Would you choose to have a smaller home so you could have more experiences or holidays?

[AutumnCandle]

Just that really

Yes we have. No kids so a 1 bed and more disposable income is how we’ve decided to go for it. Got mortgage offer for much higher loan but chose to have lower repayments as we wouldn’t use extra space and love travelling and eating out.

I’d rather have more space and luxury every day than expensive holidays.

We've tried living in a wide range of houses from very large to 3 bedroom terrace.
We've settled in a three bedroom townhouse for now as dc are teens and don't need as much space.
By not putting all our money in one house we have more for education, holidays, experiences and a holiday cottage.
It is also a lot easier and cheaper to clean and maintain than a large house.

We've bought well within our means as holidays are important to us, but I wouldn't compromise enough to live in an area we didn't like or not have space to be comfortable.
We do economise on lots of other things though - we don't soend huge amounts at birthdays and Christmas, cars and phones are kept until they die and we really don't buy a look stuff like constant new clothes or homewares.

We are similar - like having a room for people to come and stay and need WFH space. We bought a wreck so all our spare money for the last few years has gone on home improvements.

While the kids are small I don't want to do big holidays which require long flights anyway. By the time they're old enough to remember all of a holiday like that, and not to be complete nightmares on the plane, we'll have a bit more money to spend on trips as we'll have finished doing up the house.

Yes we did that, had a baseline size (enough bedrooms for kids to have one each was the crux of it) to keep the mortgage smaller so we could have the lifestyle we wanted.

We outgrew it very quickly though and Covid showed us we were probably too cautious, we ended up upsizing to something more appropriate. That said, we have since had promotions and could go even bigger now if we wanted, but we won't, we feel we have struck the right balance now between house size (4 bed detached for 2 kids) and holidays/financial comfort.

My advice would be to not be too cautious, think about your career trajectories and ensure you have a realistic "baseline" for what you want from your home, and weigh that up with the lifestyle you want.

Absolutely not. I love my home and it was great for our children growing up. We are now at the point of thinking of downsizing which will free
up 3-400,000. It is a five, four bath with a large garden in a rural village.

We always had a holiday when our DC were young but loved being at home more.

Lots of holidays and experiences wouldn’t have appreciated in quite the aame
way as our home.

We have a 4 bed terrace, which is big enough for every child to have their own room, but it's small for our budget and we could have a big detached house with large garden if we lived further out. For me I would want one bedroom for each child as I hated sharing a room as a child. But I'd never overstretch so far that we couldn't have nice holidays and activities. In a way we've prioritised experiences as living very centrally in London we can get out to visit attractions and theatres easily, and we go out every weekend, although often the attractions are free, like museums and festivals. If we lived out in suburbia where we could get a large property, it would feel like a lot of hassle and expense to travel in all the time and we wouldn't go as much.

Yes, but only in a nice area with plenty to do. If your surroundings are horrible or everything is a long way away you'll end up staying cooped up at home

I did, when I split with ExDP - I didn't want to over stretch myself on one income and still wanted to be able to afford holidays etc.

It has however, kond of backfired as not long after I moved in, I met my now DP. He moved on after a year and his 3 kids come to stay at the weekends... along with my DS... In our 2 bed house

Yes, 3 bed semi with two DCs (now late teens). It's meant we can run two cars, have holidays and breaks, never really had to worry about one of us being made redundant, enabled me to stay working PT, all of us to have lots of hobbies. Neither of us have any inclination to WFH, we don't have guests staying over often and there is enough space for our lifestyle so it's been the right decision for us. Mortgage was paid off early too.

Yes we did. No kids and 2 full-time incomes until we retired, so we could have afforded a larger place. I do sometimes envy friends who have more space. But the location is lovely, we have been really lucky with our neighbours and we've never had to employ a cleaner or gardener. And we have had some fantastic trips - many holidays of a lifetime!

Yes, I do this now.

Yes - small (just big enough at a push) but a home we love, lots of nice experiences and holidays. I do keep my eye out for bigger properties but nothing ever seems worth the compromises we would have to make.

We have tried to do this. Our house is nice and big enough but we didn't overstretch ourselves mortgage wise. We do focus on holidays and experiences over home. It's nice enough though - I wouldn't want to sacrifice too much on the home front. Like everything it's about balance isn't it.

We've done exactly that.

We bought a small cottage in the Lake District. Tiny house in comparison to what we could have bought elsewhere. But, we wanted the kids to grow up with this lifestyle and it's a life we love.

No regrets here. ♥️ Plus, smaller house means smaller mortgage. Also didn't cost half as much to renovate.

Something had to be the compromise, for us it was house over location.

We've been trying to decide on this for a while and have eventually come down on the side of no.

A smaller house sounds nice but then we realised we'd save maybe £300 a month but have to lose the pool table, and various other things that we all enjoy.

Yes and do. Technically our combined salaries could afford us a fancier bigger house (not talking mansion here just maybe, detached or extra bedroom or bigger garden/nicer location). But our house is perfectly adequate space wise and location wise and I’d much rather spend the extra money on holidays, trips and experiences.

Well we will be down sizing in about 4 years but that’s when last of the dc leaves. Planning to go down to a 2 bed and have more holidays in the sun. Friends have said “oh but you will want space for adult dc and grandchildren to stay” well they will be welcome but they might have to kip on sofa bed or air mattresses. I’m not having 3 empty rooms for most of the year.

I’m the same, love having a spacious house, I really enjoy interior design, my house is my hobby and it’s constantly evolving, the best part of any holiday is coming back to my lovely home.

I think we sort of did this. A few years back we had the chance to buy a doer upper that although was not Escape to the Chateau territory was on the way there. But we decided to stick to our mid-terrace Victorian because otherwise we knew we would never have the disposable income for anything ever again. And our Dcs were (and are) young and we thought that we could not justify having then live in a building site short on money for the bulk of their tweenie and teen years.

I still have pangs though when we drive past the house we wanted.... although it's now a full 10 years later and the people who bought it still have scaffolding up.

Yes I would. Unfortunately I have the small home and still can’t afford the holidays or experiences. If I had a lottery win my priority would be doing fun things not upsizing.

No. I spend more time in my home than on holiday. We don't really do expensive holidays and only go away for one week in the summer usually, which I enjoy, but it's a pain in the neck to book and the memory of it fades pretty quickly.

It's cheaper than a large home in the same area though.

All else being equal (area, condition etc), smaller homes are cheaper than larger ones.

No, quite the opposite in fact. Our house isn't all that big anyway, and I'd love a larger one. I would much prefer that over spending loads of time away.