I get a lot of "you guys are so lucky!" from coworkers and relatives, but that irritates me a little. We bought our house when prices were really cheap in this area, but the neighborhood was also a little crappy. We were just very committed to living here. Many of my coworkers used to live in this area, but as they made more money and started families, they moved to the nicer suburbs, and now they spend two hours every day in their cars. Choices.
:applause:

We, too, get that "you're so lucky" speech. Lucky my BUTT. We WORKED for what we have. What's so hard for them to realize is they think they're working hard for what THEY have, but they have their priorities all mixed up.

DH went in to a bank to talk about refinancing our house. The guy's face actually fell when he said we only needed to finance $100k. What? You can't buy a new house here for less than $250,000 (it's way worse in other parts of the country, I know). The bank guy was fully expecting us to be maxed out on our credit and the debt-to-value ratio on the house. No. We don't live that way. We gave up a lot of "amenities" so we could have an acre of land in a city (near a bike trail), and that's all we paid for it. We LOVE our neighborhood and we love that each house is different and unique, and we love our 110 yo Victorian with original windows that we picked up for less than HALF what people working two jobs get all starry-eyed over in the new subdivision up the street.

I guess my rant is over now, but I could go on and on. lol.

Karen