To always live in a cheaper house...

[PuckeredAhole]

...so that we can afford to travel and not feel poor at the end of the month?

We could have a more expensive house than we have but we want to travel with the kids and do days out. But am I missing out having a great house? What do you prioritise? I just don't want to get to retirement and a) be in a mediocre forever home thinking we could have pushed ourselves more (e.g. me work full time) or b) living in a huge lovely house but not having shown my kids the world or being able to buy them the latest gadgets or have a nicer car. First world problems, I know.

Where i live there is actually pretty much ceiling where it is not worthwhile going bigger. Once you have a >£500K house, the next size up is £1million+. Everything else in between is just slightly better location in the same town or slightly nicer looking house. One of my mates who inherited a load of assets recently has even decided not to bother moving even thought he could now easily afford the million pound plus houses as his house is far bigger than his family needs and spending the money on the family and investing it is a more productive use of it. Also all his friends live nearby and he is near the town centre so why would he want to move.

Id prioritise space for location namely to get into good schools.

If I didn't have kids, I'd choose an apt in the city over a house.

I'd choose location over a big house any day. I think needs change as families evolve.

You cannot buy a property for "guaranteed equity, pension pot and to leave the kids. In 1988 my house was worth £100.000, in 1989, after considerable work it sold for £64.000. When we sold our last house, and moved here, we were going to downsize and cheaper area (we were in a "nice" village in surrey, and have a bit of money for a pension pot. Firstly we had to knock £27.000 off our house price in order to sell because the houses each side of us were scruffy, that was most of the pension pot, then just after we moved, I gave my notice in to my permanent night job, (was past retiredment age) (had got a local job, days and a lot less money) 5 days later DH came home told me his company had liquidated there and then, he had a nervous breakdown,I rescinded my retirement, kept my Surrey based job because I had London weight,High cost living etc. Went back to work full time for the next 4 years, doing almost 100 mile round trip commute, we had to live on the pension pot for the year he was out of work. You dont know what is around the corner, he has had periods of ill health and doesnt get sick pay.

Yep we sacrificed having a garden (it's more of a yard!) so my dcs could be in the catchment for good schools. We aren't keen gardeners so it was a sacrifice we were willing to make. I still think about it though as I feel it's the only real downside to our new house. But would I move in the future just to have a bigger garden? Probably not.

Your kids will eventually leave home, leaving you in an empty palace. So I'd go for your choices.

We bought very cheaply as we both have lowish and variable income. My aim is to have as low fixed costs as possible, so we don't have debt apart from mortgage, don't finance a car etc it gives me security to know that we can make all our 'must have' payments. Often we are able to make choices to put our funds into more quality of life activities.

I love our house - I feel like we got a total bargain as it needed some work but nothing too major. We chose to have cash for renovations from a gift, rather than buying a more expensive place. It's a process of (fairly slowly!) bringing out the diamond of a house that I know is there :) it's a very ordinary 3 bed sixties semi, but the rooms and the spaces are great. We've done a skim coat on most of the rooms, redecorated, new bathroom, roof repairs, new doors... next is the flooring and the garden. Can't wait.

I have the same priorities OP.

I think a huge house is a hassle and wouldn't add much to my enjoyment of life. I suspect that (for some people at least) a big house is only sought after because it's an obvious signifier of wealth. So it's mostly about signalling status rather than paying for something that you get a lot out of. Not saying this is true for everyone.

And being Irish, I'd be very wary about treating a house as a money making machine. The bust was brutal here and I know too many people who bought prior to 2008 who ended up with literally nothing as they couldn't keep up with the big mortgages, couldn't sell because of NE and ultimately got repossessed.

If you've seen that happen to your friends, you'd be shit scared of over extending. I'm gobsmacked at a couple of the comments on here. And it doesn't even have to be a crash. Interest rates can't stay low forever. Could you afford your loan at 10%?

We bought an apartment in a nice area with excellent surrounding facilities rather than a bigger, more expensive property in an area with less to offer. We also didn't use anywhere near our mortgage offer to allow for long term job insecurity and my health condition, I just couldn't be doing with the stress of worrying about payments if our circumstances changed and certainly don't want mortgage payments dictating my lifestyle. Not interested in making money just want security renting can't give.
I'm not one of those people who take great joy in a certain type of window or tile, I'm just happy to have a decent, affordable roof over my head at the end of the day. Each to their own but i have seen two elderly Aunts rattling around in beautiful large homes with fewer quality 'life' memories than i'd be happy with

My husband is self employed and I worked for local government; good salary but always short term (up to 2 years) contracts so not really able to risk stretching. We bought a wreck in an ok area but it only cost us £34000. We fixed it up and it is worth quite a bit more now. The main point of this being I could afford to over pay so the mortgage was paid off in 7 years. This in turn, allowed us to help all 3 of our children to get their own homes, we have been able to holiday every year and been to some amazing places. The real pay off was last year; I was made redundant; then within the month, found I had bowel cancer and have not been able to work since (although I am well now). The thought of being in that position with an outstanding mortgage would have terrified me. So, although I have friends with beautiful, magazine worthy houses and am occasionally envious, I am glad I am where I am.

We stretched ourselves a bit - but we're in central-ish London and we really didn't want to spend however much time per day commuting so it was an every day quality of life thing rather than wanting a big house as such. Plus our house is not huge for the sake of it, but it has a lot more space than our old flat.

It does worry me a bit, but I currently work part time, plus double full time child care will begin to ease off in the next few years so we should have a bit more spare. Plus, loads of free stuff for young kids and we figured we'd be just as happy doing UK holidays in the tiny stage.

DH and I have been married 25 years and we are still living in the 2nd house we bought.

