In which we prove again that we are insane

So I spent the last week going over the list of stuff I wanted. It is a shockingly short list these days.

My ordered list looks like this:

Retire at 55
Have college funds ready when Denizens graduate high school
Finish backyard
Kitchen remodel
Move somewhere closer to San Francisco
Attend Culinary Academy

The only new thing on the list is the culinary thing, and if I were to be completely honest it’s only on there because I felt that surely there just had to be something ELSE I could put down that I wanted.

I sat down with my husband (because he kinda deserves a vote on these things) yesterday morning to talk about his thoughts. What are the things he wants. I didn’t tell him about my list – I wanted to hear about his.

Funny thing about the two of us: I think we share a single brain or something. We tend to think so exactly alike you’d swear we’d been together longer than just fourteen years.

So when I sat down and started grilling the husband about what he thought about our overall direction and what things he wanted, his list was identical. But reordered.

And, uh, he’s not all that into the whole ‘julienne the green beans by hand’ sort of thing.

He wants the move more than any other thing on the list. He wants it enough that he made it very clear he’d rather continue working clear into his 70s than stay here.

He hates it here a lot more than I do.

Hmm. Well. Interesting wrinkle.

I don’t mind moving the move up the list. Believe me, I don’t mind. But at the same time, Hmm.

Housing is a ton more expensive There than Here. That is kinda why we live Here: it is extremely affordable.

In order to make buying the house we want There possible while maintaining our current very pleasant I might add lifestyle, we will need a monster down payment. A HUGE DOWNPAYMENT. Super-Sized King Jumbo Down Payment. The kind of down payment that would buy a house Here outright.

Right. Well. So. At the moment, I’m starting from…well, let’s see…if I take the five and carry the one, and…hang on, I gotta take off my shoes and use my toes…fifteen, uh, twenty-two minus the three…right.

I’ve got $0 set aside at this point for the down payment on an extremely overpriced expensive home in the heart of the Bay Area. Granted, we’ve got some equity in the Den that we’d be cashing out and rolling into it, but it wouldn’t be nearly enough to cover what we’d need.

It’s daunting. Daunting enough that I’m really questioning my own sanity how realistic we are being, here. We are talking about wanting to almost triple our net worth in five year’s time.

On the plus side, though, no matter what actually happens, it won’t hurt us. The improvement to our net worth won’t harm our ability to retire, nor will it damage our ability to send the kids to college. It’s really just a hit to our current lifestyle, and frankly…we don’t care that much.

Isn’t that weird?!

But we really don’t. We were going over the list of things that will have to be dropped…the date nights and the cable TV and the monthly allowance for things like yarn and D&D figures, and neither one of us was a bit bothered. We are not a bit phased by the idea of ‘no vacations until further notice’.

We know it isn’t forever. Sure, it’ll be a long haul – but at the end, we will have exactly what we want: Exactly what we have right now, only closer to where our hearts beat.

Right. And now, I have some calls to make.

The cable won’t cancel itself, and neither will the Netflix…