I've been in a terrible mental place ever since our realtor told us we absolutely wouldn't break even on the mortgage if we sold this place. The thought of having to take out some sort of loan just to get out from under this place, on top of all the other nasty financial surprises that have come up during this process, was just one too many bumps in the road for my psyche to really take.

I kept trying to stay positive and focus on the staging and selling, but at the back of my mind was the feeling that we'd be much worse off financially if we DID sell than if we didn't.

I tried working the extra loan payment into our proposed budget and it made me feel even worse. Yes, we'd be able to cover the expected bills, but there would be nothing left for UNexpected expenses. So anything unexpected that happened would result in debt. We wouldn't be able to do a single thing to the new place beyond the absolutely essential. It was exactly where I DIDN'T want us to be, which is why we'd ended up making a lowball offer in the first place. (Thank goodness we did, because if we'd made the higher offer and all this came up, we'd probably have had to back out of this deal and lose our earnest money.)

I finally broke it down to AS and NT, because I didn't want them to think I was stressing over nothing. There are things we'll be able to do to bring our housing costs to a reasonable level eventually, but initially there's just no getting around it: They're crazy high.

Finally AS proposed something I hadn't directly thought of myself: What if we took the condo off the market for the time being? Next year her future income will be more solidified, NT and I will probably both be making more money at our positions, and we won't have his tuition, AS's medical procedure or my tooth implant to pay for. Plus, the condo mortgage would be about $3K lower and the housing market might be a bit stronger.

It immediately appealed to me. Financially it would make so much more sense than selling at a loss, kicking out our upper-unit renters and moving into the new place.

The only things I didn't like about it: constantly worrying about keeping all our renovations pristine during the long and dirty winter months, knowing we would have to start the staging/listing process all over again in the spring, and just basically feeling stuck.

For a second I thought "What if we move into the basement of the new place?" It's got a largish living area, a kitchen space and a 3/4 bath. But I quickly recognized that just wouldn't work for five people and a cat for six months or more, so I dismissed it immediately. (It would be really cheap for us because both units' rental almost cover the housing expenses. But it would make us crazy.)

But that crazy impractical idea did lead to another: What if we do sell the condo this year, but instead of kicking out the renters, we rent an apartment for six months or so?

I did some math, and if we could find a place for $1200 or less, it would basically be the same cost as staying in the condo. I looked around and there are lots of options well within that price range; don't know about month-to-month or 6-month options, but I bet they're there. Heck, we could probably get the seller's agent to find us a place, since he's angling to be our property manager on the new place and/or help the current renters find a new place when we kick them out.

We talked over all the ideas, and agreed that while they all have pros and cons, they are all doable and shouldn't be taken off the table. So for the time being we're keeping the place on the market, but we might not take any super lowball offer that comes along; we now realize that staying here would be smarter financially than doing that.

If the WV money comes in we could probably take a lowball offer, pay off some of the loans that are making housing costs so high, and move into the duplex right away. But if we don't, it's good to know we have other options besides just moving into the duplex and being really really house-poor for an indefinite period of time.