Today Jose and I had an appointment to look at a house!! It was our first and we had mixed emotions as we drove out to Almonacid (a village near Toledo). We had found the advertisement on a website and were pretty sure that it wasn't exactly what we were looking for, although it fit in our budget. We went out and saw it (and we were right, we didn't like it) in order to start somewhere.
As we were driving home, we decided to go through another village. Right when we pulled in we saw a new subdivision with a show house (they build 50 exact copies of the same house and call it a subdivision in Spain) that was open. We decided to stop, just for the heck of it.
(A few months ago I read _The Courage to be Rich_ by Suze Orman. One of my favorite chapters was about everything house related: buying, mortgages, etc. I read it especially well because I knew Jose and I would be in that situation soon. One of the first points in the chapter was a warning. It started in a story format, something like this.
You go to the real estate agent's office and tell them about what you have in mind, bedrooms and cost and all that. Right away the real estate agent takes you to a fantastic house that costs (a little or a lot, doesn't matter) more than you wanted to pay. You say no way, but that fantastic house has now infiltrated your brain...and suddenly you're imagining yourself living in that fantastic house...and now you're thinking about how you can possibly afford that fantastic house, stretch to meet the mortgage payments, how it will be worth it in the long run...........)
And it's happened!! On the first day! The second house we saw was really nice (and they had cleverly decorated it with fantastic, modern furniture to make it oh so inhabitable)! Lots lots better than the first...and only 20,000 euros more than our budget. And now I'm thinking about the house, imagining myself lounging on the upstairs balcony off the master bedroom, watching the sunset from the back porch, etc. Darn uplanned stops!!!
Am trying to remain strong and discourage any of this behavior in Jose!
2 comments:
Oh my. Is there a way to relate this to men? Like you meet the most perfect RING-LESS ones only to find out that ops, they're actually happily married for 8 years and work in highly scientific fields where they can't don marriage jewelry. And then you just feel like a fool. Kind of like that? :)
Yeah...it's sort of like that...you're looking, imagining your future together, how you would have such a fantastic time together...but you can't have him/it. Except it's a little different, because in this case, I can't have what I want because of a limit I set for myself, not because it's not ultimately haveable. It's like meeting a fantastic man, except he smells really bad. You *could* have him, but you would have to give up your hygiene requirement. It's that type of internal battle. Great man vs. hygiene.
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