The Writer’s Coin

My fiancée and I just recently moved in together.

The process of finding a place was complicated because we wanted to get a place we really liked and we wanted to save money for when we actually buy a place down the line. We were both coming from very small studio apartments (I was in an efficiency—don’t ask) and we were looking forward to having more space.

We briefly thought about getting a two bedroom so we could have guests and maybe use it as an office, but we didn’t see anything that nice in our price range that was practical so we stuck to one bedrooms.

Now, I figured if we could each lower our monthly rent payment we could take the difference and stash it into savings. Beautiful. I had a number in mind of what places we should be looking at in terms of price, and with that we began looking at apartments.

To make a long story short, none of them really wowed us. We weren’t happy with our choices and it was starting to get close to moving time.

Then we went to a high-rise apartment right on Lake Michigan and right away I thought “this is too nice for us.” Not too expensive, but too nice—this was a huge jump from where we were living at the time. It’s an incredible building with all sorts of amenities (pool, gym, doorman, etc.) and we were fawning over it. Then we saw the view and M’s checkbook came right out. We didn’t need to discuss—we wanted this one.

The inevitable question: Was it a wise financial decision? Yes.

We aren’t saving as much as we could of if we would’ve picked a cheaper place. That much is clear. We are basically paying exactly the same amount of money (bills, rent, etc.) as we were before. Only now we have an incredible apartment with a view of the lake and more space than we know what to do with.

We love it, and that counts for a lot.

It feels like we splurged because our quality of life has increased so much, but when you look at the numbers and see that we aren’t spending any more than before, it helps us sleep at night.

These are the kinds of decisions that make up our financial lives, and we need to make them based on many things: numbers, practicalities, logic, and feelings. Yes, feelings. You have to be happy with the decisions you’ve made otherwise it will weigh on you in the future.

So we are living together now. We are happy (ecstatic is more like it), we are within our numbers (they could always be better, but that’s the case no matter what you choose), and that’s all we can ask for.

Cheers.

Tags: moving, moving in together, new apartment