The average American home size has exploded in amazing fashion over the decades...contributing to crippling debt for America's Christian families!
Financially speaking, concerning debt, American adults are letting themselves be staked out on the prairie with very little wiggle room and small chance for escape, just situation the world systems seem to want for people, it sometimes seems! But, never the less, there are some escape paths, especially for the young up and coming. They can just try to make all of the right moves the first time. For those already in a mess of sorts, you have to extricate yourself, then try again, but more gooder, smarter, better. Yet it is certainly worth doing if you feel you've let yourself be trapped. And you'll probably succeed if you try wisely and with a sound plan, and with future expectations that are actually well within your means. There's a good country music song that says "it's alright to be itty-bitty", and the song is right. It's absolutely right! It's wiser to build up your material possessions only when it's both genuinely needed and almost effortless, especially if you are a Christian. And even then, ask yourself: "Do I maybe have all that I need already?" Or perhaps the better question we can ask ourselves would be,"Should I use this opportunity, this bit of extra I have lately, to raise myself standards above my actual needs, or should I use it to help a fellow Christian obtain their actual minimum needs?" Whichever we choose, by avoiding the tar pit of debt or increased debt we can stay focused on the mission: gaining new Christians for the Lord! Being a help and aid to our neighbor and a servant to our Lord.
***We must help our women, who are inundated with suggestions from so many ill directed parts of society that they have somehow missed the boat if their life is not flooded with material possessions. Society truly does inundate even our own Christian women with all sorts of misleading advice on what their expectations should be. Strong women absolutely thrive when they are geared towards making what they do possess be plenty, with some to share. But they, like men, can easily become enticed to believe that ever more is needed if one is ever to obtain true happiness. But I mention women in particular because I think that they are more often the driving force for which house you purchase, and of all our life purchases, houses are usually the largest single purchase by far. So even if we are an absolute model of prudence and wisdom in all of our other purchases, if we really blow it on the house it will be able, just on its own, be able to way more than negate the benefits derived from all of our other good financial decisions combined. Ladies, here is an area where one instance of shrewd purchasing rather than overly extravagant purchasing could bear wonderful fruit for your family for perhaps 30 years, and you are likely to have more impact on which initial house purchase you make than your husband will, from what I understand.***
Here below is an excerpt from https://www.newser.com/story/225645/average-size-of-us-homes-decade-by-decade.html If you visit, you may wish to select "full list". It shows more quite interesting detail about the specifics of the houses from each decade. Very eye opening!! :
24/7 Wall Street has a list that shows how the typical American home has changed from 1920 to 2014. And that mainly means the homes have gotten way bigger. The list tracks various stats year by year, including average square feet. Here's a sample, with the figure referring to the average floor area of a new single-family home:
- 1920: 1,048 square feet
- 1930: 1,129
- 1940: 1,177
- 1950: 983
- 1960: 1,289
- 1970: 1,500
- 1980: 1,740
- 1990: 2,080
- 2000: 2,266
- 2010: 2,392
- 2014: 2,657
End of excerpt.
Does this mean Christians are getting greedier and more materialistic? A certain amount of the growth probably stems from the generalized move to indoor bathrooms instead of out houses in the first part of the 1900's, but...the rest of it? Probably based more on vanity than need.
Christian Americans are saddling themselves with about 2 1/2 times more house than their great grand parents saw as necessary, and the great grand parents often had bigger families to boot!
Remember that family sizes have generally decreased over this time frame. In 1940 the average family size was 3.67 per some sources. It is about 3.13 in the 2020's per some sources. So, as time progressed we needed less house size, but purchased more anyway. A lot more!! About 2 1/2 times more. And we Americans purchased on credit. We borrowed the money to buy this ever larger sized house. We got ourselves in proportionally larger debt to obtain our houses...our Christian homes...and it financially hindered us, and stole from the financial impact we could potentially have as Christians in our community and nation, and even in the larger world, such as giving to missionary efforts. Mom more often had to hold a job. Kids were left with less Christian parenting presence if both parents had to hold a job or if one parent had to hold two jobs.
It can work out to buy the big expensive home, as when you buy it just before the market values sky rocket, or if you buy the big house when the lending rates are at their very lowest and the market values likely to rise. But many make their purchase at just the wrong time rather than just the right time, and those people pay a price! And who can really see the future of the housing market, or the future of our family finances that clearly? Experts get it wrong many times! The unwisely chosen house is at its worst a huge financial burden that you also can't sell for what you bought it for! But, a safe move, a wise and prudent move, is to shop carefully, look for a prudent time to buy, save money for the down payment in the mean time, and BUY A HOME THAT IS OF VERY MODEST SIZE AND COST IN VIEW OF YOUR FAMILY AND FINANCIAL SITUATION OF THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS. If you truly yearn for a better house then pay this modest one off quickly and buy another; build up over time. Better yet is to buy with cash, but most times you obviously have to build up to that.
Should Christians take a hard look at buying a smaller type home they can pay off pretty quickly? They could give more to Jesus and their neighbor without really losing any quality of life as a Christian family. Isn't that one very central focus of a Christian life? But in order to have such a purposeful 'shrinking down' avail us spiritually we would need to be wise, and use the saved money for valuable things...not just shift it over to the next vanity item, like a really, really great car, etc. We would need to let it free us up ever more from being debtors to this world. Who can have two masters and serve both well, right?
I think we see peoples' houses on TV and in movies and imagine that's the average house. Then we try to buy that 'average' house. Maybe we think of the house we graduated high school from and think that is the average house. No, that's the house our parents had after 20 or 25 years of marriage...you are just starting out. 'Starter houses' are supposed to be smaller, aren't they? Why get yourself trapped in the goo right out of the starting gate? The odd thing about our incomes, when we are young, is that we can buy ourselves into 30 years of financial obligation at 'the speed of light', but can only work yourself out of it at 'the speed of time'. It's like making a child (which can and should be a very great thing!), but it's 19 minutes to produce the child...at least 19 years to raise them to adulthood. These are important sorts of decisions to make with some forethought and preparation and most importantly, some prayer that God will guide your mind to make the decision that He can favor the most!