What’s a reasonable range to spend on purchasing a home for a single ERE person?

[jacob]

For as long as we've been married, DW and I have almost never had simultaneous full time jobs. (I think the total overlap is something like 2 years in the 12+ years we've been married.) It's been very nice for the full-time person to come home and have the dinner be ready, the house reasonably clean, and various maintenance problems in general already been taken care off.

I don't know what kind of value to put on it because it's hard to compare that to e.g. hiring a cleaning crew, getting everything dry-cleaned, or ordering take out every single day.

I think by extension one can ponder the value of having an in-law or parent around to look after the kids, dogs, ... or keeping the house from burning down. But it's hard to put a price on it because w/o that arrangement things would look different.

[Kriegsspiel]

For as long as we've been married, DW and I have almost never had simultaneous full time jobs. (I think the total overlap is something like 2 years in the 12+ years we've been married.) It's been very nice for the full-time person to come home and have the dinner be ready, the house reasonably clean, and various maintenance problems in general already been taken care off.

I don't know what kind of value to put on it because it's hard to compare that to e.g. hiring a cleaning crew, getting everything dry-cleaned, or ordering take out every single day.

I'd compare it to doing it myself, not hiring other people to do it. I'm shocked that thought even crossed YOUR mind...

[Scott 2]

The thing that baffles me is how most of the men on this forum are still so stuck in late 20th century thinking that they can't comprehend that the cost of keeping a wife/house-husband who likes to do productive things is worth a shit-ton of capital otherwise invested. Simple calculation: Fairly lazy home-partner who only works 4 hours in the morning 5 days/week and is only capable of work at the level of average help at McDonalds = 20 X $10 X52 = $10,400/year = SWR on over $300,000!

I went down this literal path with my wife. It did not go well. We manage finances separately. She was having a hard time at work. We agreed upon an hourly commitment on her end and what I'd pay for in return. She quit working for the man and started work for her man. Our expectations didn't match, that bled into the overall relationship, conflict ensued. The massive increase in capital required for FI made me especially critical, she didn't like being told what to do, etc.

I'm not sure the mindset to pursue ERE is well suited to making your partner a financial dependent. I needed a lot of personal growth to make something like that viable, but that same growth would lead me away from an ERE path.

[Bankai]

I'd compare it to doing it myself, not hiring other people to do it. I'm shocked that thought even crossed YOUR mind...

I guess once the stash is 3x larger than one can reasonably expect to need/spend in a lifetime, outsourcing mundane tasks to buy time starts to make more sense. After all, one only has one life and there are no bonus points for money left over.

[7Wannabe5]

In the old school conventional script, individuals with stay-at-home spouses end up making a good deal more money than otherwise. It kind of puts you on the flip-side of the problems with which a working single parent has to cope.

Also, the main point I was trying to make is that you have to use more imagination in the realm of home production. There are infinite possibilities for regression towards self-sufficiency, progression towards higher quality of life/SOL, and/or external trade. Just making dinner, tidying up an adults only environment, and handling small maintenance chores would take maybe 1.5 hours/day. So, what else could a house-spouse who is committed to 20 hours of productivity per week do?

@Scott 2:

I would suggest that the inflexibility of your arrangement was the main source of problems. I would never agree to work for "my man" for an hourly wage under specific direction. For that matter, I wouldn't agree to marry a man absent an equity/income forward shared agreement. This is also my take when on the other side of the equation. I gave my sister full partnership in the business I started, and I gave my perma-culture partner half equity in the project after he took on a great deal of the work.

[Jin+Guice]

I guess once the stash is 3x larger than one can reasonably expect to need/spend in a lifetime, outsourcing mundane tasks to buy time starts to make more sense. After all, one only has one life and there are no bonus points for money left over.

I feel like this is endlessly debated, but Jacob has argued in the past that insourcing as much as possible is the ERE thing, even if it's a mundane task and you're well into runaway mode. The point is not to need the money and to be able to do the task yourself.

The question I think is interesting and which I was trying to get at in the the ERE vs. Minimalism thread is that it's possible to minimize many tasks rather than pay for or DIY them. In so much as we aren't "allowed" to pay for tasks (under some definition of ERE/ web of goals) are we "allowed" to minimize them instead? Some tasks can't be completely minimized, you've still got to eat, but you could eat one or a few things that require the minimum effort. You'd still make them of course, life is, after all, suffering. Other things like cleaning and care taking can be greatly reduced if you rent a small room instead of buying a small house.

[jacob]

Indeed!

