Of Beets and Feasibility Studies

“Iron Chef! Your secret ingredient this week…BEETS!!!!”

Yeah, that’s right. My produce box arrived, and within I found a large bunch of beets.

I have a level of ignorance when it comes to beets that is truly shocking. Beets, to me, are bright purple things pulled out of a tin. They sneak their way into potluck meals. Occasionally, one will surprise me in a salad. But to be confronted with a bunch of beets and the cheerful reminder NOT TO FORGET THE GREENS has perplexed me.

I’m thinking Harvard Beets. I may be fixated on the fact that it has (a tiny amount of) brown sugar, a substance which I could personally sit eating right out of the bag all day, but it does look pretty good.

So that’s the beets.

The feasibility study is all about the McMansion by the River.

I’m getting a kick out of how many of us have the same exact thought when confronted by a !BIG! house: Dang, that’s a lot of vacuuming! I actually found myself thinking that, if we were to actually buy that place, I’d want to have a wall-rack of charging Roomba batteries – so that the instant one wore down I could grab the next one and keep the little robot going-going-going.

But Jan? If I hurt you for what you said, I’d be a big old hypocrite, because it’s what I’ve been talking to myself about for two whole days now. I tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to the concept of spending more money on things, especially when connected to something like a McMansion. There is a part of me that dislikes the idea of a McMansion the same way I dislike SUVs: on principle.

However, unlike the SUV, which depreciates before the ink is dry on the loan papers, the house is an investment. And, I suspect, a rather good one: It’s a down market and a somewhat ‘undiscovered’ location. The feeding frenzy is currently a good twenty miles west, where similar homes are going for anywhere from $200,000 to $600,000 more than these.

I would not be a bit surprised to find the return on investment would be impressive on these babies; there may be some near-term volatility (which should be pronounced, ‘the prices may drop like stones a few months after we’ve bought the place’) since the overall market really hasn’t decided which way it’s going to jump, but over the long haul, ten or twenty years out…yeah. I think it will see well over double digit growth.

I went over the numbers again and again and again, arguing with myself, asking what I’d missed, why was this looking like…well…frankly…not to jinx it or anything…but…well, if all this is correct…it’s actually…a pretty good deal, a good investment, a…gads, dare I say it?...smart move…

Honestly, we can afford the house. In four years, when the loan on Homer is paid off, we’d even be able to go back to a single-income situation.

But I can’t escape the feeling that, somehow, I just don’t deserve that house. That it’s wrong of me to even want it. That it’s…too flashy, too classy, too big…

That I should be happy with a Den with bedrooms so small that we literally don’t think we can get a bed and a dresser in one of them, with a lot of square footage that really isn’t usable space (but which still needs cleaning, mind you), and that really – wanting to ‘trade up’ is just ever so yuppie of me…

Well, I’m not a true yuppie. Try though I might, I can manage neither the attitude nor the flashy spending habits of a true yuppie.

But you know what?

Not only do I really, honestly think that the financial return on the investment is going to be impressive, that house would enhance our lives, a lot. It would be much more comfortable. It would be easier to work and play. It would be much easier to prepare meals (my kitchen, like most, has a ‘counter space’ issue). It has a lot more storage space, little cupboards and pantries and closets tucked in every available wall space.

The community is being designed like a village, such that schools from K through high school, supermarkets, drug stores, office space, medical centers and so forth are all within easy walking distance – a big improvement over our location here, which pretty much requires a car for all of the above.

So even though I am probably dragging the entire ‘classy factor’ of the whole development down a notch by showing my makeup-less face and non-designer-jeans around it…we’re going to look into it further. A realtor friend is coming over tomorrow to give us the dirt on how much she thinks we would list the Den for, and what-all we should consider doing to prep it for sale (upstairs carpet, I’m sure – not only is it threadbare, well, let’s just say that the recent flu season has left it’s indelible mark up there) to maximize ‘curb appeal’, blah blah blah.

She’d have to give me a really shockingly low figure before I’d have issues around down payment; if she gives me the number I think she will, we’ll be set for basically an even swap, in terms of ‘amount financed’.

And, we’ll go from there.

Exciting stuff. And also, I feel a little sick. Big decisions, even ones that I’m not technically making right this instant do that to me.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an awful lot of picking up to do before my realtor friend comes over tomorrow.

…gads…