Congratulations On Your New Money Pit!
Or, "From the Renting Frying Pan Into the Home-owning Fire"
As I said last week, my goal going into the new year is to post more consistently. So, as promised, here’s a short, silly humor piece I wrote a while back that was rejected by both The New Yorker AND McSweeney’s. That’s okay, because (luckily) my editor at Shades of Greaves thinks I’m FUCKING HILARIOUS since he’s, you know, me.
Congratulations On Your New Money Pit!
So, after years of diligently saving, you’ve finally managed to scrape together a down payment — congratulations on your new money pit!
Owning a money pit is a right of passage in middle-class American life, right up there with going to college, and bumping into your ex from college at Trader Joe’s years later. Now that you’ve joined the legions of money pit owners, you too can enjoy all of the benefits (along with a few minor downsides) that come with owning a giant figurative hole in which to dump all of your savings.
Money pits are fantastic investments. Most money pits steadily increase in value over time, provided you periodically shovel wads of cash into them for things like “mortgage interest,” “property taxes,” and an “emergency plumber” that time you try to replace the kitchen faucet yourself and learn that those valves under the kitchen sink were there for a reason.
Routine maintenance is a vital part of money pit upkeep. You’ll request quotes from contractors to find out how much money you’ll need to hurl into your pit in order to replace your old roof. And those contractors will call you the next morning at 8:00 AM because they’re salt-of-the-earth, blue collar types who wake up at the first light of dawn and don’t rest ‘til the doing’s done. Meanwhile, you stay up until 3:00 AM watching Vanderpump Rules and wake up whenever your phone starts getting Slack messages from work. That’s why they can fix roofs and you struggle to hang picture frames (though, in your defense, drywall anchors are very confusing).
When it comes to furnishings, you’ll marvel at just how much money you have to scoop into your money pit just to buy curtains and rugs and couches. Every other money pit owner you know will find great deals at estate sales and Facebook Marketplace. But they’ll all have SUVs to haul furniture and all you’ll have is your fifteen-year-old Honda Civic from college that can’t even fit an ottoman. So you’ll either have to buy a bigger car (which is a money pit that’s bad for the environment) or settle for paying full price for a sectional at Rooms to Go.
Occasionally, you’ll avoid flinging money into your money pit by doing repairs yourself. Those repairs will involve giving up a little of your time — which is like money that you can never earn more of. It may take more time to do the repairs than you initially thought, but you’ll gain the satisfaction of knowing you fixed your fridge yourself. Sure, all of your cheese will somehow occasionally end up soaking wet from then on, but that’ll be a small price to pay for a working ice maker.
Other DIY tasks, like wall-mounting the TV, may have to wait until your father-in-law comes to visit, because, as a decades-long money pit owner, he has more tools and experience than you do. Your spouse will insist that it’s totally fine that you needed your father-in-law to do basic projects for you and that it doesn’t bother her at all that you have “soft hands,” and you’ll spend the next week wondering what exactly she meant by that.
But owning a money pit does have its perks. You’ll meet your neighbors, commiserate over the truckloads of cash you’ve each had to unload into your money pits, and swap tips on ways to pour less money into your pits. When new neighbors move in, you’ll be the first to welcome them and share how glad you are to have them in the money pit next to yours.
Besides, if you thought owning a money pit was challenging, just wait until you get pregnant with your first energy pit.
I love my kids so much but "energy pit" is so accurate!
I wrote a whole memoir about buying my first home in South LA and what I learned about Sump Pumps and renovating garages. I have put a hold on it for now, but all you say is correct and amazing to see mirrored back! Home ownership is amazing though, Once you have been bitten by the bug, you can't stop and the returns if you buy in a lucrative city and better than any stocks or bonds.