Moving to bigger house - regrets?

[SilverDoublet]

Has anyone moved to a bigger, better house in a more central location, and regretted it?
I'm asking cos we are about to move to a bigger place, but am getting really worried about all the bigger expenses, bills, taxes, even bigger furniture required to furnish it, more cleaning etc... I'm getting really worried in case something happened to my husband and I couldn't pay all the bills in future... I'm thinking if the worst comes to the worst I'll be renting out rooms or selling it if I'm on my own in the future. At the moment we can afford it though.
Am I mad or is everyone like that?

No point worrying. Enjoy. Deal with life as it happens. Have an emergency fund. Do you have children?

We did, and yes it's all alot more work and expense. We love our house and the location, so no regrets here.

Yes and it was great but now we have a big expensive empty nest. If I had my time again I would have moved but not up-sized.

This is a refreshing attitude, as I am a total worrier. Yes we have children. The plan is to move so they're not all sharing bedrooms and walking in on each other in the bathroom.
There will be no emergency fund for a couple of years after the move.

I doubt you'll regret it, if anything it will be amazing and in the unlikely chance you don't like it, you can always move again.

Just wouldn't be able to move back to the house we're in at the moment. Our kids have grown up here from babies.... 😭. All the memories.... 😢 It's making me the most sad..

I think you need to stop focusing on the negative. You've made this decision for a reason so focus on the positive and look ahead.

We enjoyed our move to a larger house. The little things, like not having to turn sideways to get between furniture, an extra bedroom of course and an extra bathroom.

Try and think positive and enjoy your big house. We moved to a bigger house 11years ago and we didn’t regret or look back and yes the bigger you go the more things become bigger too but I’m sure you will manage

I understand your feelings, it's hard leaving somewhere that has great memories such as bringing home your DC. However for me the happiness moving to a bigger place and seeing the space they had to run around made it worth it. I am far happier spending time at home now than I ever was. Cleaning wise - I rotate between upstairs/downstairs on a weekly basis where as before I could do the whole house in a day. Anything gets 'dirty' I do it as and when it happens.

The decision is made. Enjoy it. If you're worried about affording the house if something happened to your husband, make sure you have adequate insurance.

No, I haven't regretted it.

I bought a larger house when ds was three. We've lived here for 14 years and we'll stay for another two or three.

We've enjoyed having plenty of space. Spare rooms for friends to visit. Family parties. It's been a stable consistent home for ds. It was a mess when I bought it so I've enjoyed restoring it and it's doubled in value.

But I'll retire soon & down-size, ds will be at uni, it will be time for the next chapter.

With things like furniture - it doesn’t have to be perfect immediately. Enjoy choosing things and letting it evolve naturally.

You will carry your memories in your heart and mind not your possessions. You’ll be making new memories in the new house and if the location is better you’ll probably be able to do more. Enjoy the next chapter.

We just did the move to a house exactly like you describe. Everything is just better. No regrets here. Seeing the kids actually spend time in the garden because it is way bigger and more usable, meeting our lovely neighbours and just having the space to breath without bumping into each other has been amazing. We have a hallway now…who knew that would make a difference lol Having more than one bathroom, kids not sharing - a blessing! I understand your anxiety but get life insurance and just enjoy what you have. You will see how easy it is to get used to something that’s just better.

In the process on doing this at the minute! Having adequate insurance in place if anything happens to either of us has removed a lot of the worry.
In terms of furniture, do you have anyone local who upcycles? It is hard to buy large scale furniture new, since a lot of houses today are smaller. I’ve found a lady who scours auctions and fb market place for the things I like, then up cycles them for me 🥰 She’s amazing, her pieces look fantastic and are a fraction of the price of new furniture.

This could be me writing this post, exact same scenario here so giving you a hand squeeze of solidarity. Our move is taking forever so it’s given me extra room for self doubt and worry but it sounds like we’re doing it for the right reasons, so let’s hope for the best 😁 me and DH have insured ourselves as much as we can which did stop me panicking quite as much. Wishing you many happy years in your new place.

We upsized last year and I felt exactly the same way. I still worry about the expenses but I think thats just my mentality, as I would have been the same in our previous home! Its brilliant having so much space though, compared to living in a matchbox before!

Do you have any life cover/ death in service etc? We both have insurances which would pay off the remainder of the mortgage should the worst happen. What we have will eventually seem on the big side once it’s just the two of us, but we could downsize then. It’s been more than worth the expense and extra work for us to have the quality of life we have now. I love cleaning, so that one hasn’t been an issue for me. It’s only maybe added an extra 15/ 20 minutes a week of the time spent. I did worry a lot beforehand because there’s always risk involved with any kind of move, but we’re very glad we took it.

Has your husband got life insurance?

We have done this and regret it in some ways as it's a big financial burden and there's so much work to do. We are chipping away at it ourselves but it's obviously taking a lot longer than we'd planned for. Having said that though, having all the extra space has been absolutely life changing, incredible for the children. When we hosted Christmas it felt like all my dreams come true. I just wish we had new windows 🤣

Really recommend critical illness cover as well as life cover. For the critical illness cover you don’t need to cover the whole cost of the mortgage if that would be prohibitively expensive, just enough to be able to cover the mortgage on one wage. At the least purchase enough critical illness cover to buy you time to sell the property and pay for stamp duty on a cheaper one.

Home is where your children are. You have photographs of the memories you don’t need the bricks and mortar.
The children are the memories you’re keeping them I presume