Interesting conversation as I just start to prepare to downsize. I want to go from lots of bedrooms + office, etcetera and garaging for a few cars down to a few bedrooms and garaging for lots of cars! By the way, I found this comparison by country of average home sizes… Sq. Sq. m feet HK 45 484 Russia 57 614 China 60 646 UK 76 818 Italy 81 872 Sweden 83 893 Japan 95 1023 Spain 97 1044 Germany 109 1173 France 112 1206 Greece 126 1356 Denmark 137 1475 Canada 181 1948 USA 201 2164 Australia 214 2303 Cheers, Grahame My favorite _expression_ about golf is what my German colleagues taught me. Golf is a game for men who have stopped sleeping with their wives. I live in the low Sierras and I'm just outside (literally, my 1/4 mile driveway ends at their back fence) one of those "hoity-toity" neighborhoods where the HOA fees are bigger than most people's house payment... then they have to build a house with a minimum footprint of 5000sq/ft. There is one behemoth up but back on the ridge that's 16,000 sq/ft... and his view of the high Sierras pales compared to mine. I cringe when I hear what their monthly's are... and even if they have a zero mortgage they still have to pay HOA fees that would swamp most budgets... for the rest of their days. Oh, but they do get to knock a little white ball around and chase it for less money that the average Joe. I prefer to recreate with a mill and a welder. What's a mortgage? You mean people don't pay cash for houses? Guess I've screwed up...
Sent from my iPad Dang, my garage is bigger than that.... and I'm getting ready to build another. But, for me its not the size of the house, but the mortgage. Having a zero mortgage is the greatest of feelings. I can't tell you what a relief it is to have no house payment on the last two homes. Call me a prepper if you want, but I'm getting ready to put huge solar/generator project into motion with 4 days of autonomy with no sunlight.... 3 Tesla cells... then I can tell the power company to pound sand. I'll be grid tied but not dependent. Septic, well... now if I can just get a fracking site on the mountain side for fuel. If not, I have 20,000 trees. Same here. We’re at 2200 sq ft and still have one bedroom that we don’t need – it ends up as a big closet. More space is just more to clean, more to heat and cool, more to fill with stuff we don’t really need. She’d rather have a big barn and a small house and I’d rather have a big garage and a small house. So far she’s winning, but at least I have my office warehouse for cars… J She’s actually pretty fascinated with the tiny house movement (like 4-800 sq ft), but I don’t see that working with two of us and five big dogs. That's what mine is, not counting the screened in porch and the four car garage. Perfect for our needs. The 2400 Sq ft house is the deal In Victory you deserve Champagne If you obey all the rules Most of the high income peers that I have that are younger than me are foregoing bigger houses, they are travelling a lot more and eating out more. Even the guys that are 10 years older than me are heavily questioning the need for starter castles. I've got one friend with a 6000 sqft house that doesn't even go upstairs any more. Times they are a changing.... "...This is where millennials may be on to something in that they tend to be less interested in owning big houses or expensive cars and more interested in experiential spending. Big implications for the market economy of the future. John"
That's because the Millennials can't afford the big homes and fast cars! No use getting worked up over something you can never have/afford.
"...When you are lying on your deathbed, what will you remember more, the things you owned or the things you did?..."
Hopefully both!
Peter
IIRC, Hemingway did NONE of those three...
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