Planning to move to a smaller home? Or wondering what life would look like downsizing to a more modest house?
You see, like you, many homeowners are beginning to realize that you don’t have to live in a bigger house to be happy.
You can enjoy life as much, stay happier, less stressed and lead a quality life living in a smaller home. Besides, your wallet and finances will thank you for it.
Now, you may wonder, are there other benefits to downsizing my home?
Sure, and, in this post, you will learn about 12 under-the-radar advantages of paring down your home.
Impact on quality of life
The number one concern for people planning on moving to smaller square footage is lack of space and cramping.
With smaller or no rooms to maneuver, they fear they would bump into family members more often and continuously be in each other’s hair.
Granted, that’s a legit worry, but, with a little planning and smart decor choices, it can be managed.
Also, the feedback from people who have had to pare down their homes indicates no significant change in the quality of life if anything, they reported feeling happier.
Save time on cleaning and maintenance
Here’s the thing, a smaller home means less time to clean, less space to worry about and little maintenance work required to keep everything spanking clean.
As you know, one upside of freeing up more time is that you can engage in other fun activities. You can now pursue your other interests without worrying about house chores and whatnot.
Smaller homes are more environmentally friendly
Think about it. You only need fewer resources to maintain your new home. You need less energy to heat your house, less water for the lawn, and of course, your new home required fewer materials to build.
Although you may not give too much thought to them, they add up in the long term to help save the environment and certainly save you a few bucks here and there.
Lower energy bill
When living in a smaller, more energy-efficient home, you are more likely to cut back on power consumption.
Now you have fewer rooms to heat, fewer hot baths to run, fewer electronics to power.
Little or no monthly mortgage payments
Paring down on your house means you now have a smaller amount to repay on the mortgage each month.
The thing is, you need a smaller loan amount to finance a modest home compared to if it were a bigger house.
Be sure to work with the lender to create a repayment plan that gives you the flexibility for a lower monthly payment.
On the other hand, you could finance the purchase of the new home with cash from the sale of your bigger house and have 100% equity.
Have more firepower to attack your debt
If you are working towards paying off your debt, moving to a smaller home could help you achieve that faster.
With a lower monthly mortgage payment on the downsized house, you will have extra money to channel towards paying off your other debts.
Suppose you have a student loan of $20000 at 6% interest and your monthly payment is $200, it will take 139 months or 11 years and six months to pay off.
Now, imagine you moved to a smaller home and can put an extra 500 dollars towards paying off the loan, it will take you a mere 31 months or two years and five months to repay the loan.
Have more money to put towards retirement/investment funds
With little or no payment on the mortgage and several savings from utility bills, you will free up more money you can put into your retirement or investment funds.
Hence, you can then begin the journey to building a more financially secure future for yourself and your family.
Smaller homes are easier to sell
More often than not, a smaller house means an affordable home. A low-cost home means you have a broader audience to sell to since most potential homeowners want cost-effective homes.
Smaller homes afford you more flexibility
Paring down your house to a smaller space, say to a rented apartment or condo makes it much easier to move or travel without getting tied down to your property.
Want to move to another part of the country? Great, you can pack up and get going without having to wait till your house is sold.
Want to go on a month-long vacation? Excellent, just lock the doors to your apartment and hit the road.
Helping others
Downsizing to a smaller home could be an opportunity to gift family members pieces of furniture and other house items you wouldn’t need in your new modest home.
Struggling to let go of those items?
Perhaps you should think about gifting these items as a way to conserve resources. Your family members wouldn’t have any need to purchase these items again, which means they can now put the money towards another need.
Small space means little temptation to accumulate
While this may not be true for most homeowners, downsizing to a smaller home could help curb the temptation to collect things.
The idea is, since you don’t have enough room to store more items in your new home, you will refrain from purchasing them in the first place.
Intentional, functional purchases
When moving to a smaller house, you become thoughtful about the items you will bring into your new home. You tend to be more intentional in your purchases too.
Your focus at this point will be to buy things you need. No more getting things just for the fun of it.
