5 Years Already

Five years, that's how long it's been now since we bought our house. I just looked back on here and I have a post from our second anniversary in our house, crazy to think that was three years ago already. It's funny to see how much has changed in our lives since we moved into our house. I would not have pictured us here this long and also now with our little furry buddy.

The more interesting topic of being in this house for five years now becomes where and when do we want to go from here? Although I have no interest in moving in the immediate future, we have no long term plans to stay here. We are getting closer to talking about, more in just the hypothetical, of where we want to move to, because honestly we have no idea, which is really the harder part. As long as Mike is at his current job we couldn't consider moving further south in Jersey since he needs to be able to commute to Westchester. So that again puts us in the position of not moving yet, which is ok too.

I'd like for us to move closer to one set of parents. Realistically I don't see us moving to Long Island, so that means Jersey. We really don't know much about towns further south of us in more central Jersey. I have no idea of where we would even start from. Plus I would wan't to be any further away from my Mom either, so no more than an hour from my Mom and then ideally no more than 1/2 hour from Mike's parents so we could be closer there. I have no idea where that criteria puts us geographically. And forget about adding in searching for good school districts, taxes that aren't another mortgage payment, and a decent house we could actually afford, and the idea of moving just becomes even more daunting.

I am happy with our actual house, and the up keep and maintenance involved. We have everything we could possibly need at this stage in our lives, but that's not going to be the case forever. We also don't want to be moving to our 'forever' house 10 years from now and starting all over there. I'm really not into the maintenance and work involved with moving into a new house right now. I know how much work will be involved with starting all over again and in a more long term house. As much as I wanted to put in new countertops here in this house, I know now that it's not worth it for the amount of time we plan to stay here and also for resale, especially since our house has lost so much of it's value (we won't even go there right now).

If I had my way I would sell our house in a year and move to Manhattan for just a year, and then settle down buy a house and start a family. But who knows if that is even feasible, it certainly isn't practical, but life experiences aren't always practicalities! And we'd never have that opportunity again. Of course moving to Manhattan and then ultimately trying to find and buy a house a year after that probably isn't the easiest thing to do either, we'd probably end up spending all our weekends house hunting the whole time we were living in the city. I get the impression finding our next house is not going to be an easy quest!

Anyway, for now we celebrate another milestone in this house, five years. It was supposed to be the 3-5 year house, but that clearly doesn't exist in this economy that's for sure. Let's just hope it isn't the 10 year house!!!