We bought a house this past weekend. Well, one of us did. The partner in this relationship who earns twice as much as the other party. And has been saving his money since the day he started working. And works very hard in a very stressful job and gets very nice bonuses.
Meanwhile, I have a very nice shoe collection (including several expensive pairs purchased by the ever-generous and more prosperous partner I spoke of in the first paragraph).
To be fair, we frequently run into this issue – the issue of our huge income disparity. One of us is the 99% and the other is not. I kid, but we are definitely not equal partners, which used to frustrate me to no end.
Once upon a time, I used to insist that we only purchase items or go on vacations that I could afford. That lasted for a fairly short time. My luxury prince/boyfriend XFE and I both agreed that staying in hostels and riding on buses with livestock was not something we wanted to explore (or, in my case, revisit).
The same issue came up as well when purchasing a house. We’re not equal partners. There’s simply no way we could have gone halfsies. And I don’t expect a free ride on XFE’s smart financial prowess and discipline. I’m very proud of him for being able to do it on his own.
But for those who are worried about me (and judging by Facebook, there are a few), there will be some sort of legal-y, document-y type thing outlining my (non)substantial contributions to this latest life-project.
I’ll probably do a future blog post on how to buy a house while continuing to live in sin.
At the end of the day, XFE bought us a lovely house.
By the way, we bought our lovely house in a week. That’s seven days from the time that we first met our wonderful, amazing realtor, and the time that XFE had an offer accepted. That’s slightly shorter than the typical Kardashian courtship.
If I didn’t know us, I would think we must not have been a very picky couple to have chosen a place so quickly. The house we settled on was the fourth of a total 10 houses we looked at.
But I do know us. We have very particular tastes (needs to have that Old Town character, but also needs to be completely renovated and under $1 million, please. And be decorated by Jeff Lewis).
So when we found something that ticked off almost everything on our list, we jumped on it. Plus, my bathroom has a sparkly crushed glass sink surround and a skylight. Which wasn’t even on my list, but should have been. I don’t know how I’ve lived without a skylight for so long. It’s shameful.
Our friends are a bit….er, overly excited for us. We’ve already had two friends/coworkers say that they’ve creeped by the new place and looked in the large front window. One was XFE’s co-worker who’s child is enrolled at the Catholic school/day care across the street. The other person is my friend and current neighbor Katie, who’s on maternity leave right now and obviously in need of something to do.
Maybe I’ll put her on a certain project called “find us some non-creeper window treatments.” (Just kidding, Katie.)
