New Place, New Me.…… Nah

I recent­ly moved into an apart­ment of my own. The last time this hap­pened was 4.5 years ago!

I’ve had room­mates on and off through the years. My first two years of col­lege I had a room­mate. I had many room­mates when I was in the Air Force (59 oth­er women for 2 months!). The first place I lived after col­lege was most­ly on my own. My friend moved in for a few months before he took a job in Texas and I moved for a new job. I had an apart­ment all on my own and hon­est­ly I loved it. A 2 bed­room apart­ment in a nice com­plex with ameni­ties and plen­ty of space was the per­fect fit for me.

Then I let the opti­miza­tion of my finances go into over­drive and I lived with a friend in their base­ment, in the Din­gle house with my ten­ants, with my ex-boyfriend, in the base­ment of a house with a fam­i­ly out­side DC and then most recent­ly with a friend in DC.

I saved tens of thou­sands of dol­lars on house hack­ing, as evi­denced below by a screen­shot from Mint. I find it inter­est­ing you can tell when I moved by those spikes where I had to put down a deposit on the new place and the change in rent paid. I was pret­ty hap­py with the first place I rent­ed, but I did not need a 3 bed­room house or the costs asso­ci­at­ed with it ($200 util­i­ty bills!!!), which is why I got a room­mate. The 2 bed­room apart­ment was expen­sive to me then ($1100 a month) but look­ing back, was prob­a­bly the best liv­ing sit­u­a­tion. I had a sep­a­rate room for craft­ing and com­put­ing and a sec­ond bath­room for the kit­ty litter/guests to use/bathtub for soaking.

Then I need­ed a place for a few months until I found a house to buy so I rent­ed my friend’s base­ment for a measly $400 a month.  That was­n’t ide­al, but I was only there for a few short months before I bought the Din­gle House. I feel like my men­tal health took a pret­ty deep dive liv­ing there. That was part­ly from the stress of landlording/fixing up the house, but it was also due to being crammed into a stu­dio apart­ment. I did­n’t have space to work on my crafts or do much of any­thing at all, to be hon­est. I had no AC, a tiny kitchen, and no laun­dry facil­i­ties. I firm­ly believe this expe­ri­ence taught me what I want and need in a place. I don’t real­ly care about a dish­wash­er, but I need that AC and a wash­er dry­er in unit. Sure, I was get­ting paid to live there, but I was pret­ty miserable.

After that I moved in with my boyfriend at the time. It seemed like the per­fect move. Plen­ty of space to work on any craft I desired, a great walk­a­ble loca­tion in the city, and some­one to split the costs with. But, things did­n’t work out like I thought they would and I end­ed up leaving.

What works out on paper does­n’t always work out in real life.

After leav­ing Min­neso­ta, I lived with my par­ents in their base­ment for a month while I looked for a job. That was a pret­ty mis­er­able expe­ri­ence for me and the cat. I was low from the breakup and had a lot of com­plex fam­i­ly dynam­ics at play. The plan was to stay there with them through the hol­i­days and then move some­where else if I did­n’t get a job.

How­ev­er, I did get a job, so I packed my car up with the essen­tials and moved in with a very kind and gen­er­ous fam­i­ly in the DC sub­urbs. I was­n’t expect­ed to pay rent while liv­ing there which real­ly helped me get back on my feet. I doubt I would be in as good a spot as I am with­out their gen­eros­i­ty. How­ev­er, all good things must come to an end and so did that sit­u­a­tion. My friend had an unex­pect­ed open­ing in her apart­ment, so I jumped on the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dip my toes in the adult­ing pool and pre­tend I was a real grownup again. Rent was $1050 for one bed­room in a 2 bed­room apart­ment. A great deal for the loca­tion, but not the best deal for me/my interests/lifestyle. There just was­n’t quite enough room for all of her stuff and all of my stuff.

That brings us to the present, where I just signed a lease for an apart­ment with 1 bed­room, one bath­room, and a den. I would love to move back into a 2 bed­room, 2 bath­room apart­ment, but while I’m liv­ing in DC that’s just not fea­si­ble on my own. I’m pay­ing $1895 a month for the priv­i­lege of call­ing this space home. It is absolute­ly a stretch for my bud­get and one that I’m hon­est­ly a lit­tle stressed over. The rent is slight­ly over 50% of my take-home pay, and I haven’t even added in the cable, water/sewer/garbage, and elec­tric­i­ty bills.

