builder grade appliances, furnace, ac unit, and other things have been replaced with better items. It would be cheaper for you to update a few things in the house rather than buy a new house.
Uh-huh. As I have said several times, better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.
If this is the case, you should be looking to reduce expenses, or raise your income while leaving expenses alone. That’s definitely not the time to be taking on more expenses.
Does your current financial situation not bother her? It would scare the crap out of me. It sounds like it bothers you.
If you got a new house and she kept watching the real estate porn shows, she’d find things she didn’t like about the new house. She probably wouldn’t be much happier than she is now. That’s the way these things always work, and that’s why people say you can’t buy happiness.
If you can, ask her to ask herself, does watching those shows really make her happier? It sounds to me like it doesn’t. And why would you want to do something that you don’t get paid to do (or would have to pay someone else to do, if you didn’t do it) if it doesn’t make you happier?
Check out some of the other shows on HGTV. Yes, many of them send out the message that you MUST have the latest thing, like a Stainless & Granite Kitchen.
Some illustrate techniques for staging a home to sell–which are also pretty good hints for remodeling on a budget. Like how decluttering & a coat of paint can make a room look much better. Or how minimal updates to a kitchen or bathroom can make the room look brand new.
Or how it’s possible to look for a second home overseas if you have some money in the bank!
In a situation like this, how does one effectively convey the message that they are simply not going to go along with what the other proposes, and that continued mention of it will simply adversely affect other aspects of your relationship?
I’m not good at subtlety. At some point I could imagine saying something along the lines of, “Look, I love you, and really want to spend the rest of our lives together. But I am not going to buy a more expensive house than our current one. This is not something I am going to change my mind about. If you want to remodel our current home within our budget, that is something we can discuss. But if you are going to keep bringing up buying a new home, maybe we ought to split up, and you can buy whatever housing you wish with your income and 1/2 of our assets.”
No talking about buying anything that expensive until the credit card debt is paid off.
Obviously I don’t know either of you, but from your description, it sounds like the issue is not a sincere and rational disagreement about finding a financially sound strategy to meet both of your long-term priorities. Which means you need to get at the emotional root of what’s going on. And this sounds like as good a way as any: “Yeah, you want a new house with stainless/granite everything, and I want to hire Megan Fox to give me lapdances every night. We don’t have the money for either of those, so we’d better learn to deal with what we’ve got.”
This is a really lousy time to take on more debt. I’ve got neighbors losing their houses and life savings right and left. Half the houses in the neighborhood have gone under. It would be one thing if this were the only debt the family had. From what you have described, this is madness on her part.
I’ll second this.
You don’t do all the bills and keep her in the dark about the state of your finances, do you? She does know about the $10,000 in credit-card debt and the fact that you’re not saving any money from month to month, right? It’s a common pattern for one member of a couple to deal with bills and not involve the other, but that becomes a problem if one of you has a very mistaken idea of your financial situation. You have said the words “we have $10,000 in credit card debt and are not saving any money each month” (or something very similar) to her, right? Just hinting around, like saying “we’re not in the best financial situation” won’t cut it here. Don’t hint around about financial trouble and expect her to pick up on your unease. Some people, including some women, are not good at picking up on nonverbal cues. We need to be told what the situation is in words, not hints and cues.
ETA: I know that talking about money so bluntly is difficult. But it’s something that has to be done sometimes.
I third it. Does she keep bringing this up because she doesn’t think you’re listening to her concerns? Are you sure her concerns are really about wanting a new house, or is she just bored? Maybe she’s scared about your retiring. Unless she’s really someone who is disconnected with reality, surely she knows that buying a brand new house that you can’t afford a handful of years before you retire and start spending half of your time out of the country isn’t a good idea - what else could be going on here?
^ This.
Seriously - until you pay off that debt and have 6 months living expenses socked away no, don’t buy a new house. You’d be effin’ crazy to do that in this current economy. NO ONE is immune to lay offs or losing their job.
You can’t afford it, bottom line.
And tell her to turn off the damn real estate shows - they’re just making her unhappy.
(Contemporary? Geez - I have antiques between 100 and 170 years old in my place, what’s the “contemporary” thing she speaks off? Doesn’t she know retro is in?)
I’m going to guess that you pay all the bills every month. If that’s true - then one suggestion is to let her pay all the bills for a couple months. That way - she’ll really begin to understand your financial position in a more fundamental way. In my family - I used to pay all the bills, and then tell my wife what our status was. And every month, she would ask “Where did all our money go?”. A couple years ago we switched, and now she pays all the bills. We still talk about finances all the time, but now that she pays the bills, she has a greater understanding of our overall financial health, and we have much more rational conversations about our financial position. In retrospect - this was one of the best things we’ve done for our marriage.
