Don't move into a neighborhood where you feel unsafe. And if you have kids that will attend public school, be sure to consider the quality of the public schools for your address.Matchmaker wrote:We have a modest to average sized mortgage on our home ($130,000). However, I don't think we could get it paid off in ten years, even if we were to sacrifice so much that we were able to double our payments every month, and 10 years is still too long to be in debt.
We are thinking we had better sell it and buy a really humble house (maybe $60,000 ish) in a really humble neighborhood somewhere so we could pay it off as soon as possible and be debt-free.
I recall a family in my last ward who found a really bad house in a decent neighborhood, selling for a small price because of how dilapidated it was. They spent most of their free time over the next two years completely renovating the house. By the time they finished, they had a house with an old exterior but it was completely new on the inside, and worth almost double what they had paid. It would take a lot of effort, but I would seriously consider doing the same thing in the future.