First was a modern 2 bed semi where we lived for 7 years. Then we moved into our current home, a semi rural Victorian 3 bed with really large rooms and huge garden with outbuildings. The plan was to stay here for 5-7 years and then move to or self build the 'dream forever home'.

18 years on we are still here and perfectly happy. Mortgage paid off. We extended 5 years ago and we all love it. Great area, good schools, lovely neighbours and friends near by. I feel really lucky and wake up every day excited to live here. Especially since I finally got my dream kitchen and a woodburner. Its not perfect. High heating bills, still rather draughty and some of it is looking more shabby than chic. It is great having disposable income and money put away 'just incase'.

We plan to stay here another 10 years or so till youngest has finished uni and then we may sell up buy a motorhome and take off into the sunset. If we come back we will buy a flat in town near to shops and doctors etc.

I think it depends on priorities and where you are in your life. We lived in a house we could easily afford had loads of disposable income, holidays, eating out. But I am similar to LauraBrown, in that I was miserable because the house was so small, we had no room and I felt a bit like a caged animal when I was home. Getting more space became a massive priority so we went to the top of our budget to get it.

At the moment money is tight and we dont have a lot of spare cash for holidays, eating out etc but we love our new home, our quality of life has improved as the space means so much to us. I hope that in time as we work to pay off the mortgage our disposable income will increase. We will never upgrade after this house, this was the big jump for us and the right decision.

At the end of the day it is all about priorities and what you want from life. We are all different!

We probably could buy a much bigger house. However, we have decided to stay in our relatively small house in an average area. The house is lovely, the schools are great and we have money to travel , visit theatre etc. We are happy with our decision

Also meant to say I know a few people who have really stretched themselves to buy a large family home as part of their retirement planning. With the intention of downsizing to free up some money. However some are finding that the children are not fleeing the nest as early as the parents would like and they have to hang on to the family home far longer than they wanted to.

Or in the case of my PILs, find it really difficult to leave the family home. They got used to the space and the location of the 5 bedroomed house and never made the move to downsize into the 2 bedroom bungalow. Now FIL is dead and MIL is rattling around on her own whilst the house and garden falls into disrepair.

Neither way is the 'right' way. People have different lives/different circumstances/different priorities.
We've lived in small houses and we were pretty miserable. The thing that makes us happiest in life is having friends/family to stay/entertaining etc. We love space, especially a big garden. Therefore we have stretched ourselves financially for the sort of house that made us happy.
This doesn't mean my children aren't getting lovely experiences. They are. There are so many free/cheap days out if you look carefully. We don't go to expensive theme parks or anything like that, but they seem to enjoy simple days at the beach/in the countryside. We also still have holidays, just not luxurious ones. Simple self catering accommodation with plenty of outdoor activities around us.
We're happy in our big house with space to entertain our friends and family, and don't miss luxuries.

We are the same in that our mortgage less than half what we could afford. We do have quite a nice house though!

If we borrowed the maximum we could afford i would always feel nervous about one of us losing our job and there's no way we could afford to go skiing every year. Skiing is our passion as a family and we have prioritised that over a bigger house and any other type of holiday.

Good times and memories are more precious than a larger house.

Size isn't everything. As long as the house is right for you, it's the right choice.

However, sometimes people may have to make the decision to move somewhere bigger (if current living space is horribly cramped, new baby on the way or whatever) and may need to make sacrifices to do so in order to be happy longterm. But if your living space is big enough for you and yours to be comfortable and happy, why waste extra money on space you don't need?

Enjoy your home and holidays OP!

Good times and memories are more precious than a larger house

You can have both. We have plenty of good times and memories in a large house.
Good times and memories don't have to cost a lot of money.

@Ecureuil yes of course you can have both. What op is suggesting is that they couldn't afford to do as much of the things they enjoy (holidays), if they were to move to a larger/"better" property.

I really don't know.

On the one hand I never wanted the worry of what to do if we fell on hard times and couldn't afford to make mortgage payments, so we bought a small house. That still feels like the right choice.

But we remained crammed into the little house for far too long because I couldn't face the upheaval of moving and thought the house was okay for us. We weren't miserable. However, the minute we moved into a bigger house with a garden I discovered what we had been missing.

My 9yo began enjoying loads of time outside because she could. I had thought she "wasn't outdoorsy" because she hadn't seemed bothered whether she was in or out. Turns out I was wrong. There was space to set up a tent and camp in the garden. We could sit outside. It's lovely. She could also spread out a craft project indoors for a few hours without having to clear up because people were tripping over it.

My teen could have friends over. They could even sleep over, which had only been theoretically possible in our two-up two-down. We could have a couple of people come for dinner and get everyone round the table.

It became possible to have a private conversation without doing it in whispers, just by going upstairs and shutting a door. I sleep better because we're more spread out and there's less noise from other people watching TV, using the loo, cooking and showering. The neighbours are farther away and as we have a semi instead of a mid-terrace, there's only one set of neighbours, so it is quiet. And we make as much noise as we want when they aren't home!

All little things, but we have a better quality of life.

You have your priorities absolutely right.

It's location not just house though. Our house is no great shakes but pricey due to location. But it's safe and pleasant and everyone from toddler to older kids to me has an easy commute with good transport links. Having an easier abs shorter commute has greatly improved my quality of life and older kids can be independent as good transport. Its not just about a bjg house with a fancy kitchen!

We have a cheap house and keep our bills fairly small. Our mortgage is £300 p/m, we love our house, it's clean and tidy and perfect size (2 decent sized rooms and a box room). Doesn't mater that we don't live in a 5 bed with a massive garden etc. We have money to do things on the weekend and we live comfortably within our means. It also means I have the luxury of being able to work part time while the baby is young since we don't have a massive mortgage to pay.
Friend of mine has just bought and her mortgage is double mine. I don't envy them trying to afford things later down the line.