a pen that is more expensive than earrings<\/a>, perhaps?), you know what I’m talking about.<\/p>\nLet’s take the pen example, because the math works out. The pen was $250 (I know, right?), and I spent emotionally.<\/p>\n
A “decent priced” house costs 1000X that (my first real estate purchase was $225,000 five years ago, and it was a postage-stamp condo without storage).<\/p>\n
So, if I’d been emotional about the condo, or the townhouse, or the Sellwood house, I wouldn’t have been able to clearly make the best decisions for my family.<\/p>\n
The fact that we made money on most transactions is sort of beside the point, because I could easily see that if I’d fallen in love with any of the places I live, I wouldn’t be able to move to the next place.<\/p>\n
There have been things to love about every home I’ve lived in, really. The heated floors on Garfield. The bathtubs on Ellis. The white picket fence in Sellwood.<\/p>\n
But somehow, I have a Zen-like detachment to things that helps me understand that a house is simply a place for my family to live.<\/p>\n
We once said that perfect was not in our price range, and that’s still very much true.<\/p>\n
But even when the money comes in, I don’t care enough about “the perfect house” to upgrade for the sake of upgrading.<\/p>\n
My grandpa on my dad’s side was excellent with his hands. He was a mailman by trade, but a DIY renovator by passion, and he had a shirt that said “Good Enough Construction” on it.<\/p>\n
I didn’t inherit his handiness, but I did inherit the “good enough” idea.<\/p>\n
The new house will be fine. Better than fine, in fact.<\/p>\n
But I don’t need to see it before we move in because I trust other people to tell me it’s fine.<\/p>\n
To me, all that matters is that the people and Stanleys I love will be happy there. And the other people I love who don’t live with me will have a space for sleeping when they come.<\/p>\n
The new house checks all those boxes.<\/p>\n
And I can’t wait to see it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was talking to my friend Dan the other day about how I feel about giving personal finance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3991,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathleencelmins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3989"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathleencelmins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathleencelmins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathleencelmins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathleencelmins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kathleencelmins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathleencelmins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathleencelmins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathleencelmins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathleencelmins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}