double

As many of you know, my husband had a career crisis that left him unemployed for several months last summer. It was scary, but we learned a lot from the experience — including the fact that ;the grass isn’t always greener and that we really needed to learn to be happy with what we had. And, beyond that, we now feel blessed that he found a new job he likes, even though it required us to move to a pricier area.

Downsizing to Save

But moving isn’t always all fun and games. In fact, buying and selling a home can have serious financial consequences that last for years or even decades. Since we knew that ahead of time, we thought long and hard about what we could do to ensure the move was good for us not only emotionally, but also financially. So, to diminish any financial consequences caused by the move, we used the opportunity to downsize into a reasonably-priced, smaller home.

That tradeoff has been well worth it in my eyes. I hardly notice that we lost 400 square feet when we moved, and I mostly made up for it by de-cluttering and being smart with the space we do have. However, I did stress at first about how our monthly expenses might change. What would the utility bills be like? And would our grocery bill be comparable to what it was before? Those kinds of questions caused many sleepless nights in my house for some time — as if the move itself wasn’t stressful enough.