Several of my friends have been house shopping this year. Their experiences brought up a lot of buried emotions in me around money, value, and security.
Episode Highlights
00:10 What is the value of anything if not the way we feel about it?
00:43 It’s so interesting how charged the emotions are around money and what we want to buy, no matter what that purchase is.
02:00 Our first house ended upside-down after the 2008 housing market crash, and we spent the next decade paying it down only to sell the house for the same exact price we bought it for in 2005. Ouch.
02:19 When the house lost all that market value, I felt suffocated, as though our amazing, wonderful investment had turned to dust in our mouths and I would cough on it for years.
02:50 If you live in CT, it’s a wonderful time to already have a house because everyone around us is fleeing the cities to come to buy a yard to lounge in. Our houses seem to gain value overnight.
03:40 Because of my experience with our house in 2008, I am apprehensive of any estimate on our current house being so high as if it’s fake money and is a huge lie.
04:35 I personally find financial markets confusing and arbitrary.
05:20 I am not a huge risk-taker in the financial dimension of my life, at least not in the investments and trading areas. It feels like quicksand to me.
05:40 The whole concept of capitalism is putting a monetary number on what we value. If you value it greatly, it costs more or you’re willing to pay more for it, and so prices go up.
06:00 For me, the biggest feeling around money and housing markets is fear that I don’t know what’s going on and so I have no idea how to navigate it.
07:00 Not understanding something means I can’t predict what’s going to happen so I can’t take advantage of it, nor can I protect myself from anything bad that is on the horizon. I am flying blind.
07:30 A house is one of the biggest investments we ever make, and if the house you’re paying for isn’t even worth the money you put into it, how is that even possible?
07:40 Of course. it’s worth everything because it’s my life! It’s me getting up every morning and brushing my teeth, having a spot to sleep, it’s where I gather with friends and family and raise my kids. My home, my house, it’s EVERYTHING.
08:50 Home is safety, it’s me watching my child grow up, it’s where I spend my life, the best moments, and where I comfort myself after the worst ones.
09:40 It infuriates me that someone can get kicked out of their house when it forecloses, and that same house can end up sitting there EMPTY for years and eventually go to ruin. WTF.
11:35 This isn’t Full Spectrum Understanding, it’s Full Spectrum Feeling, and I have a lot of feelings about things that I know I don’t understand!
11:40 I just want people to care about each other. Why can’t we just care about each other more than we care about money?
12:37 I guess what I’m learning is that there’s a lot that I just don’t know… and that’s OK.
14:16 Two years ago there were so many empty houses, where did they all go?
15:11 Do we invest because we are happy and hopeful or because we are scared that if we don’t move quickly, we’ll miss an opportunity? What is the good balance to strike?
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