Anonymous wrote:I think it’s funny that you think this is an “extreme first world problem.” Not in DCUMland. Nobody here wants a cheesy little lake house that a couple in their early 30s can afford. The folks here could buy ten of them.

I wouldn’t start thinking of buying a second home until you’re swimming in money,
OP. Are you?

Anonymous wrote:get an airstream and bring it with you when you visit! or take it somewhere else! win! win!

Anonymous wrote:"You may not recognize it but we're real grownups with big bodies now so we need a bed. Your place is great but you just don't have the space for us. Until you can add a wing, we're just not going to be able to make it work."

Anonymous wrote:They will 100% cut you out of the property inheritance since “you already have your own.” NBD, just don’t be surprised.

Anonymous wrote:What in the…

I would NEVER stay at either of these cabins. Even if it was just me going solo and I didn’t have a spouse/kids. It sounds like hell sleeping on an air mattress in a crowded cabin living room, 1 bathroom. Obviously you and I are very different people, OP. What you describe sounds like my nightmare. Like I’d stay like that if I absolutely had to like I had no money or maybe if my house burned down or I had to evacuate due to a hurricane or something and there were no hotels and I temporarily (like one night, maybe) needed an emergency shelter. The fact you consider that a vacation is totally baffling to me.

I would not go there ever. But then I also wouldn’t want to buy a cabin on a lake for myself either. Different tastes. Lake houses don’t appeal to me. Don’t want to do the maintenance, don’t want to spend my weekends there, don’t want to swim in a lake or boat on a lake. So maybe you and I are too fundamentally different for me to even share this opinion.

One more thing: if you buy a house, will your siblings, cousins, etc be staying there too?

Anonymous wrote:Op here, to clarify- the two cabins are 90 mins apart on separate lakes. We'd likely buy around my parents cabin because its an hour door to door from our house, in laws is 2.5 hours.

Other answers to questions:
-We do travel a lot. Our 5yo has been to 6 countries and our 2yo has been to 3.
-We are not rich, but live in a MCOL area with great public schools. HHI $330k with room for growth, $2000 PITI on our house, no other debt outside of our mortgage, won't be paying for private schools or anything, one more year of childcare for our youngest then that's behind us. The cabins we are looking at are like $200k.
-We both WFH and have pretty flexible jobs so our hope is even when the kids are in sports we could do day trips or even day trips while they're at school (which we have been doing often as we've been looking at properties). We can both block off a Friday or Monday on our schedules and work extra the other days if needed and it's no big deal.
-Currently, we are going to one cabin or the other probably 2 weekends per month in the summer and 1 weekend per month the rest of the year (we also sled, ski, ice fish, snow mobile). We'd definitely use it.

Agree we learned our lesson about sharing info with our parents.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop discussing it with them and just do what you want.

+1 Assuming this is what you want just do it. I wouldn't be visiting either cabin based on the space/accommodations you described.

NP and I agree with this. Also: you wrote this, OP:

They also keep reminding us that we will eventually inherit 1/2 of inlaws and 1/3 of my parents.

I know a bunch of families I grew up around, friends of my parents with lakeside houses etc. And when that next generation inherited 1/2 or 1/3 of a cabin? Never ended well. Not once. Permanent rifts in one case; in other cases, ongoing tensions over who got the house, for how long, who left it in a mess, etc. etc. Very nice families, considered themselves close, but co-owning a vacation property even with someone you love and get along with STILL creates tensions.

Especially, OP, since you want to do things like put your own imprint on a cabin with your own decorating, and you're done with sleeping on air mattresses and sharing etc. -- Get what you want; do not make a habit of having the family stay there (guess what...they have their own cabins where they can vacation!) and frankly, I would not want that 1/2 or 1/3 share in other cabins. Period. I'd tell the folks long before they died: Please leave your cabin 100 percent to other sibling or whatever. Co-owning won't end well and by then you'll have your own cabin anyway.

Though from all the pressure your loving family puts on you--honestly, I'd want my vacation cabin to be in a different location so they weren't comng over and then carping about how it wasn't as great as the "family cabins." Because that's likely to happen too. I'm not sour on owning a vaction house, just on co-owning one, or having one so close to other family who have made clear they feel entitled to get into your business.