BertVille: August 2008

Sunday, August 03, 2008

Humble Pie

We've been checking out real estate. Knowing full well that we can't afford to buy a cute, little 3-bedroom home in San Francisco (for the average price of nearly $1 million), we've been looking into different cities.

It seems that wherever we want to live, someone has discovered it first. It's been very daunting. I find myself pouting and thinking that all I want is a smallish, 3-bedroom place with a cute kitchen in which to make blueberry pie for my husband and future children.

We were especially discouraged today, after perusing Redfin, a site that shows real estate listings with photos, as well as price drops. Yes, prices have come down significantly in many areas. Unfortunately, this being our first home, we have no equity on which to rest our lofty home-buying goals. It seems we will be relegated to a crappy, 80s-style 2-bedroom condo in our town of choice. Unless, that is, prices fall by more than $100K by next year.

But, as I was saying, today we had ourselves worked up, until Bryan asked me if we were poor. It's a perfectly valid question, given that we have tried to live as frugally as we can, but still can't seem to save enough for a starter home in any decent area.

When he asked that, I remembered my Peace Corps experience. I said, "No, we're not," and I found an internet tool that proves it.

Global Rich List

I found this tool at The Wall Street Journal website. The article from which I got it is also interesting.

We are in the less-than-1% richest range for global richness. We are richer than more than 99% of the world's population!

So, I feel better about a crappy, 80s-tastic condo than I did earlier today. Sometimes, I forget to be grateful for what I have.