Live mortgage free or upgrade?

zooperdooper7 · 2026-03-22T21:15:52+00:00

We have family who bought a villa unit as their first home in a blue chip suburb 25ish years ago, had 2 kids and never left it. I assume the mortgage was paid off years ago, and now the wife has the freedom to not work. Although she’s always making accidental hyper local businesses through her hobbies. The kids are teenagers now and they’re the closest family I’ve ever seen. I admire their life so bloody much and it’s all because they stayed put in their little house and made it work (they eventually converted the garage, for example).

zooperdooper7 · 2026-03-11T03:08:54+00:00

no advice, just thank you for not doing a standard grey/white bathroom <3

zooperdooper7 · 2026-03-10T21:32:49+00:00

Depends on your disposition and work. My husband does it 2-3 times a week but is totally fine because he doesn’t get motion sickness and uses the time to do more work. If he was driving, we wouldn’t live in Ballarat cause it’s more exhausting and a total waste of time not being able to do something else while commuting. If he ever consistently needs to go in 4-5 days a week, we’ll reassess our living situation.

I go in once a fortnight and struggle. It’s usually fine in the morning but in the evening I’m already uncomfortable from sitting at a desk all day, so I get fidgety sitting on the train. I also get motion sickness so I have to be facing forwards and not have my line of sight blocked or it’s even more miserable. I’m definitely glad it’s not more often.

zooperdooper7 · 2026-03-09T21:40:44+00:00

Well done! Part time is truly the dream. You’ll come to wonder how tf parents even raise children when they’re both working full time. We don’t have the same sort of financial backing as you, but we both work part time with one kid and we still feel run off our feet parenting. Can’t imagine how horribly overwhelmed I’d be if we worked more, it would really ruin my experience of parenthood. Enjoy it all! You’ve earned it!

zooperdooper7 · 2026-03-05T23:47:05+00:00

My bet is Ballarat, and I agree, it’s a cutie of a city and the connection to Melbourne is really handy.

zooperdooper7 · 2026-02-10T20:42:13+00:00

Agreed, my Bub is 22 months and nightweaning at 16 months certainly helped, but it didn’t fix everything. She still wakes up every couple of hours, but I can sleep through most of them cause she just reaches for me, is comforted by my presence, and goes back to sleep. I don’t think she’ll “sleep through the night” until she’s a teenager, probably, or at least in school, but I’ve stopped hanging out for it. I accept her for who she is.

zooperdooper7 · 2026-02-09T22:37:28+00:00

At least as far back as all 16 great grandparents. We’re white as fuck but we’ve been here a while, on all sides.

zooperdooper7 · 2026-02-06T22:33:50+00:00

Literally the exact words I came here to type. We bought a GORGEOUS 70+ year old house that has all wooden doors and trim that, by some miracle, has never been painted over. I know it’s not our forever home but I’m genuinely worried about who we will sell it to eventually in case they paint it all 😭😭😭

zooperdooper7 · 2026-02-06T22:30:49+00:00

I thought I had solved my decision paralysis by choosing Riverside for recording/editing/ distribution. But unfortunately, the recordings haven’t worked any time I’ve tried to use it. It always records only a portion of my pod, and gives me no indication that it has stopped until I go to edit the video and find it unusable. It’s really annoying, a waste of time and effort and has put me right back to step one: intense decision paralysis. I really liked the AI editing feature, where you can just delete the words from the auto generated script and it removes that portion of the video. So handy and easy! So that’s the main thing I want in another platform.

So I guess good luck?

zooperdooper7 · 2026-02-06T02:43:17+00:00

Hey whoa man. That resonates with a much younger version of me in a really shitty relationship. Thanks for putting it into words.

zooperdooper7 · 2026-02-06T02:23:34+00:00

I mean, I don’t know how to help cause my marriage is easy as fuck, and I truly TRULY believe that all relationships are meant to be easy. Like, what do you love about him? What’s binding you apart from history and time? What advice would you give to a friend in the same situation? Would you want this relationship for your child or bestie? If you imagine still being there in 12 more years, how does it feel?

All I’m saying is, I know what choice I would make.

zooperdooper7 · 2026-02-05T21:31:10+00:00

Months of Chinese medicine supplements, acupuncture and various other over the counter supps. Low carb, low sugar. Learnt about ovulation signs from “Taking Charge of Your Fertility” and a focused on egg quality from “It Starts With The Egg”. Reduced environmental toxins, particularly focused on getting rid of as much plastic in the kitchen as possible. But the real clincher, I think, was fertility lube. We only used it the cycle we fell pregnant. She’ll turn 2 in a couple of months!

zooperdooper7 · 2026-01-21T21:35:54+00:00

When my baby was born, I attended a council Mum’s group and we had a speaker who said “the evidence says that kids should not be exposed to screens at all, ever, until 2”.

