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Comment by cmdrfred | Hacker News Reader

I live in America and my wife's family is from the UK. We aren't rich by any means but we bought a small house last year and when her family flew in they kept commenting on how big our house was. Our house is about as small as you can get without living in a trailer.

I'm a high school drop out and we each make less than the median nation income and I feel we are better off than if we lived in the UK. Though I admit life from 18 - 25 would have probably been less of a struggle there.

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Now let's hope nobody gets ill.

We both have health insurance, we make too much for Obamacare but we costed it out and we can afford for one of us to stop working if we had to.

You've never been sick with health insurance, have you? I have, it's stressful as fuck worrying about paying copays, deductibles, coinsurance, etc. And I could afford it! And I had short term disability insurance, so I kept my job and my pay during treatment. I couldn't imagine working a job that didn't have short term disability. I don't know how a lower income people could do it.

This was before the ACA though, I don't know how it works now.

I imagine is stressful to have an illness no matter what. I have the option to fairly easily move to the UK since my wife is a citizen there. We did the math and decided we prefer our higher standard of living here (we budgeted it all out and I went as far to do some phone interviews, we would have to move into a small apartment there as opposed to a house and we would both not only make less but pay much higher taxes). Risk/reward is a balance, I prefer the US way but you may differ.

You didn't address my comments at all.

Sure, you prioritizing having a big house over not worrying about having to cough up $5k in even of an illness. Or worrying about losing your health insurance. Medical expenses are covered somewhat by insurance but you're still getting a huge bill if you're significantly ill.

I was damn lucky I could afford it but if I go sick a few years earlier I'd be totally and completely fucked. Of course, if you can't imagine it you can't appreciate it.

We both have health insurance and both of our out of pocket maximums in health savings accounts as well as one years expenses in liquid assets not to mention our retirement accounts. We also both have short and long term disability though our jobs. If both of us became ill there is a possible scenario that we have to sell the house, yes but we prefer to have the oppuntinity to own a home as opposed to renting a apartment with slightly less risk. It isn't a big home, it is extremely modest and costs less than an apartment in our area. Our mortgage is our only debt.

We got here by saving together and living in a one room apartment for 5 years. We don't have new cars or iPhones and we go out to eat about once a year (that we pay for her mother offers to take us out from time to time). I just upgraded my 30 inch CRT TV to a 50 inch 4K after a decade of loyal service. Its not for everyone but its certainly not impossible. I make about 43k a year pretax and she makes 37k for reference. Median income nationally is 55k or so and about 75k in my county so I suspect a great many people have the opportunity to do just as we have done.

Excellent. Make sure you keep a sharp eye on that and the future developments, this is one of those little things that can really ruin your life. It's bad enough to have a serious health issue, if it gets compounded by a financial crisis then you can go from 'ok' to 'really bad' in a surprisingly short time when there is no safety net.

We keep one years expenses at all times as well as our mortgage payment is a little less than the cost of a two bedroom apartment so if a finical crisis hit that left us out on the street we would be there regardless.

The problem with the housing crisis was people had variable rate mortgages that made their payments quickly balloon up under them. We have a fixed rate so that can't happen.

What gives you the right to be so imperious about this?

I think you are mis-understanding what I wrote. Having seen a couple of lives of states-side friends ruined by what would have been minor (but still serious from a medical perspective) issues in Europe I'm all too aware of the differences in the various health-care solutions.

I've also lived in enough places with various levels of health-care and insurance (and lack of insurance) to see this as a potential problem.

So, instead of reading imperiousness, how about worry?

Whats the comparison of sizes like ?

Really curious because if the next smaller house in size is a trailer then the UK sizes must be weirdly small.

Here in the UK houses are tiny compared to the USA, but it's really just because there's far less available land to build on. The entire UK is about half the size of California.

Average home size in the UK is less than half that of the US: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house

US @ 77 sq meters per capita vs UK @ 33 sq meters per capita.

Yet in the equally crowded Netherlands, the average house size is much larger. Is it just the house building industry is really poor here in the UK?

Yes, the new houses they build are effectively shoe-boxes. Where you see them clearing land and think "ah they'll put a house there", instead they build two.

Pretty much, yes.

The average new-build British home is 76 square metres; a typical single-wide mobile home ranges from 60 to 93 square metres.

We're a crowded island, we have small houses.

We're a crowded island, we have small houses.

The UK has a lower population density the than both Belgium and Holland, both of which have larger average houses than the UK. So there has to be more to it than simply being 'crowded'.

Haven't run the numbers, but the impression is that the South of England is much more densely populated. The majority of people lives south of the M62 and east of the M5/M6 highways. And then there's greenbelts to prevent the endless exurbanization.

Good point. Greater London, Hertfordshire, Surrey, Essex and Kent all have a higher population density than Holland, and between them count for a significant part of the UK population.

When you go north, and more generally away from population centres, the houses do seem to be quite a bit larger. There, of course, there are other limiting factors, most often wages.

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