Being a responsible adult sucks.

Responsibility takes away a lot of the fun in life. You can't just go do what you want, when you want; you can't buy what you want without regard for how much money you actually have...it's just no fun sometimes.

I guess the reason this has presented itself is because my husband and I have recently been doing one of those "responsible adult" type things: looking at houses to buy. We've been renting, either an apartment or a small, poorly maintained house (see previous posts involving vermin and broken-down air conditioners), since we got married seven years ago. Now that we are both in our early thirties, our parents are watching us with interest to see if the "settling down" phase is imminent. Why are parents in such a hurry to get their children "settled down"? Is it because their parenting job effectively ends when you are married, have children, and own property? I've wondered this before, but, as the years have progressed and my mother and mother-in-law have become more inquisitive about grandkids, I've thought about it a lot more. Once the children are married, parents no longer have to feel like the providers. Once a house has been purchased, parents don't have to worry about the children being nomads and being hard to find or easy to misplace. And once the grandchildren have been spawned, they can stop worrying about populating the next generation and starting spoiling their grandkids. It's like being retired from parenting.

Anyway, my in-laws were in town last weekend, and we went and looked at some of the many housing developments being built in the midsouth area. I have heard that there is now a housing slow-down in other parts of the country (and my brother, Hoff, is an unfortunate victim of said slow-down in the SoCal area), but no one has heard of such a slow-down here. There is tremendous flight out of the hoods and ghettos in the city, to the nicer neighborhoods to the east and south of town. This means the housing market within the city, of existing homes, isn't great, but the new houses being built are selling like hotcakes. We found some nice houses, some better built than others--regardless of price range--and some with some cheesy extras, between $170K and $240K. Note: Housing prices in the South aren't all that bad, really. A house we looked at today was 3100 sq. ft. with four bedrooms, a sitting room in the master bedroom, a two-car garage (unusual in the area), and a finished bonus room upstairs, and cost $270K. In SoCal it would have been $800K, easy.

We've found some houses we like, but here's the thing: we can't afford to buy anything right now. We probably won't be able to buy for a minimum of 1 1/2 to 2 years. This is where that "responsible adult" thing comes in. You see, back when we were in college, we were a little, um, let's say reckless, with money. We bounced some checks, racked up some credit card debt, and basically had a whole lot of fun using money we didn't have. That's the problem. It is seriously fun sometimes to spend money. Buying things is great. So we did that, repeatedly. And now we are literally and figuratively paying for it. We've got some residual credit card debt that it is taking FOREVER to get rid of, not to mention $80K in student loans and two car payments with horrible interest rates (that's another downside to the fun you can have with credit cards--it screws your credit rating severely. Your credit rating is like that stupid "permanent record" you were forever being threatened with in high school, only it actually exists, and really can make your life miserable).

We are making ends meet, barely. We do make enough to cover all our bills and expenses each month, with a couple hundred bucks left over for those extraneous things, like food. Our kayaking habit isn't always a good thing, because of the gas our trips require, but we'd probably spend about the same amount of money on entertainment if we stayed home, so it's really a wash. But because we don't have any extra each month, we can't really start setting money aside for a down payment yet. We have to get these other bills taken care of first. The credit cards are slowly but surely getting paid off, but it will take at least a year, I'm guessing.

I did some math (something I'm not good at, or particularly proud of) and figured that, if we get all our credit cards paid off, we'll have enough money along with our rent payment to handle mortgage payments of about $1300 a month. Using one of those "mortgage calculators" online (I have no idea how reliable those are, or how accurate), that figures out to a $200K mortgage loan at 7% interest over 30 years. So, I feel a little better knowing that we CAN afford a house, someday. But I'm still a little ashamed of the fact that we can't afford one right now. We still do silly things occasionally, like going on a random trip or purchasing an Xbox 360, and we are bad about squandering opportunities when we get extra money, like bonuses.

So we have to be better about our finances. When we get extra money, no matter how small an amount, we need to throw it at a credit card. We've already agreed that for birthdays and Christmas, any money we had planned to spend on each other should just get paid to a credit card. Since my parents have already said they're getting plane tickets for us to come visit as our Christmas present, and we are going to skip the gift exchange with each other to save money, it's going to be a sparse holiday. I know that Christmas is not all about the presents, and we'll still get gifts from my in-laws, but it just isn't as much fun. I love giving my husband gifts. He's a techie, so he's all about toys and gadgets, and I like to surprise him with things like that. So, it won't be as much fun, not giving him a present.

Being responsible stinks.