I spent some time looking up real estate prices in upstate NY, the pacific northwest, and the midwest. I hope to buy a house in the next 12 years. There are certain non-negotiable requirements for the house I buy: it must have more than one bathroom, more than one floor —attic and/or basement are negotiable but I won’t deny the fact that I’ve always wanted both. 

A yard isn’t necessarily necessary, either. But the neighborhood need be interesting, near a major park or off the beaten path. I will not live someplace densely populated like Miami or New York. 

I might print out the price of a good house in Indiana and tack it up to my wall as motivation to actually pursue a real career, to be thrifty and thoughtful in all my monetary investments, etc.

I’m not sure how much thought people ever give to owning a house when they’re 10, 15, 20 years old. But I grew up a guest or renter at a couple of houses and apartments my whole life. My parents’ investment of the little money they made since coming to the U.S. from Cuba in their mid-30s were none to irresponsible. Their current financial situations are troubling and I don’t know if by my 30s and early 40s (when they start hitting their 70s) I will be capable of caring for them (let alone my mom’s two siblings who are like second parents to me), a fact that hangs over me every time I do my homework or drink a $5.00 milkshake. 

There’s a terrible guilt that comes with dreading your parents’ aging not because you want them to stay young and active forever (because duh) but because you don’t want to have to deal with what it will weigh on you morally and emotionally and financially as you try to build your own network of security, work, home, and family.

I also don’t know the first thing about personal money management, taxes, etc. Summer is a time, like New Years’, to make easily broken or never pursued promises. “I’ll start running,” “I’ll go to new places around town,” “I’ll write letters,” “I’ll read more,” “I’ll finally pick up a guitar, learn to cook, knit interestingly patterned scarves, and blink away 15lbs.” I love to believe every time is different, every time will be the time these things actually, however fractionally, happen. 

This summer I have a new one of these easily done but rarely committed-to goals: learn to be smart about money.

I’m not sure why I’m writing this on tumblr, a space reserved for impersonal images that reflect a certain aesthetic sensibility or another, jokes, or melodramatic snapshots of emotion. Part of me is uncomfortable with how much I want a home. I don’t allow myself much if any material demands on the world: I like to pack light, hate buying clothes, can sleep anywhere, can eat ‘whatever’, and appreciate anything if I’ve spent enough time with it (as reading Greek plays and doing calculus taught me in school —two things I hated the first week and loved by the ‘last’ day). But a space of my own, by my own efforts, painted and assembled and regularly cleaned with my own hands, is too rich a want not to use as a source of ‘ganas’ when I think about living and growing up and feel a little lost here and want to fall into a hole because that’s what thinking about college and the rest of my life do to me: make me want to fall into a hole —that is, until I think about making my own bookshelf, stocking it, fixing my own light fixtures, changing the oil in my own car.

The idea of sturdy things meant to be cared for for years and years sets my mind at ease.

It gives me purpose.