The following solutions

• A meal you cooked yourself.
• A meal someone cooked for you.
• A meal you bought.
• A meal you forewent and replaced with PB&J

are not the same and the choice between them is not necessarily limited by affordability (at least not solely in the monetary sense). In particular, problems might arise if one tries to convert between money, love, or expectations as illustrated above.

[Bankai]

The point is not to need the money and to be able to do the task yourself.

Exactly. Once you don't need (all your) money (passive income> >expenses) you can outsource, even if you are perfectly able to do the task yourself. After all, even if you can make a soap yourself, it's usually very poor allocation of your time.

You spend resource you don't need (money) to acquire resource you always want more (time), while possibly also increasing your quality of life.

[7Wannabe5]

After all, even if you can make a soap yourself, it's usually very poor allocation of your time.

This is entirely dependent on what(s) you are attempting to maximize. I am usually happier rough camping with my BF than staying in an upscale hotel. Of course, that is partially due to the fact that I can't hear him yelling so much when he is a half acre away, so I am less distracted from my reading.

[Bankai]

This is entirely dependent on what(s) you are attempting to maximize.

And what exactly are you optimising by making soap for personal use?

[Scott 2]

I would suggest that the inflexibility of your arrangement was the main source of problems.

One of several factors, but definitely a source. I am very specific and uncompromising by nature. Combine that with the transactional approach, lots of problems. Examples:

1. Preparing celery is a 13 step process, down to cutting the stalks diagonally before they soak, to maximize crispness.

2. On one occasion, I eyeballed the amount of nuts packed for a lunch, guessed they did not match the requested level quarter cup, remeasured to find a heaping quarter cup, then talked to my wife about how I'd like my nuts measured.

That's on top of the general "hey, I'm going to tell you what to do" part of it.

[jacob]

@Bankai - DW recently (process started several months ago) finished a batch of homemade bar soap that she rendered from lard from the butcher and mixed with solid lye (usually sold as industrial strength toilet cleaner). Did you know that you can use blended red cabbage as pH indicator to check the measurements? I didn't. Now I do. Anyway it worked which was cool. Maybe next time I will try to make lye out of wood ash instead of buying it.

Next she upped the game and after acquiring some more ingredients this weekend finished constructing bar lotion (apparently that's a thing), lip balm (with some insanely high spf), and shampoo. Also candles.

Now she can make a lot of home remedies to personal specification.

Is it economically worth it? Somewhat but we're clearly operating at the end of the s-curve here. But is a cruise ship vacation worth it? --- I mean you sail out and you come back to the same place with some experiences? Is watching TV worth it? What about painting a picture?

At 3x+ in terms of finances, nothing is really done for the money anymore. Activities fall more under "priceless".
I think it's more an expression of who we are and our interests.

Add: I should probably add something I told the TV journalist which resulted in a light bulb moment for her. I asked (paraphrase) whether she thought we lived this way because we didn't have a lot of money to spend? Yes?! No, it's the other way around. It's because we like/prefer to live this [DIY anticonsumerist self-reliant] way that we don't spend a lot of money and thus managed to quickly save up so much that we became FI.

[Kriegsspiel]

In the old school conventional script, individuals with stay-at-home spouses end up making a good deal more money than otherwise.

Well, that's definitely some motivation.

Also, the main point I was trying to make is that you have to use more imagination in the realm of home production. There are infinite possibilities for regression towards self-sufficiency, progression towards higher quality of life/SOL, and/or external trade. Just making dinner, tidying up an adults only environment, and handling small maintenance chores would take maybe 1.5 hours/day. So, what else could a house-spouse who is committed to 20 hours of productivity per week do?

Something like 10.5 hours of going to the gym and 8 hours of sex seems like the right answer, but you could probably quibble about how you split it.

[7Wannabe5]

And what exactly are you optimising by making soap for personal use?

What Jacob said. If I had to label some qualities on a systems model ; novelty, self-sufficiency, thrift, personal learning curves, loop-closing...

If you watch a series like "How to Make Everything" in which it is emphasized that it costs Andy George $1500 and takes 6 months to make a pretty terrible sandwich completely from scratch, what you don't necessarily notice is all the times he ends up not having to repeat certain elements of the process when he tries to make something else from scratch, because a skill transfers or there is already a few leftover jars of whatever on his shelf.

I just suggested to my BF that we should make soap from scratch out of ingredients we can acquire on his property, and he said "Are you crazy." Which is why I am going to trade him in for a house-husband named Hank who will better co-operate with my druthers.

