Buying a house: realistic or are we overextending ourselves?

Do you actually ever reflect in between on what you’re putting out here? Seychelles... with 5,000 net and a new build. Keep dreaming...

Where’s the problem? Flights are well booked at 650€ per person (I’m always talking about holiday times since I’m always traveling with kids). You can also easily get them to Mallorca at the same price.
The holiday apartment costs between 100 and 200€ per night – Holland is often more expensive.
You always need food, even when staying at home.
In total, a Seychelles vacation during the holidays for 10 nights for two adults + child still costs under 4,000€.

Yes, it maybe shouldn’t be immediately after building the house. But just because it says Seychelles doesn’t mean it has to be expensive. Curaçao & Co. are similar. I never pay more than 150€ for a flight to the Canary Islands. Get out of your comfort zone, organize it yourself, and after building the house the world is still open to you. You just won’t be taken by the hand – and for that, you pay huge lump-sum surcharges.

I also don’t see that people in Germany are hostile to children.

Then you have a very positive view of Germany. With three kids – from a lot of experience – it’s definitely more relaxed especially in southern countries (in Africa or Central and South America) because children are more a part of life there than in Germany, where you already get dirty looks in the supermarket like “Here come freeloaders who certainly don’t have a job and live off my taxes.” Experienced that personally, verbally and sometimes also with looks.

I don’t doubt that Mexico is beautiful. But I’m not going to do a long-haul flight for that and then can’t really immerse myself in the local nature and society anyway, because the children are my priority and they don’t see any point in it anyway.

You don’t have to. But it’s easier than you think (besides, kids at that age often fly free).

I once worked in a hospice. None of the dying ever really said: how good that I was in New Zealand 40 years ago. That’s why I find travel hype massively overrated.

No, because vacation is for many one of those moments where there really is plenty of time for family. If both parents work a lot, and the kids are busy with homework or friends, otherwise only the weekends remain (mine only get up for Sunday lunch…).
Therefore, vacation is enormously important for many people. Not only “the foreign,” but also time for family.

I do small bike tours and visit friends. I try to travel “door to door.” That’s the challenge for me.

Thumbs up. I think that’s great too.

You probably made yourself unpopular with the fellow travelers. Long haul flight with screaming kids is really awful.

No, night flight. They slept crosswise on the seats the whole time. It was more relaxed than a few years ago driving through the Spanish Pyrenees. The kids got sick one after the other sitting in the back. Actually, most flights only very rarely have constantly screaming kids. But those flights are the ones that stick in your memory.

My conclusion and then that should be it on the topic: Vacation very gladly as family time. Kids feel comfortable everywhere, but vacation should also be relaxation for the parents. Price-wise it’s relatively cheap almost everywhere if you don’t want special luxury or service.
And if vacation far away is too expensive, exciting things at home also work – even the campsite in Münsterland with a bathing lake and campfire can be so great for everyone (especially camping is, in my opinion, the most relaxing vacation for everyone involved).

My personal theory is still, and increasingly so, that the partly ingrained attitude of "having it better once" leads to considering this as normal. This is more difficult the better it already was from the very beginning.

That resonates deeply with me and, of course, is more accurate than I could ever be.
I actually remember a funeral speech where exactly this was addressed, that the mother absolutely wanted the children to have it better once. But these mothers & fathers were battered war veterans and/or displaced persons, and there was real poverty as well as constant fear. That's how I experienced my own parents, and that's why I absolutely had to learn something secure, coming from their own imprint; moreover, I had to give money for my keep at home.
But that no longer fits today because even my generation already had it much better in comparison (no war, no hunger), yet this "the children should have it better" is apparently still lived or even more so today, I sometimes have the feeling. I myself did not have this attitude with my own children, because I personally felt good and was/am satisfied, so why should the children have to have it better? That would only have been talking down my own life.
If today's children are supposed to have it better, I think it mostly ultimately means financially (money), so that one can afford things like traveling again. But we see that young people today are not doing better; they are often insecure or feel disadvantaged, and one should perhaps rather ask where this bad feeling of young people comes from, although the external circumstances are no longer really like that in comparison.
Despite everything, my mother said goodbye to the world with gratitude and was happy about her beautiful life, despite war, displacement, and no vacations or anything else. So the solution cannot lie in that, or it is not necessarily a component of satisfaction.
If I had ever felt this necessity for my children, then my current life would not have been good enough, which it was.
In this respect, I fully agree with that it is a "work" on oneself to achieve these insights, that we can have a lot but do not really have to to be satisfied.

I come to my above-mentioned theory because as the first academic in the family during my studies, I actually felt pressure to now have to create an even more wonderful life than the already good life of my parents. I feel much better since I recognized this and put it mentally into the drawer with bad ideas.

For me, at some point, it was a rather hard crash landing, personally and financially, that brought me this realization and the associated freedom of no longer having to have or experience many things. I can have or experience them, and then it is also nice, but I do not feel a deficit if I do not have something. I can make life beautiful in many ways, no matter where that is, for example, one experiences that when spending time with people in poorer areas.

One more brief summary and current status:

[*
The initially described property was unfortunately already reserved after our bank appointment. However, the buyer is still in contact with us; we are basically on the waiting list in case the financing falls through.
[*]I had inquired in advance whether she was generally willing to negotiate before I scheduled an appointment with an expert/architect. She then told me, as mentioned above, that the house was already "assigned," and an agreement was reached at €445k. (The asking price was €480k).


Regarding Interhyp, I had clarified the following results in advance:


[*]Purchase price €480,000
[LIST]
[*]Equity €160,000
[*]Term 39 years (was not seriously an option, I was just interested)
[*]It was a combination with a building society savings contract
[*]€1482 for 20 years + €1314 for 19 years 11 months


[*]Purchase price €430,000


[*]Equity €160,000
[*]Term 28 years
[*]3.85%, with a monthly rate of €1426

Only for posterity, in case anyone is interested.

I find it very nice that you inform about the outcome once again. Thank you very much for that! I then wish you more luck next time. Or the object comes back after all...