How to deal with comparing myself to friends and their success?

[elephantmeg]

hugs. BTDT. Heck live with it daily when I visit friends who have the same house we do except it is actually finished. And DH is stilllllllllllll dragging his feet.

[Tondi G]

well we live in an apartment ... 2 bd 1 bath. we have no hopes of buying a home in the area... can't afford a $6000 a month mortgage period! We live well, but we have no back yard, no garage, our kids share a room. We had always had dreams of buying our own home but at this point it ain't gonna happen any time soon so I have had to change my thinking and be thankful for the positives in the place/life we live. Love our neighbors, family lives close, everything is at our fingertips (live right in the city), happy with our school. It does get me down sometimes though. I'd love to be picking out countertops and choosing colors to paint my house and flooring etc. Letting my children each choose a decor for their own rooms..... sigh .... maybe one day!

[mom3boys]

OP, I just wanted to say I totally understand. We are in a high COL and live in about 1640 sq. foot, attached row house, with no parking or yard. We finally did a renovation about 1.5 years ago, before that, we had only 1 bath (we now have 1.5) and an absolutely terrible kitchen with no storage, very outdated appliances and no dishwasher at all. (I remember complaining about the no dishwasher thing to DH after finishing up a PILE of dirty dishes one night. He said "You know, lots of people don't have dishwashers. Some people don't even have kitchens, they need to cook their food in a hut with an open flame." I was like, "Those people live in Africa. We live in New Jersey." I was not in an empathetic mood).

The hardest part I find is when people from low COL areas (like my ILs) come visit and they really think we must not be doing well financially. Meanwhile, our home is valued at 2-3 times their much larger home. But, even our friends in our area do seem to be doing better. I often can't understand how they are able to afford these homes, buy maybe they (unlike us) are receiving help from parents or have inheritance or whatever.

I try not to let it get to me. There are families in our neighborhood, which though high COL neighbors a lower COL area with a lot of renters, recent immigrants, etc. who are clearly poor. I see moms coming out of their appt. buildings to walk 3-4 kids to school, I doubt the apts. are more than 1200 sq ft. Once some young kids came to my house for Halloween (with their mom), they had no costumes and were using plastic grocery store shopping bags to collect their candy. Many kids in DS's school qualify for reduced or free lunch.
The awful (and selfish) thing for this about me is that people basically need to drive through this area to get to my area. So in addition to the small house I feel like they must think, why are they in this crappy neighborhood?

However I guess I have finally let it really get to me because we are moving to find a larger home. When we brought home DS3, I could immediately tell we needed to move out of our current house. I was there with DH, my mom, DS1, DS2 and DS3 in our only "living room" (we have no additional family room or playroom) which is about 10' by 13'. It was just so obviously small and crowded. We can't have more than 1 family come over and even that is tough.

Honestly, I am fine with anything more than 2,000 sq. ft and with 2 full baths, I don't need a gigantic house with rooms I don't use. I know people who have way more house than they need and I don't quite understand it (I honestly think there is some "LOOK HOW SUCCESSFUL I AM" to it). The more important thing for me is the outside space. My kids need need need a yard (as do I for my sanity). Even getting a 4 bed 2 bath in a neighborhood we like will require me to take an industry rather than academic job, and probably work full-time, but I am so unhappy in our current home I am not really opposed to this.

ETA: I have been wanting to move for years. DH finally came around because of the schools being bad where we are and we can't afford private school for 3 kiddos.

[BabbyO]

I try to remember that everyone has something they are more "fortunate" in. For example I live in a lower COL area than my sister and she still has a much bigger home, has had more new cars in the last 5 years than total number of cars (new or used) that I've ever owned, and she *could* give up her job and stay home with DN.

BUT her husband travels all the time, DN doesn't sleep as well as my boys usually do, she doesn't live near family, she's struggled to find a sitter she really likes...etc, etc.

For me, I'll give up the home and cars for an awesome support network and DH who is home almost every night.

Long way to say that I try to remember the things I'm more fortunate in. (but I agree it is hard to do that sometimes!)

[AnnieW625]

I feel like that all of the time, but like others have said I would rather live in a small house and have the support of my DH during the week than only see him on weekends, and I know he feels the same way if I were the one that had to do a lot of travel or have a stressfull job, but made lots more money. In fact I could make a good $20,000 more per year working in the private sector, but I wouldn't have the flexibility I do now.

