Getting to know you - do you have kids, etc.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I moved back home about ten years ago, deep in the recession, as I was doing a government funded post graduate and it would save me money, enough to be able to travel to do the post-grad.  While unemployed I paid €20 a week did half the cooking and about 75% of the manual labour.  After I got gainfully employed the rent went up to €50 (despite me wanting to pay more) and a slight reduction in big labour (less time).  I also took over fuelling, taxing and insuring my mother's car in the year between getting my full licence and being able to buy my own car.

Needless to say, all this was a huge bargain compared to renting.  I have since moved out because I had to move on promotion.

When my son went to work at Pepsi, about 14-15 years ago, it was really his first 'real' job.  Husband had already worked there for years so I was familiar with the benefits and helped son set his up.  I set up for contributions to a 401K as Pepsi matches up to a certain percentage and snuck in for his part to increase every year on his anniversary up to the maximum allowed.  A few years down the road he asked husband why when he got a raise he never got any more money on his check.  I had to come clean about the increase I had set on the 401K.  He had been working for about nine years when he bought his house and was able to 'borrow' the money for the downpayment and other expenses from himself because he had a pretty sweet nest egg built up.  

Since then the home values in our town have skyrocketed.  Our house is worth twice what it was when we bought it 2006 and son's house has increased in value by about a third.

Real estate tends to be like that. When my maternal grandfather was mustered out of the army at the end of WW2, he purchased two homes on five acres of land for £5000 and had to borrow the £500 deposit from his parents. Fifty years later, the property sold for just over a million.

Boru