He Wants a House. I Want the Money Working Somewhere Else. We Both Think the Other Is Being Foolish

A reader writes:

I’ll try to keep this short because I’ve rewritten it four times.

My husband and I are both in our mid-thirties. I’m a pharmacist, he works in IT. We married late, we have no children yet, and for the first time in our lives we both earn properly. We rent a decent flat in south London and we’ve built up savings that would be a reasonable deposit on somewhere modest.

He wants to buy. He grew up in a council flat with his gran, moved four times before he was sixteen, and he says he wants a front door nobody can take from him. I understand that. I really do.

But I’ve done the sums, and the kind of place we could afford here is a small flat with a long mortgage and service charges that keep going up. Meanwhile my parents have land in Clarendon doing nothing, and a friend from church has done well with investments over the last few years. My view is that we keep renting, put the money into a mix of things, maybe build something small on my parents’ land later, and buy when we can afford somewhere we actually want.

He says investing is gambling and I’m being reckless. I say tying everything up in one overpriced flat is its own kind of risk. It’s become the argument we have in the car, in the kitchen, even once on the way home from a wedding. Last Sunday the sermon was about fear keeping us from God’s blessings, and we both went home thinking it was about the other person.

We love each other. We just can’t find the middle. Who is right?

— Simone, Croydon

Our response

Simone, the detail about the sermon made us smile, because it is so common. When a couple is stuck, every message sounds like ammunition. We will not tell you who is right, partly because we cannot see your whole situation, and partly because we suspect you are both right about something.

Your husband is right that security has a value that does not show up on a spreadsheet. For someone who moved four times as a child, owning a front door may be as much about healing as about money. You are right that buying the most you can afford in an expensive market concentrates your savings in one place, and that owning brings costs renters do not see.

It may help to name what each of you is protecting. It sounds as though he is guarding against losing his home again, and you are guarding against getting trapped. Those are both reasonable fears. Once they are said aloud, the conversation can move from “you’re wrong” to “how do we protect both of those things?”

Some middle paths other couples have considered:

• Split the savings deliberately. Agree a portion for a future home and a portion for longer-term investment, and review once a year.
• Buy smaller and sooner, invest alongside. A cheaper first home can give him his front door while leaving room for your other plans.
• Rent for a fixed period with a clear goal. If you keep renting, agree a date and a target, so he knows it is a plan and not an indefinite delay.
• Treat the Clarendon land separately. Building on family land abroad has its own questions: whose name is on the title, what your siblings expect, and who will manage the work. It deserves its own conversation with your parents before it becomes part of your plan.

A few questions to answer together before choosing:

• Where do we want to be living in ten years, and are children part of that picture?
• How much could we lose on an investment without it hurting our marriage?
• If we buy, what would the full monthly cost be, including service charges and repairs?
• What does “enough” look like for us?

We would strongly suggest seeing an independent, regulated financial adviser together, not separately. A good adviser will ask about your goals and your appetite for risk and show you how different choices might play out. Hearing it from a neutral voice, at the same time, can take the heat out of it. A mortgage adviser can tell you honestly what buying would cost.

Last, the bigger picture. Ecclesiastes says that “two are better than one” because if one falls, the other can lift him up (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10). The goal is not for one of you to win the argument about money. It is to come out of this decision still on the same side. Pray together about it, not just separately, and be as quick to listen as you are to explain.

This article is general information only and is not financial, legal, tax or other professional advice. Please speak to a qualified professional about your own circumstances.

Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.

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