So nervous and anxious about moving (different town)

[OfUselessBooks]

I was so excited about house hunting and moving, but now I'm feeling scared! We have had such big changes in our lives due to Covid - I have lost my job and we made the decision to move back to our home town. The magnitude of the changes is making me so anxious and tearful, I wonder if anyone else is in the same boat?

I was a bit hesitant about posting on this board as I know the advice is often not to proceed if you have doubts...however, I know that we are making the safest decision for our family at the moment. If we did wait, the figures might not add up any more (it could be disastrous if we lost even £5k off our sale price at the moment), and we would use up savings paying our mortgage, making a move even harder. It does make sense to get on with it now while everything has gone well.

A move has always been on the cards, but I suppose in my mind it would have been part of moving jobs and a more planned decision. If this had been the case, we could have got a bigger house.

When we were looking, it was exciting, but now we have chosen a house I am focusing on the negatives, especially as we are slightly downsizing. This is necessary as we cant get a mortgage at the moment, but I feel sad about leaving our lovely family home, where we brought our children home from the hospital to.

I'm not really asking for house advice. We have made a safe decision for our own security. Maybe a slightly better house could come up next week, or in a few months, or maybe not. We're not in a position to take a risk at the moment (so I have switched off right move alerts!). The house is nice- actually the location is great, with plenty of parks and a very short walk to school. It is a similar size to our current house in terms of a number of rooms, but most of them are slightly smaller (think 1980s build rather than 1930s). There are very few houses on the market and out of the 8 or so we looked at this ticked the most boxes. One had a fractionally bigger garden and rooms, but the location and layout were worse. I have been imagining how our day will be, and where our Christmas tree will go and it will work for us, which I think is a good sign! It was the last house we looked at and all of the others were quite disappointing, so it was a relief (and a surprise actually as on paper it didn't look so good). We got an ok price, probably slightly more than I hoped, but we also got more for ours than expected so it balanced out.

It's just the emotional side I'm struggling with really. I'm very tearful since we have started doing the practical things like organising searches etc. Too many changes on top of redundancy are really hard to deal with! I am massively over thinking everything and obsessively measuring out rooms and our garden to see what would fit. I wish I could be more relaxed and excited about it like my husband. If we had made one of the other decisions I would be posting about that instead! We can't afford to rent at all (there will be no mortgage to pay at the new house, which is obviously a huge advantage - going from a London commuter town much further north) and we need to be in the right area for school applications later in the year so we can't move in with family. How do I put my doubts to one side to be excited?!

[Didicat]

Do you have any friends in your home town that you could get in contact with?

Congrats on being mortgage free!

[Megan2018]

Do you will be mortgage free? That’s amazing, such a brilliant position to be in. I’d focus on that, no matter what happens you and your family have a nice house in a nice area. The world can go tits up and you will all be secure.

It will all be ok, nothing has to be permanent- it’s always possible to change direction again one day. For now you are doing the best thing, even if it is not what you would choose.
But to be mortgage free with children is fabulous.

[JoJoSM2]

Job loss and house moves are up there, only second to divorce and bereavement when it comes to the most stressful life events. So it’s probably bound to be difficult emotionally for a while. Once you’ve settled, it’s bound to get better.

[OfUselessBooks]

I'm silly really focusing on the negatives. We are moving from quite an expensive area fo a much cheaper one so won't have a mortgage. We also won't have jobs to begin with so I suppose I've been focusing on that more. My career is a real mess as well. But we are in a good situation with the house and I should be grateful for that! Our worlds have changed virtually overnight and I wish we could go back to our 2 jobs and hefty mortgage and make the decision more freely. I'm really silly though, I cant stop crying sometimes when I should be happy.

[Didicat]

It’s understandable that you are upset, getting new jobs is daunting at this time, and part of the reason when we sold, we’ve ended up going to rental to secure my job or I would have had to pull out and already resigned from the previous.

Maybe pick 3 really good things about the move and focus on them.

[OfUselessBooks]

Thank you, that's a good idea. There are so many good things: cheaper house, near family and friends, security for us, a playroom! We were so settled here, it's such a horrible feeling for everything to be changing.