It’s always been a dream of mine to build a home. Ever since I was in middle school, I loved architecture and design. When we bought our first house, I decided to dive in and learn as much as I could about construction. But there is one term I’ve never cared for: Forever Home.
I’ve been waiting 16 years to build a home and that might be in our plans over the next few years. Whenever I mention this to someone, I get the exact same question: “Oh, will this be your forever home?”
Nope.
Houses Aren’t Forever
Calling a house a “forever home” is a misnomer.
Part of my push back with the idea of a forever home is that as humans we aren’t forever. Whether you believe in the afterlife or not, we can all agree we don’t stay here forever. This life is temporal. Unless you think you get to take your home with you, it’s not forever. Now if you do think your house travels with you to the other side, by all means, build a pyramid, fill it with gold, mummy cats and have fun.
Not only can’t we take it with us, but even without us, houses also won’t last forever. I lived in Europe for four years and loved the old architecture. But even there it’s rare to see houses over 800 or 1000 years old. If your extremely lucky, your buying a 1000 year house. Still not a forever house.
Justified Budget Busters
So the real issue is that by buying into the idea of “forever,” even with our words, we justify spending WAY too much on the house. Because it’s “forever” we include upgrades and extra costs that we couldn’t justify with a short term home.
I encourage people to buy a house where the numbers would work as a rental property, if at all possible. Long term it will often mean your spending less per month. You also have much more flexibility if you need to move. “Forever homes” almost never make good rentals.
This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but if your not financially independent yet, following the rental rule will help you get there much faster! And maybe get you that first positive cash flow rental.
Life Changes
The odds of one home working for you from the time your 18, through marriage, maybe kids being little, teenagers, grown kids, kids moving back home, then aging adults….it’s a tall order! Life changes and our needs change. A forever home might not be a flexible home.
Change is Hard Enough!
The idea of a “forever home” also keeps us stuck. When life changes. When new opportunities arise. When we want to venture into something new. It’s hard to walk away from the “forever home.” It might be hard to rent it out. It might be hard to give it up. It’s easy to get overly attached if you think it’s forever.
Transitions and change are hard enough on their own! Transitions are one of the most dysregulating things we encounter. If you want to be able to make bold changes in your life, it’s smart to not burden yourself with the idea of a “forever home.”
The “Perfect Right Now Home.”
This isn’t against owning a home. Or building a home. Or even staying a very long time in one home. Heck, that’s my plan! It’s not even about not liking your home. If we build a home, it will be nice and we will like it very much.
But I won’t call it my forever home. I try to hold things loosely. To love and appreciate them while I have them, but nothing is forever.
Instead, can we have “Perfect for right now homes?” Right now, in this season of life, for this month, where we are is perfect.
Maybe you’re perfect right now home is:
- A camper traveling with your kids to National Parks
- A rented condo
- An Air BnB in South America
- Staying with your aging parents while they recover from illness
- A fixer-upper
- A duplex you rent half out to live almost rent free
- A rented room in NYC
- A sprawling farmhouse
“Wherever is your heart, I call home.” -Brandi Carlile
My “perfect right now home” is wherever my family is. Where ever I feel called to be. Where ever gives us the leverage to live our best life. That’s home. It rarely looks perfect. It’s not forever.
If we build something over the next few years, I want it to enable our best life, not steal it away. We would build something that moves us closer to our dreams, not burdens us with so much debt that we have to compromise the life we love.
For us, that home is something that’s easy to rent out long term, easy to Air BnB, easy to live in and wonderful to come home to. A home that sends us out and welcomes us back.
Jillian, we’ve moved 9 times with my career, and learned long ago that no house is forever. We enjoy it while we’re there (#LiveInTheMoment), but we also realize it’s essentially an “extended stay hotel”, and keep our options open for wherever our lives lead. Homes Aren’t Anchors.
Now you’re going to have an awesome 5th wheel home for the summer!
As a builder’s daughter, a home has always been looked at for resale value at a minimum, so I think that’s adjusted my thinking compared to what you describe here. You definitely make different decisions if you know you could sell someday (and my parents always have). That said, we do expect our home to be more or less our “forever” or at least 20+ years home. Not mutually exclusive, but I love the lens you put on it here.
I like the idea of a long-time home or 20-year home. It’s easier to change a 20 year home to a 10 year home when life changes.