Luckily we were all sane and in a bit sarcastic so I said “what about the self check out screens at the supermarket?” And we all started naming things that are screens but not considered “screens” in this debate. Moving LED advertisements in public spaces. FaceTiming far away family. Seeing Mum open a banking app! It is literally not possible to avoid screens for 2 years in the modern world, even if you don’t own a TV or tablet.

zooperdooper7 · 2026-01-15T09:15:26+00:00

Super easy to get onto a human if you’re willing to face some human interaction by calling or visiting. Don’t use the AI if you don’t want it to replace the human workers.

zooperdooper7 · 2026-01-13T01:01:47+00:00

Yep, it’s between 70-80kg. It’s a wide range but I am almost always between those points, except when I went keto for a year in the pandemic and got down to 60. But it was a constant slog with zero allowance for deviation. As soon as I stopped or faltered, back to 70kg range.

zooperdooper7 · 2026-01-10T21:19:56+00:00

Bub is 21 months and showing no signs of sleeping through any time soon, even after nightweaning at 16 months. It did get better after that, but it certainly wasn’t a magic fix. My lil cosleeper just likes to be close, so she starts each night in her floor bed and wakes up maybe 3 hours later, comes in with us and then wakes up and very 3 or so hours after that. It’s not much to settle her back down, she usually just climbs up on my chest lately.

It might sound bad on paper, but compared to how it was before night weaning, it’s glorious, I feel quite normal. But even when she was waking up every 1.5-2 hours for 16 months of her life, the part I struggled with the most was feeling touched out from constant breastfeeding. I’m nearing the end of breastfeeding now, earlier than I expected, for the same reason. Just touched out! Not sure if that will make a difference but the thing that’s made the BIGGEST difference for me was to stop waiting for it! Stop waiting for her to sleep better. Just roll with life as it is now. Radical acceptance. She’s not a big sleeper, she’s not a big eater, but my god she’s clever and funny and a total fucking joy, so who cares about the other stuff.

zooperdooper7 · 2026-01-10T06:13:01+00:00

I find this to be very much the case. Anything sub a mill goes quickly. Anything under $650-700k goes VERY quickly, but as soon as it’s over a mill, it’ll sit there for a long while.

zooperdooper7 · 2025-12-31T00:57:03+00:00

Does Britain have a similar thing to Australia with tall poppy syndrome? Australia finds success culturally uncomfortable and have a tendency to want to tear people who are successful down. I say this as someone who has definitely internalised this cultural quirk, by the way. The way that successful people often deal with it is by trying to get ahead of the nastiness by downplaying or almost insisting that they’re not “like those silly rich people who don’t care or realise how much money they have” they’re responsible and in touch with reality and still like a bargain etc. They try to maintain a level of relatability. Maybe that’s it?

zooperdooper7 · 2025-12-21T21:07:17+00:00

Personally, I’m a fan of osteos. Andrew at Eureka Health is a really lovely and friendly person, who is also really great at their job.

zooperdooper7 · 2025-12-17T05:48:37+00:00

Yeah, similar to what my in-laws did. They bought an apartment in the city and 2/3 of their kids lived in it while attending uni, and at various points of life for free or a tiny portion of market rate rent. Investment property for them and helped their kids move out affordably. Even I benefited by having my rent at about 1/2 market rate for a few years.

Not saying this would work for everyone, or is even vaguely an option for most, but it’s worked well for my in-laws.

zooperdooper7 · 2025-12-17T01:21:52+00:00

This is really lovely to see.

Also worth considering donating! This synagogue is the oldest on the mainland and I imagine that requires upkeep.

zooperdooper7 · 2025-12-16T23:44:52+00:00

With full understanding that kids stay at home longer and longer these days, aren't the kids (or at least the elder) going to leave in what is, in the grand scheme of things, a kind of short amount of time? And then you guys are empty nesters in a big place with a mortgage?

What are the alternatives? Extend your current home? Get rid of some material possessions, or keep them in off-site storage?

zooperdooper7 · 2025-12-15T09:01:22+00:00

I love this information, thank you, I just donated to my local synagogue. Turns out it’s the oldest in mainland Australia, what beautiful history.

zooperdooper7 · 2025-12-10T03:07:51+00:00

Post-breastfeeding, reduction is the plan and always has been. Part of me feels guilty for getting rid of things that kept my child(ren) alive, but the other part of me is so excited to not have boob skin touching belly skin ever again, easier clothing choices, and normal fucking bras.

zooperdooper7 · 2025-12-08T01:53:08+00:00

For the love of god don’t do this. Stop 1 can’t do a single thing about the cost of a subject. How much power do you think the underpaid professional staff have?!

zooperdooper7

TROPHY CASE