So, the past month has been a little crazy. And it all culminated last night into a question, “Do we really want to live on a boat and travel around the world?”
We’ve been talking about living on a boat for years. We’ve been doing things to get ourselves ready. We’ve been checking off our list:
- Paying off our debt (we are now counting months instead of years)
- Getting jobs so we can be location-independent (both of us have been working from home since October 2011)
- Shopping for exactly what we want in terms of boat (I think we have narrowed it down to a Lagoon 380 Owners Version as a perfect boat for our family – reasonably priced, yet just spacious enough to not feel too cramped. We even went on a “shopping” trip last week.)
- Getting ASA certified (signed up for classes in July)
So, why are we still going in circles?
Even though we have done all of these things to get us ready for a life at sea, I’m not sure we actually want to live on a boat and travel around the world… I know that seems ridiculous to say out loud. Of course we want to do it! That’s all we’ve discussed for the past 3 years! But really? Are we really ready and willing to give up our comfortable life for the unknown? I’m not so sure anymore.
Let me tell you why… we’ve been saying for a year or more that we want to get out of this enormous mortgage we have, that it is too restricting for this adventurous spirit we have, that it would be such a relief to be able to sell our house and minimize our belongings… that by selling our house, we would be free to live anywhere we wanted! Especially now that we both worked from home! But the reality was bad: If we sold our home, we would most likely have to bring a wad of cash to closing and PAY someone to buy our home because the value of our home (according to zillow) was a good $30-$40,000 less than we owed. So, even though we were doing everything we could to move along in our plan to live on a boat, we were “stuck” in this mortgage.
And then a strange thing happened. We tried to refinance our house with the HARP program (basically a refi for those like us with a LTV that is upside down) – we were turned away because of a “glitch” (we’ll just leave it at that) with our bank providing lender paid MI on our loan, which made us ineligible for the refi. So then we tried a traditional refi – maybe, just maybe, someone would think our house was worth more than zillow.com says it is worth. And they did!! The roller coaster took us straight to the top! We were going to re-fi with an appraisal that was perfect! We were going to save nearly $1300/mo with the lower payment and getting out of escrow (we are so budget-savvy now, we felt comfortable paying insurance & taxes on our own). It was going to the best of both worlds – get out of debt sooner with all the money we save, and give us another year or two to save while, hopefully, the real estate market bounces back a bit. Then, we zoomed right over the roller coaster, falling faster than it took to get to the top… the re-fi fell through. The actuary said our appraisal (from the appraisal company they selected) “did not pass” so they had to have it re-appraised. And it re-appraised for… $40,000 less. FOURTY THOUSAND LESS! Seriously? How is that possible?
Sorry… I think I lost my train of thought… “And then a strange thing happened” … After the fiasco and depression of NOT being able to refinance our home, I happened to have coffee with my cousin, who I happened to tell our woes to about not being able to refinance, who then happened to tell me she decided to go back into real estate about a month ago. So then I happened to think: Maybe we could sell our house without losing money. The first appraisal was pretty good. Maybe this all happened so that I would get to this point so that I was sitting here with my cousin talking about potentially selling our house! Maybe this was our way out! So I happened to see if she could give us an honest opinion on what our house would be worth on the open market. We had a $40,000 window and wanted to know which end of that spectrum was realistic. And she happened to give us a price $5,000 MORE than the first appraisal; $45,000 more than the re-appraisal! And she was confident (as much as anyone can be confident in real estate) that we could get a full price offer (or close to it) this summer. HERE WAS OUR OPPORTUNITY!!! We’ve been hoping for this! And we have NOTHING to lose by putting it on the market. Sure, we have to keep the house clean all summer. And fix some stuff we wanted to fix anyway. But if it doesn’t sell, well, then, no harm, no foul… we would still be living here anyway.
So, what did we do? We didn’t put our house on the market.
We. Freaked. Out.
We can’t afford a boat yet! Where would we go? Where would we live? What if we hate living somewhere else? What if the boys hate it? We love our neighbors and the boys’ school and our pretty little life we’ve created! We want to sell our home? We want to live in a dumpy little place for a year or two while we finish paying off debt and saving for a down-payment on a boat? We want to give up our comfortable life for a year or two of possibly uncomfortable living until we can set out on our adventurous life at sea? Are we crazy? We started going in circles. Again.
I’m one of those people who over-analyzes everything. And last night, it seemed really clear: we don’t really want to do this. If we did, wouldn’t we be willing to give it all up? Even in the face of uncertainty? Isn’t that what living on a boat, traveling around the world, is going to be?
Instead, when we were faced with an opportunity to actually be “free,” we chose to be “stuck” in our house. So, the question we truly need to answer is: “Do we really want to live on a boat and travel around the world?” Or are we just going to keep talking about it?
– Michelle
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