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.")

On spring and new opportunities

I realize my posts have been few and far between lately, except for over the ongoing saga with the slumlord next door (if you were wondering, the city's code inspection department finally decided to do their jobs and had ALL of the junk outside removed- wow, it only took two months!). I've been quiet because there's been a lot going on in my personal life, and well, this was supposed to be a blog about my house, not about ME.

Today's been a good day, though. I found some kindred spirits online, of all places. Finding community on the interwebs isn't a new concept to me; I was a 16 year old geek cruising a Smashing Pumpkins fan site's forums until 3:00 AM, after all. That community was very important at that time in my life, and I still call several people I met there good friends. A couple of years ago, I became involved in the Colorado political online community. I was a regular blogger on the Colorado version of DailyKos. But I left that world behind, and all of the friends I made through it, when I moved home just over a year ago.

Today, however, I found GenPink. I found it via decor8, which I read every day. Holly Becker of decor8 wrote today's post about the trials and tribulations of making your own first place, well, your own:

"For nearly two weeks, I pretty much stayed in my apartment depressed to the core. I cried and slept all day, remaining wide awake at night since I feared the bugs finding their way to my bed and coating me in my sleep like some weird Alfred Hitchcock-ish film. My friends kept calling and knocking on my door but I didn’t answer. I just cried over my ex-boyfriend, lack of employment, the list grew as I isolated myself. Then something in my head snapped. I woke up after two weeks of extreme poor-me syndrome and decided to kick my own self in the butt. I wasn’t about to make the first official month in my new apartment a miserable one. I opened all the shades, played some music, and decided to get a life. I couldn’t just lay there and cry over love lost and bugs found. Sure I lived in a crappy beat-up roach coach, and okay I had no job and no man, but I did have ME and that had to count for something. I also had a few bucks left in my savings account so I did what any sensible depressed girl wanting to make a change would do. I shopped. But not at the mall. I headed to the one store that always made me feel better. The hardware store....

It’s vital to live in a place that supports your emotional well-being. One that motivates you and keeps you focused on moving forward in life. If I hadn’t renovated my apartment back then, who knows what would have happened to me? I may have become consumed in pain, I could have fallen into a deep period of depression, who knows? And though I made the choice to purchase paint over groceries (I lived on ramen noodle for 3 months), all that renovating, cleaning, and decorating kept my spirits very high. It kept me busy. I had friends over frequently to help me, including the hot guy friend with his power tools. You find what needs to be done, take ownership over how your apartment looks and feels, ask for help, find cute boys to do the hard stuff, don’t diss the dollar store (and curbside finds) and skip a few meals sometimes to buy a can of paint if needed. When you put your all into something, when you sacrifice to have the things you want putting your entire heart (and sometimes your last $20) into fixing up your home - then your confidence starts to soar, you feel empowered, motivated, and that you are just one extremely unstoppable human being. You feel like an adult, and that’s a good feeling. Progress is power. It’s empowering to take control of what you can control and forget the rest."

This is what I've been grasping for, for awhile now. My house might not have roaches or holes in the walls, but I do have a hole in the ground for a deck, a backyard that floods every time it rains, a kitchen door that lets rain water in, etc. etc. etc. It's easy to feel overwhelmed when I'm not rich, and I'm alone.

But finally, spring is coming. It might even be just around the corner. Yesterday was a beautiful day, and I got some crafty things done around the house for the first time in months. Small things, sure, but things that had been on my to-do list for awhile. And it felt good. To quote Toby from The Office (another reason to love spring! New episodes next month!!!), "I'm gonna chase that feeling."

It really is a love/hate relationship.

Sometimes, I get SO ANGRY over the fact that the woman who sold my house to me- a licensed REALTOR who works for one of my town's most prominent brokerages- was such a no-good, filthy liar. She took advantage of me, and flipped that house on the cheap over a period of ten years. I've learned quite a bit about deck construction in the past two months (wow, has it really been that long?), and the more I learn, the more obvious it becomes that a) her brother had no idea what he was doing and b) she outright lied to me about the materials used. Did you know that pressure-treated lumber is supposed to be stamped with all kinds of markings, saying where it was treated, how it was treated, etc.? Only TWO pieces of lumber that we pulled off that deck had any kind of stamp on them- and both of those pieces were ledger boards. The rest of the lumber was used, and some of it was even painted, from whatever prior life it had led. And all this, in a backyard they knew was prone to flooding. Sigh. Nevermind that the joists were not hung at proper spans, nevermind that they used rust-able nails in the joist hangers, nevermind that the support posts were not correctly set or spaced or utilized....

But, what's the use in whining and feeling victimized, right? It will all be fixed soon enough, and even better. My dad's design is going to be so strong that I could have 50 of my friends (do I have 50 friends?) out on it, and it wouldn't so much as creak. For those curious about this Hulk deck, it will have 2x6s spanning 16 inches on-center, with only five feet between the ledger and the rim joist. I'm not even concerned really with what it looks like, I just want it to be strong and built to last.

On the other hand, I really do love my house. I know I bitch a lot about it here, but that's just a by-product of the stress I feel in trying to manage it all on my own. Most nights after a 12 hour work day, I love coming home. A friend who is also young and owns his house told me I would find that my house would make a good companion. I didn't really get it back then. I think I do now.