I agree that no home should be labeled as a “forever” home. Situations change over time, and being tied to a physical structure emotionally can spell disaster. A home is, as it were, a big box of stuff, not a living, breathing thing. I know for my family, our home is wherever we are – the energy that we inhabit. A house is something, that left unattended to, will quickly be reappropriated by Nature…even a “forever” home. I think that instead of concentrating so much on the inevitable accumulation of house that is so pervasive in our world today, we really have a unique opportunity to begin to think about environmental stewardship…a concept that can be practiced no matter where we hang our proverbial hats. Alternative building techniques (I heard straw bale!), net-zero home energy use, and a severely decreased footprint for so perfectly in the simplicity movement and represent something monumentally tangible we can teach our children. Because, our only true forever(ish) home is ?! (Objections noted, Mr. Musk)
I’m so into strawbale right now. I might even go to a strawbale camp, like the true geek I am. The “accumulation of house” is an interesting idea! There is a strong cultural pull and so much personal identity that goes into that. It’s rarely helpful to self identify with a house. But so many people tie their self worth to the place they sleep. And culture and friends and family only reinforce that.
I really appreciate your philosophy of life’s “seasons”. My Mom is 85 and living in the home she bought in 1955 with my Dad, who passed 4 years ago. It was originally 1100 sq ft, but my Dad personally added on another 500 sq ft, and over the years remodeled all parts of the house. Now, as my Mom is aging and getting to a point that she would be much better off in Assisted Living, she clings to this house as it personifies my Dad. To her, it is my Dad.
With that background, I look at my own situation where my husband and I live in our home of 30 years. A home he added 500 sq ft to, handmade the kitchen cabinets, and we personally did so many projects ourselves here. I look at my Mom, I hear your words, and I know — this is just this season. Yeah, it’s been a long season, but I don’t want to be stuck with the large place, and big step downs, lots to clean, and so on as we get older. Onto the next adventure, when the time is right!
This is one of my fears. Being devastated by losing a home either to age or crisis. It’s part of the reason I put off building one. The more of our home we create the stronger our attachments gets. No one is more weird about their home than those that have built or remolded it. I literally walk strangers around my home showing them everything I’ve done. I’d never do that in a house I simple bought. =)
I agree. We can attach our dreams to physical possessions, especially big ones like houses. For us, now that we’ve been house hopping and then tiny house living for over three years now, with kids, we all have a more ingrained sense that home is really where we all are together.
I love that. I feel that way when we have been camping. Especially in the pop-up camper, home is family or where we belong.
Love this Jillian! It’s something we struggle with for sure as we’re very much so “home people.”
If I’m being honest, we’ve spent money on our Airstream that we could never justify if we were trying to flip it for example. But it was in the budget for us and extremely important. However, I love the point of not calling it forever and using that as an excuse.
The Airstream is our perfect right now home. We shall see what the future holds 🙂
Great mindset shift here.
I think it’s OK to spend more than makes sense if that’s your splurge area. So many people justify the cost, not as their splurge but because it’s supposed to be “forever.” I’m such “home people.” Design, building, and architecture are a true passion for me, so I wrote this post based on a decade of trying to keep myself in check!
Jillian – very well said in such a succinct post. Just to add by quoting the Godfather, Jim Collins, “a home can be an expensive luxury.” So true. Also, the comment that the home you purchase should be a good rental is on target.
Thanks for these posts and look forward to the next one.
Semper FI,
Luis
Thanks, Luis! Expensive luxury is right! Not that all luxuries are bad, but it’s important knowing that going in.
This is definitely helping clarify some of the thoughts and feelings I’ve had toward my home recently. For several years I’ve looked at it as defining me and something we’d have “forever”. We have done so much work to fix it up and there’s a lot of pride tied up in that. But as our lives and priorities have slowly changed that past year and we might want to make some choices we never thought we would, I can now see it as an unhelpful anchor tying us down. We both struggle with the idea of maybe selling one day and letting someone else take over our home, someone who might not appreciate all our hard work. 😉
It’s so tricky when, as owners, we have done a lot of work. It makes it much more personal than if we just bought it that way. It’s been one of my concerns if I built a house. I want to like and appreciate it, but not let it dictate my life.
This is a wonderful post. I have had a hard time with feeling “home” in our new rental – because it is just that, temporary. Yet so true that everything is temporary anyways, and that home is not the building or the place. I just stumbled upon your blog and am excited to read more 🙂