When your kids are doing better than you...

I am having one of those: "When I was your age I had to walk 5 miles to school, uphill both ways, in blinding snow..." sort of moments with respect to the first home purchases of both my stepdaughters.

Last year, at age 27, the youngest one (let's call her "Y" for youngest) and her new husband had a lovely, brand new home built - we are talking stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. It cost them about mid-six figures. And they bought all new furnishings to grace their abode including flat screen TVs, not to mention upgrading one of their two cars.

Yesterday, the eldest daughter who is 31 (call her "E" for eldest) called us with the very exciting news that she and her boyfriend have bought their first home together - a virtually brand new, luxury 2 bedroom plus den condo priced in the high six figures. They will also be buying all new furniture for their new pad.

Please don't get me wrong, I have never wanted anything but the best for both of these terrific girls, and over the last 20 years I have put my money where my mouth is in this regard, countless times. But I can't help but compare their home-buying experiences with mine, and notice quite a marked difference.

My first home purchase was a little pre-WWII dumpy box that I bought with my then-fiance, B. That house and yard needed everything, which is why we could barely afford it (I was 22 and he was 26). We had very little furniture - mostly worn-out, discarded items from our parents' basements, some yard sale finds, and plastic milk cartons and boards for shelving. To spruce up the kitchen a teeny bit, all I could afford was some brown, wood-grain-look self adehsive "Mac Tac" to cover the old fridge that had been streakily painted by a previous owner. The place stank even after we tore out some rotting and stained wall-to-wall carpeting. We knew it would take a lot of our time, effort, and untold elbow grease to polish this zircon-in-the-rough! For many unrelated reasons, I broke off the engagement within three months of moving into this house - drove away and did not look back. The horrors of renovation were avoided, that time.

During my engagement to my first husband, R. (or, we could refer to him as "The Cheater") we bought an amazing home together. It still needed a lot of work as it had been let go, but it was huge, architecturally unique and attractive, and privately situated on a rocky hillside with a glorious south-facing view over a golf course, along with a fabulous in-ground pool. It was like a resort...albeit one that was going to need a lot of updating and repairs, including replacing decks and new $10,000.00 roof (in 1987 that was big bucks); the long driveway needed repaving as mushrooms were actually popping up through the asphalt. Again, we had next to no furniture and no money to buy any. The capacious living room sat empty for about 2.5 of the 3 years we lived there. R's dad gave us a cast-off queen bed and his old dining room table, and we were glad to have them (I still have the table - it's now at the cottage). R. apparently cheated on me for a long while and then walked out in 1990. We'd done some of the more urgent repairs and painting that we could do on our own, but the expense of the new roof had pretty much tapped us out. I took my share of the profit from the sale proceeds and moved forward with my life.

By 1992, I was 33 years old and married to John. We were househunting together, looking for something suitable for us that could accommodate the regular visits of his two girls (the aforementioned E and Y). We bought a solid, if fairly unremarkable, 3 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom suburban home that needed a lot of updating. We worked miracles with that place based on John's skills and talents in architectural design, construction, carpentry, plumbing and electrical, and my ability to do a fair bit of manual labour (cleaning, stripping wall paper, painting, sanding and staining). In 1994, with the help of John's moderate inheritance from his mother we set about transforming that place over the next 2 - 3 years. During that time I was sometimes working up to 70 hours a week at my government job (with no overtime pay - insane!) and coming home to work on the job site every evening, weekends and holidays. It was exhausting and contributed to my eventual burnout. But the renovations did turn out nicely. Over time we also furnished the place pretty decently.

Fast forward to 2001 and the condo we're now in. We gutted that place top to bottom, moved walls, and completely rebuilt it floor-to-ceiling. At least by then we could afford to pay tradespeople to do most of it for us. I was 42 and John was 49 by the time we reached a point that we could do this, but we still could not afford something luxuriously new and "move in ready".

I marvel at both of John's daughters having first home buying experiences that we could barely afford even now, and we've been at this a heck of a lot longer. It makes me shake my head in wonder. But, like I said at the beginning of this post, I am truly happy for them and looking forward to many delightful visits in their happy new homes.

Todo bien, amigas (It's all good, girlfriends).