On mortgages, insecurity, and men.

I'm a single female, in case you were unaware. I'm 25; I'll be 26 in August. I bought this house when I was 24. By myself. I had modest help from my parents- they paid off my car loan so I could better afford the monthly mortgage payment (roughly $2000, at the time), and covered the half of the closing costs I was responsible for (roughly $600). Beyond that, I did this on my own. I used first-time home-buyer assistance and down-payment assistance, and got a special FHA loan because I'm part Native American.

So now I am a single, female, 25 year old property owner. I pay all of my bills every month on my own, and haven't received monthly financial assistance from my parents since I was 20. Sometimes I wonder, how does that look to men my age?

I have a lot of friends who are getting engaged, getting married, and are even starting to have babies. Some of them have purchased homes or had homes built for them. But I don't know anyone else in my position. It seems a more natural thing, at least a more traditional thing, for a married couple, or even a cohabitating couple, to purchase a home together. And beyond that, it is *far* more traditional for a single man my age to purchase a home on his own. He meets a girl, they get married, she moves in, they make the home together. This is customary.

So what on earth does it look like to single men my age, when they know I already have my house? Does it make them feel useless? Since I don't really need their financial help? How many men does it scare away?? How many men would feel emasculated by moving into their girlfriend's, their fiance's, their wife's house, and having the mortgage and title be in her name?

I wonder. But I also know, that this is pretty much the way it has to be with me. The entire time I was with my ex (of five years), I kept one toe out of the relationship and always made sure to maintain my financial independence. We broke up, and I emerged pretty much okay. I'm not ever going to tie my financial security to a sinking ship of a relationship. So either it has to be this way, or I'll have to go into something new with a boyfriend, fiance, husband completely equally. But even the idea of doing that makes this Feminist slightly uneasy.

My ex had the tendency to make me feel like a selfish self-preservationist when I acted this way. It's just not romantic to insist that everything be divided completely equally, or that ownership be kept track of, or that new purchases which are to be enjoyed jointly in the relationship are fairly negotiated and divided. (Example: When my ex and I decided to purchase a washer and dryer for our apartment, we decided that I would buy the washer, and he would buy the dryer, instead of jointly purchasing the two appliances and splitting the cost down the middle. This way, it was clear who owned what. And when we broke up, you bet I moved that washer home with me to Oklahoma. Just one fewer appliance I had to buy when I set up my house.)

From my perspective, that's the only way a smart female can behave in a relationship today. Women start out financially behind men in most relationships, and most of the time, they finish financially behind men when the relationship is over. Add marriage and children into the equation, and the likelihood that the woman will be severely negatively financially impacted at the end of a relationship goes up even more. (And statistically, men's financial outlook improves after the end of a relationship or a divorce.) I see how this point of view could be viewed as "gaming for the end"- planning everything based on the idea that eventually, this too will fail. But does anything last forever? I don't think so.

So maybe this house really will be my boyfriend for the foreseeable future.

(P.S.- Incidentally, this blog is the sixth hit on google out of 47,000 when you search for "single female twenties homeownership.")