We bought our 1200 sq. ft. home we bought about 18 months before (March, 2005) the market peaked in my area (October, 2007) and had we not bought then we would have just bought within the last 18 months or soo, we were close to being priced out of our area by the time we closed escrow (April, 2005), and within 6 months had about 25K in equity. Now we are underwater about 100K.

We don't know too many people in our situation because our friends are between 3 and 10 yrs. older than us and are now on their second home or bought their current home in the late 1990s. DD1 comes and tells me we need a bigger house I tell her in nicer terms "too bad and deal with it, we can't move now." It is just life. Both DH and I wish that we had a second bathroom, and a nicer kitchen, both of which will become a reality when we have saved enough money, which is a couple of years off. Off to go research the HARP 2 program in hopes that we can refinance, and if we can then maybe in a few years we might be able to move.

[almostmom]

I just want to say thank to everyone for sharing your stories here today. It has truly made me feel better, or at least partially get me out of my funk. It strikes me how everyone has a unique situation, and most are a struggle in one way or another.

DH and I both grew up in very large houses, though mine was bigger but in a slightly lower COL area. My current house is 1600 sq. ft. and I would be happy with the right house at around 2300. And a bathtub I could soak in - that is my dream. But really, just a second full bath someday. But even with help from my parents, who would help, I don't think we could improve to a point where a move would be worth it. And many times, I am proud of what I've made of our current space. And it is hard for my parents to see us living where we do - they feel we should have more. And that weighs on me (and probably makes DH dig his heels in more).

I am glad I'm not alone, but I'm sorry others feel this way too. It's good to have the perspective of not being strapped for cash, maybe being able to think about a vacation some day, or some home improvements. Appreciating the time we have every night together as a family. And a house that is paid off in 15 years. And the fact that I connect best with people who live in houses like me, and if I moved their perspective might change! I think that's also why it's hard to see my friends, who live in similar places, move up. It's my own issues, and I'll get over them.

Thanks again everyone.

[niccig]

And it is hard for my parents to see us living where we do - they feel we should have more. And that weighs on me (and probably makes DH dig his heels in more).

Your DH may have a different definition of what success is. A bigger house may not be that important to him.

I do think it can be more difficult when you've come from more to less. SIL wants lifestyle she had growing up, but her DH doesn't earn the income FIL earned. She's gone back to work to get some of those extras. Other people we know decided the extras weren't worth it, and have accepted their lifestyle is what it is.

We had friends that considered a job out in SoCal and came out for a weekend for us to show them around. He turned down the job as they couldn't imagine living in a house 1/3 the size for 3x the cost and the job's pay couldn't make up for that difference. We have accepted that's what it is to live here.

I hope you can come to terms with things and be happy.

[sunnyside]

Wow. Don't compare yourself! You are doing fine!

I was thinking of buying a house and someone asked me what I would really like to have in my house? Like what thing were important to me. I've only ever rented, and so my three were:
1. A yard with a tree.
2. An island in the kitchen or extra place to do kitchen prep.
3. An open living/dining with windows all around.


Those were my must haves. Now I'm still renting, but I have the tree in the yard and the open space with windows. I didn't get that kitchen island but I realize how happy I am with just keeping it relatively simple.

Good luck!

[niccig]

And it is hard for my parents to see us living where we do - they feel we should have more. And that weighs on me (and probably makes DH dig his heels in more).

I was thinking of this as I went to get DS from aftercare. I'm not sure if this is happening, but I know my DH would be very upset if he felt my family were critical of what he could provide for me and it would be compounded if I was telling him I wasn't happy with the house and I wanted a bigger house like friends had. He would feel he wasn't a good enough provider and it would cause a lot of tension. He also wouldn't want to talk about the situation.

You also didn't say if you're a one income or two income family. If you're one income can you go back to work, or two income, do you see any chance of increasing earning potential? The only way you can get that extra bathroom is to have more income and/or make some budget cuts to save more.

Would you ever relocate to cheaper COL? I know many people that have done that. I wish we could.

Do you think you can accept your current housing situation and be happy with it? Is there something else you can focus on.

Just trying to see if there's any solution in sight - we're in a high COL area too and we've lost way too much on the house to ever leave. We're stuck here until DH retires and then we can move to cheap COL. I'm resigned to it, and hope one day we can fix the kitchen up a bit, but that's probably about as much as we can do.

[maestramommy]

Yup, BTDT. Used to live in L.A and what we could afford was renting an apt. Even the 1100 sq ft house on a 1/8 acre lot was out of our reach. Which is why we left and came here.