<p>I am interested in what your market is like that encouraged you to put, what I assume was enough for a deposit on a home, into paper instead.</p>
<p>If it was in a retirement account- schools won't look at it & if it is in your primary home- schools that just use FAFSA wont look at that either.
I saw Gone with the Wind- I knew what to invest in ;)
( we don't have any curtains either)</p>
<p>I would say though that in many ways we have been very very lucky.</p>
<p>Because
we worried about money- even to the point where we moved to the city to have better access ( HA!)
to public transportation ( I laugh because Seattles public transit is not so userfriendly)
more jobs, a neighborhood that was cheap because it was very blue collar in an era when everyone had an MBA, but where our income and education level, was more of a fit, than in the suburban neighborhood where we had been renting.</p>
<p>We had friends who were moving to the suburbs, even ( what was then) rural and building huge houses, or even reasonable size houses.
We didn't have the upfront cash to do that, so we bought a starter house- hoping we could fix it up ourselves. </p>
<p>I guess we could have rented- and taken our down payment and invested it- ( like in some nice furniture) but then it might have vanished like a great deal of our retirement fund has.
( although our retirement fund wouldn't have counted on PROFILE)
At least with a house, you still have something to live in, even if the value drops.</p>
<p>We did have to downsize our standard of living, although our mortgage payment was more than our rent- we couldn't have afforded to buy the rental, even though the landlord offered to sell it to us ( which made me cry for a long time)</p>
<p>So we were lucky or at least benefited from our foresight, because even when my H had over a year of unemployment- being in the city meant there were lots of odd jobs and we paid the bills by mowing grass and baby sitting . We still had a place to live and even though our groceries and medical bills ended up on a credit card- we still paid the house taxes.</p>
<p>Its ironic, because our lack of money which fueled our original choices, has worked out pretty well for us. </p>
<p>Our friends who lived in the burbs- had bigger & newer houses its true- but those houses haven't appreciated as much. Small houses, apparently even less than 1000sq ft and over 100 years old, are so scarce that they appreciated faster per sq ft than anything else., and keep doing so.</p>
<p>Small houses in the city, that are close to jobs given the price of gas- are a " hot" commodity. Who woulda thunk that a neighborhood known for its fishermen and lutefisk would be "hip", and flannel shirts & work boots, a fashion trend? :D</p>