What's Real - Vol. 2: The messy reality of "owning" our home

The real story of how we bought our house, an honest look at the numbers, and balancing all this with how I decide what to charge in my business

Hello loves,

Apologies for the delay in writing this post. I was away last week and thought I would have the bandwidth to write, but didn’t end up having the capacity (more on that next week). So here I am, doing my best to show up as often as I can…

Today, I want to talk about money. It’s actually one of my favourite things to talk about, and I find it equally anxiety-inducing. But I think I’ve written “I’ll talk about buying our house soon” or “I’ll write about money later” at least three or four times in previous posts, so I think it’s high time for us to get into it.

As a business owner one of the things I’ve been grappling with when it comes to money is how much to charge. There’s this dance we have to do as entrepreneurs between making our offerings affordable and accessible (which is certainly something I value), while also ensuring we can pay ourselves well without over-exploiting our own capacity.

More and more I’m coming to terms with the reality which is that: I have to charge a lot more than I want to for my services.

I wish I could give away more for free. I wish I could make my therapy sessions and my copywriting work and my creative coaching more financially accessible for people. And the reality is, that to get by, take good care of myself and my family, and not over-extend myself… I have to charge more than I’m often comfortable charging. And that’s just the math.

It brings up a lot of grief. I feel sad about charging more. I feel sad about the fact that a lot of my work isn’t accessible to people. I balance these feelings with also ensuring I do have affordable and accessible offerings like Ephemeris and the Coven of Creativity… and for any kind of one-on-one work, I have to charge more than I would like to.

Now, I know if you’re not a business owner you might think this isn’t a relevant conversation for you. And sure, parts of it are really specific to being an entrepreneur. But I think these explorations are important for all of us to consider at all levels, because it’s vital that we understand all the different layers of this system we are operating within.

Could I charge less by lowering my living expenses? Yes. Not a whole lot to be honest, but a little. And that’s where we get into the really sticky stuff.

How much money is enough? How well do I deserve to live when so many others are struggling? Where do we cross the line from being stable and supported, into being overly greedy?

These are questions I’m grappling with. And I don’t really know the answers. But here is what I do know, based on my own experience.

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My partner and I made a decision to buy a house on the island we grew up on. We wanted to live here because both our families live here, and we therefore have some support for raising future little ones. It’s also a place that we both love dearly, and brings us so much joy and happiness. We decided to buy a house in part because it’s a “good investment” (although who knows what the heck will happen with the housing market over the coming decades) and also because the monthly cost of a mortgage here would be only marginally more than renting something of similar value.

At the beginning of COVID-19, when we moved back to this island home, we lived in a 180 square-foot one-room home, with no attached bathroom, for two years. This was the old pottery studio, that some of you may remember seeing photos of, on my partner’s mom’s property. We had to use an outhouse or walk across the property to the main house to use the washroom. It was a tough two years. But over that time of not paying rent we managed to save enough for part of a down payment.

Here’s the little one-room abode we lived in:

At the time we purchased our home, a little over a year ago, a small single family dwelling without significant maintenance or repair needs ran about $700,000 CAD. Alone, with the downpayment we had saved, we could only afford something under $650,000 CAD and anything in that range would require pretty massive upgrades. We were at the point of realizing if we wanted to buy, we might need to do so somewhere more affordable. That’s when my parents offered to contribute to our downpayment, and co-sign on our mortgage, so that we could afford something in a higher range.

What we ended up doing, with their financial support, was buying a $870,000 CAD house with a secondary suite that we could rent out. For a while we ran that secondary suite as an Airbnb (simply because we weren’t allowed to rent it to tenants due to bylaw issues) and then once that was resolved, we started renting it out longer term - which is a much more value-aligned decision in a community with a housing crisis. Soon a close friend is moving in, and we’re so excited to explore how we can live more communally on our little half acre of land, collaborate more, and garden together.

All this to say… within the first year of being homeowners, with our first ever home (shown at the top of this post), we ended up with an $800,000 bank loan and became landlords. And, all things considered this was the best financial decisions for us if we wanted to buy. This is fucked. I have no other words other than this is absolutely fucked.

Right now our mortgage is $3500 CAD a month, about a third of which is covered by our tenant (which also makes me feel all kinds of weird and ick). Plus we have about $500 per month of utility costs between water, electricity, and internet. (Looking at the rental market here, if we had chosen to rent a similar space instead, it would cost us between $2500-$3000 a month, which is one of the reasons we opted to buy).

Our home is a humble one. The upstairs section that we live in is 1000 square feet. It’s beautiful, and I adore it, but it’s no mansion. We are lucky to have some land on which we can garden. And somehow, although I never dreamed this would happen, we can see the ocean.

Here’s where I struggle… it is a massive privilege to own a house. It is a massive privilege to own this particular house. And when people look at us they see “homeowners” and think that means we’re doing well financially. We are not. We are more broke than we have been in a while, despite making more money than we ever have. We are really intentional about our spending and the choices we make with our money. And things feel really tight.

Side note: I also really struggle with the idea of owning a home for other reasons, primarily that we live on stolen land that has never been ours and I don’t believe we can ever really be entitled to “own” land - but that’s a story for another time.

I share all this for two reasons. First, to be transparent about the reality of some of the numbers in our life because I think that’s really important. And to be honest about how we were able to afford this in the first place (family support and intergenerational wealth transfer). And secondly, to return to my initial concern about charging for my work.

Most of us don’t charge high rates for our work because we want to get rich and take a million trips and live these crazy lifestyles (although yes, those people are out there). Most of us are really just trying to get by, and do the best we can to protect ourselves and our families in late-stage capitalism, without completely burning ourselves out.

I don’t know how to do this right. I don’t know what this balance is. I know that I feel good when I work only 25-30 hours a week maximum. And that I need to earn an absolute minimum of $60,000 CAD a year just to be able to pay my half of the mortgage and meet my other - pretty basic - needs, and save a little bit to be able to take a mat leave in the future. And I know, based on the math, that I need to bring in about $50 for each hour that I work in order to meet that goal… which means I need to bill out at about 3x that on average minimum. (If you’re confused by this, my “billable” work is about a third of my work hours. The other two thirds go to things like marketing, admin, writing these posts, and other things I don’t get paid for. And so I need to charge more for my billable work to make up for my non-billable hours).

This is just the reality. This is just the math. And so many of us are doing it.

Yes I would like to earn more than that. Yes, my goals are actually higher because I do want to be able to travel occasionally, and I do want to be able to afford to go to regular massages for the chronic headaches I get, and I do want to be able to have more fun money. And I also am never ever ever ever going to accrue wealth beyond what I really need to thrive.

I will never buy a second home. I will never hoard resources beyond what my family needs to thrive now and into the future. I will give generously when I can. And I think that’s okay. I don’t think that’s the problem.

The billionaires are the problem.
Us, doing our best to just live good lives, are not the problem.

Yes. I have a lot of privilege. I am absolutely not complaining about not having enough. I have the freedom to make choices, and change my circumstances if I need to. I have support. I have so much. And, I will make the choices I need to support myself and my family in thriving. And I will try to figure it all out as I go and find the balance.

That’s all I know.

And I think the more we can be honest about the reality of our financial situations, and how we’re making our decisions, and what we’re struggling with… the better we’ll all be for it.

Got questions about it all? Share them in the comments. Want to know more about something I shared here? Ask. I want to talk about this stuff, so drop your money queries or struggles or your own thoughts in the comments below and let’s have a conversation about it.

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Speaking of how I decide to charge what I charge… let me tell you about a fun way to work with me if you are a small business owner yourself!

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