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Comment by ashark | Hacker News Reader

There are no 50s-sized cheap houses within walking distance of employment centers in good school districts in my city. Out where the good schools are, they only build McMansions. This is the typical case for cities in the US. I live in a big-ass house in the 'burbs because a big-ass house in the 'burbs is cheaper than a smaller one still capable of (more or less) comfortably housing 2 adults + 3 kids in the city, plus private school for those three kids. It's not because I love McMansions and owning cars and being far from everything.

As for entertainment spending (Netflix, cell phones, et c), it's nothing next to (especially) housing and (even cooked at home) food. Cutting all of that wouldn't get us down to a secure, responsible income level with only one parent working.

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You can send your kids to an average or even below-average school, be able to spend more time at home, and more than make up the difference. Education driven by the parents is always going to be better than education driven by a public school board anyway.

Which is better, having your son be the salutatorian of the average school district in a suburb nobody's ever heard of, or having him be 75/350 in an amazing school district in a suburb nobody's ever heard of?

School district quality matters of course but I think it's overblown when everybody thinks they need to live in the best school district within a 50-mile commute from the job they ended up with more or less randomly.

The other problem is utility bills. These anti-big-house people complain how people don't need giant houses, but they completely ignore how horribly inefficient older houses are. It probably costs a lot less to heat and cool your McMansion than it would a 50-year-old house that's half the size.

I really wish it were easy to find nice, well-built, efficient, modestly sized houses in neighborhoods where you don't have ex-cons living next to you, vicious dogs running loose, etc. That just doesn't seem to be the case.

That seems suspect. How much does it cost to heat and cool a McMansion in dollars? I live in a 2000 square foot 75 year old house and my utilities are very reasonable.

When I lived at my grandmother's house (rented from her), the utility bill was almost as much as rent through the winter (I think the highest I saw was about $500 one month). The house is from like 1890 or whatever and they did add insulation and all but the heater was on a lot.

How many square feet was the house? I don't know if that's compatible to heating a McMansion though.

I just did the math with my past bills and, amortized, I spend about $200 total on utilities a month. That's water, electricity, and oil. I have no special upgrades to my house. It gets fairly cold here. I have the aforementioned 2000 square foot (which I consider big) 75 year old house. I keep the heat on 68 when we are home. It gets hot in the summer and we use window air units.

I just looked up the realty listing and it says it's 2100 sq ft. In the summer the bill was < 100. We get a lot of snow up here and I am betting that even though they added insulation the roof leaked ridiculous amounts of heat. I don't live there anymore luckily.

In climates with seasons you really have to do a yearly amortization to get a true idea of utility costs. A lot of oil and propane companies around here actually let you sign up for a plan that lets you pay them your amortized costs year-round. A few friends of mine love those plans, I prefer to pay the upfront cost to fill the tank and not bother.

My grandma's house had exactly the same problem, the roof was rotted and actually had a hole in it, you could see the outside from the inside. She didn't have the wherewithal to get it fixed though, unfortunately. She would just put down buckets to catch the water when it rained.

All houses need regular roof maintenance!

My house was built in 1920 and I spend more on my car payment that I do on all my utilities combined. Even if you buy a house that costs a lot of heat or cool, it's at most a weekend project per room to rip down drywall or plaster, put in new/better/any insulation, and re-drywall.

You can't do that if you don't own the house. A lot of us are renters because we have no intention of staying in the same place for 10 years.

That depends. In a lot of places, if you expose any wiring (aka, rip out drywall) you need to get a building permit and inspection for the work you're doing.

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