I agree with this. It should be fairly obvious to even someone with no financial expertise or experience that building a brand new house is not a good idea for you, and is in fact a very BAD idea.
Many people would like nicer things than they currently have, but it’s not a good enough reason to rack up debt on top of the amount of debt you already have.
Does she know that you paid your business expenses with your credit cards? If you haven’t told her this, you need to. If you just say you have “business debts”, she may think those are separate from your household financial situation. She needs to know that that is not the case.
It sounds like either she’s been totally sheltered all her life from financial decisions, she’s out of touch with reality to the degree that you might want her to see a psychiatrist, or she doesn’t really know what your financial situation is like. If it’s Door #1 or Door #3, she needs to know now what the real situation is.
I know it’s embarrassing to have to admit to someone you love that you managed to get over $10,000 in debt. But you do need to tell her. If she thinks you can afford a new house, she might also think you can afford all kinds of small purchases every month. Those can add up (as anybody who looks at their monthly credit card statement can tell you), and might be contributing to the problem of not being able to save any money.
$10,000! TEN **$10,000!!! ** **TEEEEEENNNNN THOUSAND **in CREDIT CARD DEBT!!! and you don’t have any excuses for not spending a ton more money! Is your wife a politican???
NO YOU CAN’T BUY A NEW BIGGER HOUSE!!! You have ZERO… zero savings… $10,000 in debt and your wife wants to rack up MORE expenses…
You want someone with some clout to explain this to your wife? On CNBC Suzie Orrman (sp?) has a show, she’s a noted personal finance author that focuses on women and their issues with financial matters. She has a call in segment on the show, Can I Afford It? Where the callers call in with what they want to buy and their current financial situation… and Suzie gives a Yes or No and holds the callers to her verdict… trust me, she’s going to give a big fat… NO!
You mentioned that you will be retiring and selling your house in the relatively near future.
Try this for additional ammo. Figure out what it will cost to sell/buy/move now.
Sell - assume 6% of of the value of your house. Plus maybe a couple of thousand for getting your current house ready for sale.
Move - I haven’t paid for a move in a while. Maybe $3k?
Buy - closing costs, I’d assume 2-3% of the value of the new home, plus you will find that you will spend money in the new place on inspections/decorating/furniture/appliances/whatever.
It’s easy to rack up $20k+ in costs when you sell/buy/move. This isn’t money you are going to recoup when you eventually sell the house. It’s gone. Kiss it bye-bye.
Is a new house for a few years really worth an extra $20k + the additional mortgage/property taxes?
Is there a possibility that you’re saying “no” in such a way that she’s hearing “maybe”, or even “yes”?
This could be her fault, if she’s the kind of person who only hears what she wants to hear. Or it could be your fault, if you dislike confrontation and soften your no enough that it doesn’t sound like a clear no. It could be both. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. What you’re doing is not working. Maybe it would if she would change, but you can’t make her change. Your situation might be better if you had a time machine and could make some different decisions in the past knowing what you know now, too, but you can’t do that, either. All you can do is change what you’re doing now about this situation.
A better approach might involve getting some expert financial opinions. It must involve full disclosure of your financial situation to her, including the amount (to the nearest dollar should suffice) of credit card debt, if you haven’t done that. It will have to involve getting to the emotional root of why she isn’t happy with your current life and house. Ignoring emotional concerns in favor of something more quantifiable like financial concerns seems like a good idea on paper, but it’s really just a good way to be miserable.
Has anyone thought about the wife is thinking? I doubt she’s so shallow that she’s been entirely brainwashed by HGTV. It is her life, too, and it is possible that she has some very real valid concerns.
Of course, you can’t afford a new house. But just dismissing all this obviously isn’t working. If she’s willing to take on another job for it, it must actually be something important to her, and probably for a good reason.
What parts of the house are bothering her? Does she feel like it is unsuitable for entertaining? Is something about the location not working for her? Does she feel like it doesn’t measure up to her peers’
If it’s a cross-cultural marriage. could it be that there is something of cultural significance that makes perfect sense to her but might escape you? I know Filipinos are traditionally very house proud- they invented the idea of a “dirty kitchen” for daily use so that your beautiful show kitchen doesn’t get messy.
If she won’t tell you, try talking to her friends or her female relatives. Maybe you can get to the root of why your current house is bothering her.
Is there any option at all to buy a new house that is cheaper?