Is it possible there is not one “right” answer to this question?
What suits one couple may not suit another.
While my parents ended their years (67 years happily married) in a smaller house on 3 2/3 acres of land plus owners of a semi-detached home in a small, wooded 55+ community, they started off living in two upstairs rooms of grandma’s (dad’s mil’s rented house), moved with one baby to Navy housing overseas, half of a Quonset hut where babies nos. two and three were born. Baby no. four was born in a sizable rental apartment back in the US.
There was a full-sized rental house in NJ during which time, five cousins were taken in and eventually adopted. Dad left the Navy and Mom took part time work because t two older cousins were of age to take care of the youngest a few days after school. This enabled the purchase of a fixer-upper on 3 2/3 acres where we lived for many years. Our parents rented out the house to daughter and son-in-law while they moved south for 12 years into a large house which they were able to purchase outright.
Old age brought them back to the area of daughters and most of us, no more than a day’s drive. They sold the southern house and used the proceeds to downsize to the 55+ home. When they passed in 2023 at 96 and 98, the houses were willed to both daughters, the larger to daughter with two sons, the 55+ home to older daughter, single, no children. When we die, both homes will pass to son and a nephew. The only reason we live here is because both homes are inheritances, ownership passed on with zero mortgages.
No way could they have purchased a home and land on a Navy salary. Dad grew up in two houses, owned outright by his grandparents and passed to his parents. At the time of their marriage, Mom was living with her mother in the upstairs of a rented house. She grew up living with relatives in rentals. During childhood, she was poor, her father having deserted the family during the Depression before FDR’s programs. At one point, she lived as a child in an Army tent set up in the woods behind her mother’s employer’s summer residence. Her childhood years were spent between two towns living with relatives, and a series of rentals in both locations. She was used to being “housing insecure” as they’d say in today’s parlance. So did she mind rentals or living in half a Quonset hut on a military base? No. To her it was normal. What was a huge upgrade was having a secure marriage to the right man.
If Mom had required a standard of living as a newlywed equivalent to what she had in advanced age, I wouldn’t be writing this.
Dad grew up in an intact family and never had to wonder or hear his parents worry about whether there’d be food in the table. But Dad was not spoiled. He knew from his grandparents the precariousness of life’s necessities. They were Potato Famine Irish who suffered much and fled Ireland only to suffer more in the New World. His parents grew up in the Irish slums of NYC. He knew poverty and sacrifice in the vicarious sense.
Both my parents knew the only true security in this life comes from God through faithfulness to His Son and the Church He founded, plus reliance on His Mother.
Sadly, this mindset is lacking in today’s young adults. True reliance on God has passed from living memory so that religion is a commodity, an expected cultural accoutrement instead of one’s life’s blood.
If a young adult has no practical understanding of the Catholic life beyond the smells and bells, the house, the land, the vehicles, the standard of living, the marriage will be lacking even if it remains intact.
So, yes, young man who offers a trailer home, don’t feel badly about yourself if you’ve worked your hardest. You’re better off single than with a wife whose priorities are misplaced.
Topic: Would it be unreasonable to ask a potential spouse to live in a mobile home? (Read 1628 times)