so I really have no need to complain about anything. But man, why is the housing market so terrible? It's discouraging that we've saved so aggressively the last several years yet it seems that we would've been much better off putting 0 down payment several years ago instead of saving almost half or our paycheck every month to try to make a substantial down payment.

I'm looking to buy a modest $550-650K house in the next year or two (pretty small house, but we would fit), but making a $4000/month payment vs a $2800/month payment is quite sobering given that the difference is simply timing. Being in the military and moving every couple years makes timing those moves even more tricky in some respects. Fortunately my family is used to living in a smaller home--in many ways we embrace it--but it might become challenging as our kids get older.

Maybe we'll just rent for the next decade and continue to save for the long-term. I have a feeling that the larger house with a nice yard is much more likely to happen in retirement, but at least our grandkids can enjoy it! The nice tradeoff is having a lot of savings frees us up to do things we enjoy doing together as a family with a lot of peace of mind. It makes it easy to travel and eat out together, have our kids do cool activities, etc. In the end, I think they'll value that a lot more than they would having a glamorous house. I think that tradeoff will become more and more common.

I really hope interest rates will go down sometimes In the next year or so! There's a chance, right?