We were driving back home after kicking my brother's dog out of my car. My wife and I started talking about the houses that we had looked at and what we do. Regardless of what Pete thought or was used to, we could afford quite a bit of house with a 30 year fixed loan.
The question wasn't about whether we *could* or not but rather, did we want to.
Surprisingly, the answer is no.
I say surprisingly because we thought we would be moving back into a house the size of the one that we moved out of last time. It was big and nice and we just thought we would get back into something like that. Quite frankly, we probably would if the prices were like they were 3 years ago.
I like space. I know it's not efficient but I like to have open space. I don't like to feel cluttered or closed in. We have never owned a coffee table because it takes up too much space.
With prices the way they are now, it became a trade off between having a large (well, relatively anyway since I wasn't impressed by what we saw) house or having extra money every month. A couple years ago, we may have gone with door #1 but after living with extra money in our pockets for a year, we just can't see going back to having all our money spoken for before we even have our paycheck.
"Do we want an extra comfortable house or extra comfortable everything else?" my wife asked, summing it up.