If some­one came to me and said, “Gwen, I want to spend 55% of my take-home pay on an apart­ment”, I would tell them that’s a ter­ri­ble idea and not to do it. So why did I do it?

The only rea­son I felt com­fort­able doing this is because I saved so aggres­sive­ly in the past. If you want to be finan­cial­ly inde­pen­dent or retire ear­ly in the near­ish future, you should absolute­ly keep your big three (hous­ing, vehi­cle, food) expens­es low and save every pen­ny you com­fort­ably can. Since I did save so aggres­sive­ly (and changed my FIRE plan), I feel com­fort­able low­er­ing my sav­ings rate and bump­ing up my hous­ing costs.

I do want to stop for a minute and talk about the priv­i­lege of being able to have low hous­ing costs in the past. I have built up a fair­ly exten­sive net­work both in per­son and online, which real­ly real­ly helped. Turns out, talk­ing to a cowork­er at a train­ing class about triv­ia could get you a com­fy base­ment for $400! Shar­ing per­son­al details on my pod­cast led to stay­ing with the fam­i­ly in DC. I’m also blessed to still have fam­i­ly I can stay with, that some­one else in the fam­i­ly did­n’t need my old room on a per­ma­nent basis and that my par­ents haven’t down­sized into a small­er house (yet).

I’ve been in my new apart­ment for a few days now and I can’t even believe the changes in my qual­i­ty of life. Every­where I turn, there’s some­where to put my stuff neat­ly away. Front hall clos­et, linen clos­et, walk-in clos­et in the bed­room, cab­i­nets and coun­ter­top space in the bath­room, clos­ets in the den, a pantry and so many cab­i­nets in the kitchen. My Kitchen-Aid stand mix­er is able to live on the coun­ter­top! My sheets and blan­kets and tow­els can go in the linen clos­et in the bath­room! My extra toi­letries can go in a draw­er in the bath­room! I don’t need to have my plas­tic 3 draw­er orga­niz­er from my fresh­man year of col­lege any­more! The unpack­ing and orga­niz­ing stage of the move is going shock­ing­ly easy thanks to all the extra space I have now.

How­ev­er.….. with all the good things, come some bad things as well. I’ve already men­tioned the high cost of the apart­ment, but I am also pay­ing more mon­ey in oth­er ways. Name­ly, replac­ing sup­plies. I need an eclec­tic range of things for the apart­ment, from a new plunger and toi­let bowl brush to ice cream scoop to kitchen table. Thank­ful­ly, my room­mate is mov­ing in with her boyfriend and they’re con­sol­i­dat­ing their 2 apart­ments into one, so I’ve been able to buy a lot of things off of them. I’ve also been keep­ing an eye on Craigslist and estate sales for some of the things I need which lead to a great deal on a new to me couch. It retails for $600, I got it for $150, and all but one piece fit in my car. Which is good to know because I’ll need to help my room­mate move the same kind of couch when they find one on Craigslist!

All of this is to say, it’s tempt­ing to say I’m turn­ing over a new leaf in life and I’ll do x, y, and z now that I have this new place. Hon­est­ly, just because I’m liv­ing on my own in a nice new place does­n’t auto­mat­i­cal­ly mean I’ll be a bet­ter per­son. I’m still me. I’m the same per­son I have been, just one that’s a lit­tle less stressed in some ways and a lit­tle more stressed in others.

I hope this post has at least been a lit­tle help­ful. This was a dif­fi­cult post to write — not for the con­tent, but for the phys­i­cal act of writ­ing and get­ting the post out. Blog­ging is a skill like any oth­er that needs prac­tice and I’ve been woe­ful­ly neglect­ing this skill of mine late­ly. So par­don any ram­bles and enjoy what­ev­er I man­age to publish!

As always, thanks for read­ing! What’s been your favorite place to live? Why? Dis­cuss in the com­ments below!