11

RENT OR BUY

Despite wanting to avoid the appearance of a shotgun wedding, your wedding dress has had to be expanded a few times in recent weeks. But your bump is super cute, and you actually love the way the off-white lace falls over it.

The weeks leading up to your wedding have been a confusing fluctuation of emotions. Sadness, excitement, fear, and happiness. Rinse and repeat. Between the hormonal roller coaster that comes with growing a human in your body, the mild stress of pursuing a challenging graduate degree, and the mixed feelings you have about planning a circumstance-driven wedding, you don’t even know what version of your emotions you’ll be met with when you open your eyes each morning.

Even though the circumstances leading up to your wedding were fairly off-script from your youthful fantasies, the wedding itself turns out to be lovely. And not nearly as stressful as Hollywood might have had you believe. You have an intimate ceremony and celebration, with about fifty of your and Silas’s family and close friends. You didn’t even meet his parents until after you said yes to his unceremonious proposal, so you feel fortunate that you didn’t inadvertently stumble into a crazy in-law situation. They’re a little more conservative and meddling than your own family, but they are extremely excited about their impending grandchild and seem fond of you already.

Your parents have been slightly less joyous over the thought of becoming grandparents already. They’ve been predictably supportive of you, but neither of them has a great poker face, and you can see the concern and residual shock in their eyes. You’re well past the window of teen pregnancy at the ripe old age of twenty-six. But your parents—like you—had assumed you would be out of grad school, gainfully employed, and intentionally partnered up before you started spawning. It’s just taking them a little time to get used to the situation.

You would think that the new marriage, motherhood, and the last year of your master’s would be the most overwhelming things on your mind. But the change that is looming most dauntingly for you—perhaps because it’s the only one that’s not already decided on—is where you and Silas will live. Up to this point, you were focused on all of the aforementioned changes and have been keeping your own living arrangements until you got past the wedding. Your roommate has already lined up a new tenant to move in next month, and Silas’s one-bedroom apartment will be too cramped for a new family of three, so the time has come for you to find somewhere to live together.

Your home search is complicated right out of the gate since you are both current students and don’t have a great proof of income other than student loan documents. But Silas’s parents generously offer to cosign for you. Even though you’re both in school right now, it’s a pretty safe bet to assume you’ll both be working near downtown once you graduate . . . assuming you don’t decide to move to a different city.

Although the unknown of where you’ll be working coupled with your current lack of income makes you think that renting a place downtown would be prudent, there’s a new nesting side of you that can’t stop fantasizing about buying a home in which to really settle down. If you did buy, you would opt for a place outside of downtown, where your little mango-sized decision-driver would have room to play and you would have community to foster.

Silas’s parents really love the idea of you settling down in the suburbs and, in addition to cosigning, are willing to help you out with a down payment. This is nice of them but it also makes you a bit uncomfortable. It already seems as if they’re pushing their presence into your lives more than you prefer, and you worry that feeling indebted to them in this way will make your desire for boundaries more difficult to negotiate. You know that, financially, it only makes sense to buy a home if you plan to stay in it for several years, which will narrow your job options to local ones once you graduate.¹

Even though, rationally, you see all of the challenges you might face as a result of accepting assistance from Silas’s parents and narrowing your job search options to those surrounding you, you can’t help but feel drawn toward the dream of starting a family in a home of your own. Perhaps it is because so much else around you feels fleeting and uncertain, but the thought of a nest of your own is pulling on you. Like 55 percent of your generational peers, you love the mental picture of a cute little home in the suburbs for your cute little family.²

Most of your friends live in the city, though, and although you know you would eventually make new friends, you’ve seen other friends move further away and slowly lose touch. The thought of sacrificing the morning coffees and weekend walks with some of your closest girlfriends gives you pause.

If you decide to accept a down payment from Silas’s parents, commit to living in the same place for at least the next five years, and look to buy a home in the suburbs, go to Chapter 16.

If you decide that you want to avoid the reliance on Silas’s somewhat-overbearing parents, keep your options more open for relocation, and find an apartment rental in the city near your friends, go to Chapter 18.