Hank's Honey-Do List

1) Go hunt a Canada Goose
2) Clean, cook, render lard, save feathers for future project
3) Boil some wood ash with water from the rain barrel collection system you constructed last month to procure lye.
4) Gather wintergreen berries and leaves
5) Carve a decorative stamper from wood that says "Harsh Winter Bar Soap"
6) Boil up some dried huckleberries with vinegar for ink
7) Make soap with lard, lye and wintergreen bits
8) Make little packages out of paper you scavenged from dumpster last week
9) Stamp with logo
10) List half of batch for sale on Etsy. Put rest in store-room.
11) Please, baby, try for 300 push-ups today

Something like 10.5 hours of going to the gym and 8 hours of sex seems like the right answer, but you could probably quibble about how you split it.

I had a total lightbulb moment* when somebody posted a very similar sentiment on another forum I belonged to about 10 years ago and all the other men agreed with him. That's how I came up with my B'rer Rabbit into the Briar Patch Plan for Sexual Security and Profit!

*Ahhhhh, so they WANT to pay for it.

[Jin+Guice]

@Bankai - DW recently (process started several months ago) finished a batch of homemade bar soap that she rendered from lard from the butcher and mixed with solid lye

Being on a forum with you is like being on a forum with superman in a world where superman also defined the rules and convinced us they were great.

I had a total lightbulb moment* when somebody posted a very similar sentiment on another forum I belonged to about 10 years ago and all the other men agreed with him. That's how I came up with my B'rer Rabbit into the Briar Patch Plan for Sexual Security and Profit!

*Ahhhhh, so they WANT to pay for it.

In this analogy you're like a super sexual and slightly evil batman.

[Bankai]

@jacob - yeah, if you frame it this way, it boils down to personal preference. Can't argue with that. After all, assuming free will exists, each moment is spent on most preferred activity, whatever that means for each of us.

[Bankai]

novelty, self-sufficiency, thrift, personal learning curves, loop-closing...

Novelty - surely this fades after a while?

Self-sufficiency - can't argue with this if it's your preference. Even if it's an illusion (try being self-sufficient when your break a leg during a hike or have pneumonia. Unless you're Riddick of course). Some would also argue this is against human nature.

Thrift - the quality of using money and other resources carefully and not wastefully - time is also a resource. Probably the most important one.

Personal learning curves - how does this look for soap making? After a month? A year? 10 years?

Loop-closing - not sure what this means in this context.

[7Wannabe5]

In this analogy you're like a super sexual and slightly evil batman.

Nah, more like an autistic dodo. Most females come to this realization at a much younger age. Boils down to "Don't chase boys."

@Bankai:

Novelty and Personal Learning Curves: It's not about "soap-making" in particular, it's about the almost infinite range of novelty, fresh perspectives, renewed interest and learning curves that can result from "doing it from scratch" and/or "doing it with beginner's eyes." For instance, another quite different example might be "dating your wife of 20 years."

Self-sufficiency: I absolutely agree that one is unlikely to benefit from absolutely maximizing this quality, but heading in this direction will likely prove very helpful in improving Resilience.

Thrift: Time is not a resource, although its manipulation in equations sometimes offers that illusion. Human vigor/attention is the resource most often incorrectly short-handed as "time." I agree that soap-making is not necessarily the very best use of human vigor/attention, but the particular soap making assignment I gave to Hank is fairly well in alignment. It includes the thrill of the hunt , exercise in fresh air, creative crafting with small- muscles of hands, and puzzle-solving at just challenging enough level. Therefore, granting the inevitable decline of the any human physiological system, this combination is about as good as it is going to get for maintaining stock of human vigor and maximizing potential of flow.

Loop-closing: Just a more technical way of saying self-sufficient and thrifty.

[sky]

Loop-closing = recycling, reusing

[TopHatFox]

So....if one can buy a 3 bedroom house for 30-80K in some nice parts of the country, what exactly is the point of purchasing the same home for 300K-500K in a more expensive area? Memphis is probably nicer to live in than NYC to boot. I don't get it. Is it because people haven't travelled enough, or they've always lived in XYZ expensive city/town? Cities are starting to look and feel similar anyway.

In the sample homes shown, you still get a nice house, nice weather, nice neighbors, and an office job paying 50K 5-10 miles away, but you also get a 2-3 bedroom brick house for 50K-90K, a used hatchback for 5K, and groceries for $200/mo. That's the same if not better quality of life for a much cheaper cost.